TAD Micro Evolution One loudspeaker

Notwithstanding the twists and turns of Japanese corporate culture, the status of Technical Audio Devices Laboratories, Inc. remains unchanged. Founded in 1975 as a subsidiary of Pioneer to build loudspeakers for the professional market, TAD remains part of that corporation, even after the recent sale of Pioneer’s home-audio division to Onkyo.

TAD has long been a highly respected name in pro audio, and for decades sold exclusively to that market. But 16 years ago, when they introduced a speaker designed for the home market—the Reference One—its five-figure price raised eyebrows in a market not yet saturated with speakers selling for more than $50,000/pair. But it was less than a shock, given that speakers with pro-audio genes in their DNA are expected to be pricey.

A string of other new TAD models followed, including the Compact Reference CR1, at $45,000/pair plus $4000 for the matching stands—still the costliest consumer stand-mounted speaker we know of.1 All of these designs came from TAD Labs’ main development center in Japan, led by chief engineer Toru Nagatani and the pen of content/surpassing-expectations-pioneers-andrew-jones”>Andrew Jones (footnote 1), who alternated between creating TAD models for those who could casually write a five-figure check, and surprisingly good and affordable Pioneer speakers for the rest of us.

Now we have the new Micro Evolution One, or ME1, the first affordable speaker from TAD—though affordable only in comparison to the company’s other models. At $12,495/pair, just under one-third the price of the CR1, the ME1 will still put a significant dent in your savings.

Design
The ME1 is the first TAD home loudspeaker not designed by Andrew Jones, who now works for Elac. But Jones’s fingerprints are still clearly visible—the ME1 echoes many of the themes found in the CR1. It’s a true three-way design in a size normally reserved for modest two-ways, though its design and appearance are anything but conventional.

The bottom end is handled by a 6.3″ (160mm) woofer with a MACC diaphragm—TADspeak for Multi-layered Aramid Composite Cone. The rear radiation from this woofer exits the cabinet through small openings on each side that feed into narrow slots that vent to the outside at the enclosure’s front and rear. TAD calls this bass-loading design bidirectional ADS, for Aero-Dynamic Slot.

Is ADS actually a variation of aperiodic bass loading—a technique first used by Dynaco in the 1960s? Based more on a cabinet with a controlled leak than a sealed or ported box, aperiodic loading produces the single impedance peak characteristic of a sealed box instead of the two peaks of a conventional ported system. It also reduces the amplitude of that peak, and is claimed to offer the bass extension of a larger sealed box while lacking what some consider to be the disadvantages of bass ports.

We’ll see what John Atkinson’s measurements show. In any event, aperiodic loading is rare today, perhaps because when it was first used, the rigorous, math-based techniques for the optimal design of a specific driver in a ported box hadn’t yet been refined. Even today, manufacturers in search of more salable bass output from smaller ported boxes bend the rules a bit. They might get more extension, but often at the cost of a sloppy low end and/or an upper-bass emphasis that many consumers confuse with deep bass. This might be why audiophiles sometimes give ported boxes a bad rap.

TAD also uses coincident midrange and tweeter drive-units in its speakers for the home. Unlike coaxial drivers, in which the tweeter and its mounting bracket are positioned in front of the midrange driver, partially blocking the latter’s radiation, a coincident driver’s tweeter is placed at the throat of its midrange cone, leaving that cone free of obstructions. KEF, with its UniQs, is today’s most prolific producer of coincident drivers, though Tannoy might justifiably claim it got there first. Other speaker brands that use coincidents today include Pioneer and Elac. It’s no coincidence (sorry) that Andrew Jones did early work at KEF before moving on to Pioneer/TAD and then to Elac.

TAD calls its coincident drivers Coherent Source Transducers (CST), and the ME1’s CST is the smallest yet. Its 3.6″ (90mm) midrange cone is made of magnesium, which is lighter than aluminum, and is partnered with a 1″ (25mm) beryllium-dome tweeter. TAD claims that this tweeter’s response extends up to 60kHz, though that would be a challenge to verify. The crossover frequencies are 420Hz and 2.5kHz, though the slopes aren’t specified.

Unlike the usual separate midrange and tweeter, with a coincident driver the frequencies from the bottom of the midrange to the extreme treble originate from the same point in space. This eliminates the erratic response (comb filtering) in the crossover region that can be produced by separate drivers when a listener isn’t positioned within the optimal listening window. In a speaker with a coincident driver, the low end is typically handled by a separate woofer, as in the TAD ME1. But in some designs, such as KEF’s smaller two-way stand-mount models, the cone of the coincident driver also handles the bass.

A coincident driver’s midrange cone can also act as a waveguide for the tweeter, to equalize the radiation patterns of the midrange (or midbass) and tweeter in the crossover region. Sometimes, it can also widen the tweeter’s dispersion at higher frequencies.

Also: a cone driver’s effective acoustic center is somewhere between the cone’s surround and its apex, but generally closer to the apex, particularly at a typical crossover frequency. But in a conventional speaker the tweeter is on the front baffle, perhaps as much as 1″ forward of the midrange’s acoustic center. This can result in response problems where the two drivers’ outputs overlap. While this can be compensated for in the crossover, it’s not trivial. But with the tweeter of a concentric driver at the apex of the midrange and closer to the latter’s acoustic center, the two drivers’ outputs can be closely aligned at the crossover frequency without complicating the crossover.

