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TAD Evolution 2 Speaker Review

Rate this speaker:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 66 15.1%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 208 47.6%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 149 34.1%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 14 3.2%

  • Total voters
    437

VintageFlanker

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Sounds from Amir’s description that it looks and feels very high quality in real life, but I was just thinking exactly what you said.
Yep. I have no doubt that build quality is excellent (how could it be otherwise for 20k speakers made in Japan?), but it looks like... nothing.

And I'm saying this while TAD makes ones of my favourite looking speakers ever:
tad-cr1tx-br~2.jpg
TAD_Reference_One_TX_4~2.jpg
 

jhaider

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I was disappointed (in the academic sense at least - I wasn’t a potential buyer) that TAD was abandoning their “CST” coax in this new model at least. They had at least 4 versions of CST, with the same basic geometry: an all-Be one with the expensive vapor deposited mid cone, one or two versions with 7” (called 6”) magnesium cone and Be tweeter (Pioneer S-1/2/7EX, TAD Evo 1), a 6” (called 5”) version with magnesium cone and ceramic-graphite tweeter (Pioneer S-3/4/8EX, S-iw6/7/891 in walls, S-ic6/891a in ceilings), and the baby one for ME-1. I guess a TAD badged version needs Be but it’s hard not to see going from a 3 way with sophisticated coax to a 2.5 way with basic waveguide as cost cutting inappropriate to the price point. Especially when measurements aren’t better than one finds from most peer brand and some much less expensive speakers.

CST in its ~15 year old form may be a little long in the tooth compared to current Genelec or KEF coaxes, but it’s only real problem is an on axis cancellation notch that quickly fills in. There’s some sophisticated cone damping and tweeter geometry that leads to really fine performance.
 
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Purité Audio

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Compact reference 1 from Stereophile,
Evolution 1 Stereophile
Even the Micro Evolution ( not Andrew Jones) isn’t bad ,
Keith
 

Sancus

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Mnyb

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Hmm no reason to buy TAD if they ditched their famous coaxial driver. Thats was the whole charm with their offering? (When i win the lottery )
 

3125b

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Why not make this a 3-way - that would have helped to avoid at least some of the issues, and at 20000$ there is no need to save money on the crossover ...
 

fredoamigo

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What should I tell him?
20000$ is like 22000 € now dude
Except that the price in Europe includes the 20% tax (VAT) rarely in the USA...... look for the error
 

delta76

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Except that the price in Europe includes the 20% tax (VAT) rarely in the USA...... look for the error
yes. which means the price in US is even more expensive than EU. By EU laws shop must display prices inc. taxes to individual customers
 

thewas

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The on-axis/LW peak at 600 Hz and presence dip are disappointing at that price point as the directivity is well behaved and those could be corrected with a better crossover tuning, same as the vertical lobes at the crossover region, especially the one close to listening spot at -10°:

Here is the vertical:
TAD Evolution Two Tower Speaker Vertical Directivity Response Measurements.png
 

Maiky76

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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/
I can't see the usual data in the file that is attached
 

Mnyb

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Why not make this a 3-way - that would have helped to avoid at least some of the issues, and at 20000$ there is no need to save money on the crossover ...
This is usually an economic compromise you get the surface area of two drivers in the bass for higher output capabillity.

But I agree this kind of compromise is for much cheaper speakers, for this money one should expect an optimized midrange driver and a larger bass driver or a dual bass drivers as it is now but with a dedicated midrange
 

Arc Acoustics

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Attachments
TAD Evolution Two Tower Speaker Horizontal Beamwidth Response Measurements.zip
580.4 KB
The file you attached contained 11 image files but no text file.
Is there no raw measured data at this time?
 

okok

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TAD is one bitchy pricey brand, this is only their entry stuff, they got this silver midrange, the color is silver, sandwich materials

edit: should be ATD
 
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