This is a review and detailed measurements of the TAD Evolution 2 tower 2.5 way speaker. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $20,000.
View attachment 241950
Sorry for the cellphone shot of the speaker on Klippel NFS. I have not had the time to test it in the house.
The fit and finish is impeccable. The binding posts is likely representative of the quality inside:
View attachment 241953
It is full custom with a level of precision that makes it a pleasure to tighten the screw on the terminal. The fit is so perfect against the threads that make you feel there is fluid/oil in the thread but there is not! An example of very high precision machining.
Measurements that you are about to see were performed using the Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (so where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close distance ("near-field") which sharply reduces the impact of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms yet results that can be more accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.
Reference axis for the measurement was the center of the tweeter. No grill was used. Measurement axis is parallel to ground plan. 1500 measurements were performed in 3-D space (50% higher than my normal standard) generating 1.2 gigabytes of data.
I have shared my results with the company representative. Alas, I have not heard anything back despite checking a couple of times.
Here are the company specs:
View attachment 241956
TAD Evolution 2 Speaker Measurements
As usual we start with our CEA-2034 frequency response measurements:
View attachment 241954
Great to have good bass extension. Alas, the rest of the response is somewhat variable which is likely due to interference from multiple sound sources. Here is the near-field response:
View attachment 241955
Nice to see port/cabinet resonances being suppressed well. Company specs the first crossover point at 90 Hz. I am not seeing that effect so perhaps the near-field measurements are polluted by the other woofer?
Anyway, here is our early window reflections:
View attachment 241957
Nothing to add other than the comment on the graph. Here is our predicted in-room response:
View attachment 241958
Horizontal directivity is good so we should have good luck with EQ:
View attachment 241959
View attachment 241960
Here is the vertical:
View attachment 241961
Benefit of 2.5-way design kicks in lower distortion, at least at 86 dBSPL:
View attachment 241962
View attachment 241963
At 4.5 ohm minimum, lowest impedance point is slightly better than average which is appreciated:
View attachment 241964
Here is our waterfall and step responses:
View attachment 241965
View attachment 241966
As I noted, due to lack of time, I do not have listening impressions for you.
Conclusions
I guess I can state the obvious that given TAD's stellar reputation in speaker designs, I walked in expecting perfection. We did not get that. I let you all vote with what you think of the measured performance. I am delighted about the quality of the speaker though.
I should also mention the incredible support and generosity of the company to work with me and send me these samples for testing. No other company has offered such expensive speakers for testing.
-----------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any
donations are much appreciated using
: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/