08/18/2026
In a shop like ours, with so much gear and so much activity, electronics and speakers tend to have seasons. There’s no real rhyme or reason for it. Like anyone else, our attention shifts forward and back depending on what’s going on, what reviews have come out, what has recently arrived, or simply what we feel like listening to that day.
TAD, though, is a speaker company I have carried a torch for for a very long time. I remember listening to the original Micro Evolution One and dreaming about the day when House of Stereo might be big enough to support a Reference dealership. Since then, I’ve spent years with the ME1 and CE1 within the Evolution Series, the larger Evolution models, and the Reference Series. I have simply always loved TAD. Over the last eight years, I’ve also been fortunate enough to strike up a friendship with Shinji Taratani, their CEO, whose vision and ideals for high-end audio align very closely with my own.
Recently, I decided we needed another stand-mount speaker to liven up the offering on our floor, and it occurred to me that although I had heard the ME1TX many times and we had sold them, we had never actually stocked a pair in the showroom. It was an honest oversight, but in retrospect, a critical one.
From the moment they arrived, something was different. We took the first ME1TX out of the box on camera for an unboxing video after closing, and it quickly became apparent that Jasmine, Little Joe, and I were not going home without hearing them. Jasmine has heard me wax poetic about my love for all things TAD for years. She had spent a little time with my personal CE1TXs before they went home with me, and she had also spent time listening to the Evolution Two, so her appreciation for TAD was already founded in real-world experience. But here came the real test.
Armed with a nine-watt-per-channel Phasemation SA-1500 300B integrated amplifier and a Meitner MA3i DAC, we started playing music. Almost immediately, Jasmine sat up and her face lit up like it was Christmas morning. Little Joe’s reaction was much the same. He is still relatively new to the audiophile world, but after spending the summer and several months before that being inundated in all things audio, he has already heard his share of very, very expensive systems. His reaction to the sound coming from TAD’s smallest speaker was still one of genuine shock and disbelief.
Their reactions were strong enough—and frankly, photo-worthy enough—that I broke the camera back out and started shooting some handheld video, trying to capture the moment. Unfortunately, the microphone wasn’t attached, so we didn’t get to preserve the experience the way I had hoped. Nonetheless, somewhere in that moment I knew it was time to bring my CE1TXs back to the shop. It was no longer reasonable to keep them at home. They needed to be shared.
So the next morning, the CE1TXs sat proudly beside the ME1TXs, and the testing commenced. Yvette, newly introduced to the ME1s that morning, happened to be there for some of the first notes from the CE1TXs and quickly became the first new CE1 convert in the shop. Little Joe was in school, but based on the previous evening I thought it prudent to send him a few pictures of the fronts of the CE1TXs, hoping he’d see them between classes. His response was to ask me for pictures of the backs as well. That made me pretty proud of our youngest shop guy.
By Friday, the Phasemation rack had earned itself a new companion in the form of an original Gryphon Diablo, pushing 300 watts per channel into 8 ohms and 600 into 4. We spent the day alternating between the Phasemation and the Diablo, showing off the merits of both and asking a fairly ridiculous question: what could these little TADs do with 300 watts of solid-state power, and what could they do with nine watts of 300B tube power? The Meitner MA3i faithfully reproduced the music as we went through PCM, DSD, and just about every format and kind of recording we could throw at them. We went looking for chinks in the armor. We tried to bog them down. Mostly, we just kept listening.
In some ways, I feel a bit like a cult leader this morning, surrounded by a few new faithful adherents to the magic that is Technical Audio Devices. Customers have come and gone, some completely inspired, heading home and examining their own systems and rooms to figure out exactly how they might accommodate a new pair of speakers.
And that, really, is what makes this business fun. Sometimes the excitement comes from discovering something entirely new. Other times, it comes from being reminded just how extraordinary something you already loved really is.
Right now, we are having one of those moments with TAD.
It is a very exciting time in the shop indeed.
