TAD Reference One Loudspeaker

Since its inception the TAD Reference One has been hailed a true reference monitor. World-renowned sound engineers Ray Staff and Matt Colton use a pair of Reference Ones' for critical sound quality evaluation in the mastering room at London's AIR Studios.

Standing 130cm tall and weighing 150kg, this ultra-high-end floorstanding loudspeaker is exquisitely crafted. Its base plate is aircraft-grade aluminium, the structurally inert teardrop-shaped enclosure formed of multiple layers of birch plywood finished in sumptuous Pommele Sapele veneer. The cabinet tilts backwards by four degrees to afford time alignment of the drive units, the location of the force produced by the immensely powerful bass drivers place directly over the centre of gravity of the enclosure.

TAD Labs' flagship Reference One (R1) is a three-way vented speaker system employing the company's CST (Coherent Source Transducer) drive unit - with its tweeter at the acoustic centre of the midrange cone. Unique in the world of audio, both its 3.5cm tweeter dome and 16cm midrange cone are made of beryllium, the lightest and most rigid of metals, formed by vapour deposition. This is worlds apart from the beryllium foil tweeters some manufacturers feature in their top-end loudspeakers!

Frequency response of the R1 is an astonishing 21Hz – 100kHz (-10db), the R1's awesome bass performance delivered by two 25cm (10in) woofers featuring diaphragms that have a unique triple-laminated construction: a core of foamed acrylimide sandwiched front and rear by direction-oriented aramid fibres. To eliminate drive loss for more efficient power handling, the dust cap uses the same material. Furthermore, by joining the cone, dust cap and voice coil at a single point, the powerful motor unit's voice coil drive is transmitted directly to the cone. The result is fast response and ultra-clear bass, with ultra-low coloration.

With scrupulous attention paid to fine details, TAD Labs manufacturers everything in-house, its hand-built drivers often employed by acousticians and architects designing recording studio control rooms. So not only the R1 speaker system itself, but its individual drive units also are subject to strict quality control based on serial numbers.

TAD Reference One Specifications

Design: 3-way bass reflex compact loudspeaker

Drive units: 25cm woofers x2; coaxial midrange/tweeter - 16.5cm cone/3.5cm dome

Freq responce: 21Hz to 100kHz

X/overs: 250Hz, 2kHz

Sensitivity: 90dB (2.83V, 1m)

Required amp output: 50-300Wrms

Dimensions: 554mm x 1293mm x 698mm (W H D)

Weight speaker each: 150kg