New edition of TAD CR1

There’s something liberating about manufacturers who do not release new versions of the same product every year. Usually the updates are barely an upgrade, but of course the press release says the new version is up to par with Jesus’ return.

Fortunately, this is not true for everyone, and Japanese TAD, or Technical Audio Devices Laboratories as they are also known, has spent over 10 years on this speaker.

In fact, the first TAD CR1 arrived in 2011, just a few years after Andrew Jones’ first TAD speaker. To say it caused a furore back then is hardly an exaggeration. Since then, TAD has always been up there with the best.

This speaker is a brand new version of the CR1, now called CR1TX (so they avoided the worn-out Mk II), based on the same basic recipe with TAD’s unique Coherent Source Transducer.

That unit they got from the flagship TAD-R1TX, if you remember it. Here, the unit is inserted into a cabinet TAD had the high-end furniture makers at Tendo Mokko in Tendo, Yamagata Prefecture, carve.

The side panels can be supplied lacquered in a special beryllium-based lacquer, the black one having some green in it. Everything is handmade, of course.

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TAD R1TX Beryl Red finish

The cabinet is also acoustically damped to the highest standards. Or as TAD calls it: SILENT (Structurally Inert Laminated Enclosure Technology). The enclosure is built as a frame with 21 mm thick laminated beech boards and 30 mm vacuum-pressed side panels glued to MDF boards.

The tweeter in the centre of the coaxial unit is made of beryllium. So is the 16 cm midrange diaphragm, and the unit should be able to reach 100 kHz.

The bass units use TAD’s acrylamide TLCC (Tri-Laminate Composite Cone) diaphragm sandwiched with two layers of aramid. The motor behind the diaphragm is driven by an OFGMS (Optimized Field Geometry Magnet Structure) with a short coil and a magnetic gap of 20 mm. TAD believes this gives the device more stable motion under load and better linearity.

It’s not cheap. A pair of CR1TX with the stands pictured below is priced at $89,000.

Facts:

• 3-way bass reflex standmount speaker
• 20 cm woofer
• 16 cm coaxial midrange
• 3.5 cm tweeter
• Frequency range: 32 Hz to 100 kHz
• Crossover frequencies: 250 Hz and 2 kHz
• Sensitivity: 86 dB (2.83 V, 1 m)
• Dimensions: 341ｘ628 ｘ446 mm
• Weight: 46 kg