![]() ![]() The woofer is reflex-loaded by a rectangular port at the base of the front baffle that is 9" wide by 1" high, including the flared profile at the port's sides, and is covered by a removable black mesh grille. TAD calls this an Optimized Field Geometry Magnet Structure (OFGMS). The voice-coil is 4" in diameter but only 12mm long, operating in a 22mm-long, magnet gap, which again confers excellent linearity over a wide range of cone excursion. Unusually in these days of ubiquitous half-roll rubber surrounds, the woofer cone is terminated in a corrugated suspension that TAD claims offers high linearity. Again, the goal was to produce a diaphragm that would be light and stiff, but with good internal damping. This features a central, foamed-acrylic core, with front and back woven coatings of an aramid material. The woofer has what TAD calls a Tri-Laminate Composite Cone (TLCC). Because beryllium is very brittle, the CST drive-unit is protected by an integral wire-mesh grille, and is mounted within a silver-finished ring that smoothly continues the midrange cone's flare.įrequencies below 250Hz are produced by an 8" woofer mounted below the CST unit on the CR1's matte-black front baffle. The result is a response that is truly pistonic within the audioband, and is claimed to extend to 100kHz. The profile of the tweeter dome was developed using what TAD calls the Harmonized Synthetic Diaphragm Optimum Method (HSDOM) of computer analysis. The diaphragms are produced using a vapor-deposition technique developed by TAD. Both diaphragms are made of beryllium, which is both a very light metal and extremely rigid, properties that make its use optimal. As shown in the exploded diagram on the next page, this is a concentric driver combining a 6.5" midrange unit with a 1.375" tweeter. The midrange and treble are handled by what TAD calls the Coherent Source Transducer (CST). Minimizing these effects requires that special attention be paid to the profile of the midrange cone.Īll of the TAD Reference speakers' drive-units are made by TAD. The trade-offthere are always trade-offsis that the symmetrical acoustic environment for the tweeter means that diffraction effects from the boundaries of that environment all occur at the same frequency. There are therefore no discontinuities in the speaker's radiation patternno off-axis flares or gullies that can lead to coloration, even when the on-axis output is flat. The benefit of this is that the acoustic centers of the midrange unit and tweeter coincide, and their directivities can be made to match in the crossover region. But the Compact Reference weighs a more manageable 101.4 lbswhen I visited the TAD room at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show last January, I asked Jones for review samples.Īndrew Jones had worked on the groundbreaking Uni-Q drive-unit when he was at KEF, which mounts a dome tweeter on what would have been the midrange unit's dustcap at the center of its cone. I couldn't envisage how I'd be able to get a pair of 350-lb Reference Ones down the steps into my basement listening room. Reina in his September 2011 review, offers astonishingly uncolored sound quality for just $150/pair.īut it has been two Jones designs for Pioneer's Technical Audio Devices Laboratories division (TAD) that have attracted the press's attention at recent audio shows, both designed with no apparent limit on the bill of materials: first the floorstanding Reference One ($78,000/pair), then the stand-mounted Compact Reference CR1 ($37,000/pair plus matching stands for $3600/pair). The Japanese company had established a state-of-the-art speaker-design facility in Southern California, and Jones was invited to lead the design team.Īndrew Jones designed some superb-sounding speakers for Pioneer, including the S-1EX, which Kal Rubinson enthused over in the March 2007 issue of Stereophile and, more recently, the SP-BS41-LR, which, said Robert J. Jones followed Fincham across the Atlantic, where he worked on Infinity's Prelude, Overture, and Reference Series speakers, before joining Pioneer in 1997. Fincham led a team of young engineers, including Mike Gough, who eventually joined B&W, and Yorkshire-born Andrew Jones, who became KEF's Chief Engineer in 1989, before Fincham was lured to Harman's Infinity division, in Northridge, California, in 1993. Cooke left Wharfedale in 1961 to found KEF Electronics Ltd., where he subsequently appointed Goodmans designer Laurie Fincham as Chief Engineer in 1968. Wharfedale was founded by Gilbert Briggs in 1932, who in the 1950s handed over the reins of Technical Director to fellow Yorkshireman Raymond Cooke. High-end audio is in some ways a dynastic beast, though without as many "begats." One of the world's most successful loudspeaker manufacturers in the years following World War II was the Wharfedale company, from Yorkshire in the North of England. ![]()
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