Question on iPod, Dock, and DAC - Page 2

The TAD line of products (most notably speakers designed by Andrew Jones) are engineered and largely manufactured by Pioneer but without any budgetary constraints on the designs. Basically, there is a huge amount of IP and engineering knowledge at any major consumer electronics manufacturer... but their designs are always compromised by the source components, assembly tooling, etc... and always governed by a target price. So management says "design the best speaker possible that will cost us less than $350 each to produce... so we can sell them at $1K/pr and make money". With the TAD division those same engineers are told, "design the best speaker, amp, etc.. possible, PERIOD - and then we'll price them a little higher than that." and there really isn't any expectation of significant sales at all... just publicity. Essentially it's the same thing as car companies do with concept cars... much of the technology will eventually trickle down to the consumer level in some form or another... but by that time it's now governed by the same economies. So you can think of the TAD Reference One as something like the Lexus LFA for Toyota. It proves the point that they can engineer something extraordinary (with a price to match) so the "common man" feels that much better about spending $30K on a Camry.



The Reference One's run about $70K/pair and the 'cheaper' stand-mounted CR1s run about $34K + 4K for stands (IIRC).

I've heard them at T.H.E. Show during CES here in Vegas... pure audio heaven... and the only speaker I've heard that was significantly better than the Revel Ultima2's which are also nearly perfect speakers IMO.

EDIT: And as if the price alone didn't say "not your average consumer speaker" the weight should... 330lbs EACH SPEAKER...
Edited by DiGiCiDAL - 11/5/12 at 12:10am

It doesn't hurt that Andrew Jones is a really nice guy in person too, I met him at the NY Audio show 2 years ago.

And I concur about the sound of CR1s, they sound fantastic.