The ME1’s enclosure is made of a combination of Baltic birch plywood and MDF. Inside, a 4mm-thick steel plate extends between the sides of the cabinet to further reinforce it, contributing to the speaker’s robust weight of 44 lbs. Two pairs of high-quality speaker terminals on the rear allow for biwiring or biamping, if desired. If not, the speakers’ heavy-duty shorting links—not the thin metal straps provided with many biwirable speakers—can be used to connect the terminals to each other, as I did for this review.

As I write this, the ME1 is available only in the impeccable piano black finish, with flat black side cheeks, of our review samples. At the 2017 Tokyo Audio Show they were reportedly shown in a titanium finish. When that becomes available, it will likely be an extra-cost option. In neither case will you have to decide between listening with the grilles on or off—there are no grilles, though a metal screen protects the midrange-tweeter CST from prying fingers.

TAD offers optional stands for the ME1s. They’re attractive, a good match for the speakers, and solidly made. The heavy center support is pre-filled—no messing around with lead shot and/or sand—but the stands come in a flat pack and are a bit awkward to assemble. At $1795/pair, I’d expect your TAD dealer to assemble them for you!

Fasteners at the rear of the stand let you secure the speaker cables to it with ties (not provided). Spikes are included, along with floor protectors for use under the spikes. I didn’t use the spikes, as there are hardwood floors under the carpeting that covers most of my listening room. In any case, it may not have mattered; the spikes’ soft points aren’t thin or sharp enough to penetrate most carpets.

I recommend the stands—the ME1s can be screwed securely to them using the preinstalled, threaded inserts in the speakers’ bottom panels. Secured to generic stands with only a few blobs of Blu-Tack, the TADs would be too heavy to walk around the room without being dislodged, and anyway, most multi-use stands lack a top plate big enough for proper support. Even on TAD’s dedicated stands, the ME1s were top-heavy and tricky to move around. Gloves with rubberized palms, cheap at any good hardware store, are a big help in ensuring a good grip to walk these or any speakers around the room.

Setup
My listening room measures a modest 21′ by 16′, with a ceiling shaped like the inside of a four-sided pyramid and 11–12′ high at its apex, with an estimated average ceiling height of 9′. A soffit roughly 18″ deep (slightly deeper on one of the 16′ sides) high runs the room’s perimeter. This space is part of an open floor plan, with one of the 21′ sides almost entirely open to the kitchen-breakfast area, which in turn is open through a large opening to the dining room. The acoustic space is therefore much larger than the 21′ by 16′ listening area, and also accommodates a home-theater setup, for my work for our sister publication Sound & Vision. (My two roll-up projection screens, of different sizes and aspect ratios, are fully retracted when I listen to music.)

The room isn’t overly dead, but apart from the kitchen space, the floors are mostly covered with large, relatively thick, unpadded rugs. Shelves filled with books, CDs, and videos line the rear wall, several feet behind the listening seats, and acoustic panels of various sizes are scattered around the adjoining spaces to suppress any slap echo that might intrude into the listening area.

Except as noted below, I positioned the TAD ME1s about 6′ out from one of the 16′-wide ends of the room. The entire wall behind them is segmented in a bay shape; each of its three facets has a window, but this isn’t a conventional bay window. The TADs were a bit more than 8′ apart, just slightly more than that from the main listening seat, and angled inward so that their axes crossed just in front of me when I sat in the main seat.

Listening
I began with a Marantz UD7007 universal 3D BD player and AV8802A surround-sound processor (in stereo only) with two channels of a Proceed AMP5 amplifier (125Wpc into 8 ohms; each of the Proceed’s five channels is driven by a completely separate power supply and transformer). The TAD ME1s immediately impressed me with their exceptional resolving ability—their beryllium tweeters were clearly the star of the show. This was the first chance I’d had in at least five years to live with beryllium tweeters (as opposed to hearing them often at audio shows), and I don’t remember having ever been so impressed by them before.

The leading edges of the percussion instruments in Bizet’s Carmen Fantasy, performed by the All Star Percussion Ensemble conducted by Harold Farberman (CD, Moss Music Group MCD 10007), exploded onto the soundstage without unnatural edginess. Subtle shadings of instrumental percussion textures were far more evident that I’m accustomed to hearing, and the distinct reproduction of the ambience of the recording venue added welcome helpings of air and depth. On vocal recordings, sibilants stayed natural as well, apart from poorly miked or overprocessed recordings. The ME1s were not forgiving with the latter, but neither were they ruthlessly revealing.

The midrange was similarly impressive. All we can reasonably expect of a midrange driver is that it be low in distortion, offer a believable balance that clearly reflects the recording quality—for better or worse—and avoid obvious colorations.

Footnote 1: Andrew Jones now works for German loudspeaker manufacturer Elac. Click here to see a recent video interview.

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COMPANY INFO

Technical Audio Devices Laboratories, Inc.

US distributor: MoFi Distribution

1811 W. Bryn Mawr Avenue

Chicago, IL 60660

(312) 738-5025

www.mofidistribution.com

ARTICLE CONTENTS

Page 1
Page 2
Specifications
Associated Equipment
Measurements
John Atkinson March 2018

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