What's unique about the brand
What reviewers are saying
We read all the reviews. Here's what reviewers feel most strongly about:
- TIDAL combines luxurious aesthetics, often featuring high-gloss piano lacquer finishes and stainless steel accents, with advanced acoustic engineering.
- They uniquely integrate their phono stages as an integral part of their preamplifiers, rather than an add-on.
- Tidal meticulously selects high-quality components for their crossovers, such as Dueland silver-foil capacitors and Mundorf parts, regardless of cost.
- TIDAL loudspeakers often employ Accuton ceramic and diamond drivers custom-made to their specifications.
Our favorite reviewer quotes:
- "Not only did the Tidal speakers present each of the eight vocal lines separately, but their superbly precise stereo imaging in both the width and depth planes let me fully appreciate their ensemble singing in that beautiful church acoustic. The sheer resolution of the Akiras continued to astonish me throughout my auditioning." (https://www.stereophile.com/content/tidal-audio-akira-loudspeaker)
- "The TIDAL Audio Intra exhibited the cleanest, most hash-free high-frequency transients of any amp I've yet to hear. Zero glare–while simultaneously delivering a staggering level of detail and information that never feels decoupled from the core of a recording." (https://pt.audio/2022/01/16/tidal-audio-intra-power-amplifier-review)
- "With the TIDAL Audio Prisma in my system, and digital sources feeding the Berkeley DAC, the sound was absolutely free of even the smallest amount of glare or glassiness. Any and all annoying extraneous texture – no matter how minute was magically buffed off of the music." (https://pt.audio/2020/07/24/tidal-audio-prisma-preamplifier-review)
- "Dynamically, the TIDAL Audio Intra is in a class of its own. It's never jumpy or artificially exciting but effortless in the way it plays dynamic contacts, macro, and micro." (https://pt.audio/2022/01/16/tidal-audio-intra-power-amplifier-review)
- "The imaging of the TIDAL speakers was precise and the soundstage was remarkably deep and wide -- the latter being one of the more improved facets of the G2 over its predecessor. Cranking up the volume simply gave more of the same -- a generous helping of spacious, clear, coherent and tactile music with no sense of dynamic compression, congestion, or harshness that might have been stereotypically attributed to ceramic drivers years ago." (https://www.theaudiobeat.com/equipment/tidalpianodiacera_g2.htm)
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Products
Lineup comparison
We think it's helpful to understand how their products compare. To learn more about each, scroll to the section above to click through to individual product pages.
TIDAL Piano
- Positioning: The entry-level masterpiece in TIDAL's lineup.
- Description: Features sophisticated simplicity and high build quality, with proprietary TIRADUR cabinet material for reduced vibrations.
TIDAL Contriva
- Positioning: A mid-range model in TIDAL's lineup, offering a balance of performance and luxury.
- Description: Known for its elegant design and deep bass, uses TIRALIT cabinet material and carbon-fiber aluminum woofers for enhanced sound clarity. It stands out from the Piano with its more advanced driver technology.
TIDAL Akira
- Positioning: A high-end model, positioned just below the flagship La Assoluta.
- Description: Features a 1 carat pure diamond tweeter and TIRALIT Ultra cabinet for superior resonance control. It offers a more refined sound than the Contriva.
TIDAL Sunray
- Positioning: Positioned between the Akira and La Assoluta, offering a unique blend of both.
- Description: Distinguished by its use of diamond and ceramic driver technology, providing an exceptionally fast and deep bass. It offers a more powerful sound than the Akira.
TIDAL La Assoluta
- Positioning: The flagship model, representing the pinnacle of TIDAL's offerings.
- Description: Renowned for its groundbreaking sound quality and luxurious craftsmanship, featuring custom components and a massive build. It surpasses all other models in terms of performance.
Used
TIDAL
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Speakers
brands
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
About the brand
The Grand Reference loudspeakers embody and advance the groundbreaking principles initially introduced in IO Design’s Naked speaker concept, pushing technological boundaries and utilizing the highest-quality materials available. Unlike traditional boxed or dipole speaker systems—which inherently produce distortions, compression, and energy loss—IO Design's approach achieves extraordinarily low distortion, minimal interference, and an even distribution of energy across the entire audio spectrum.
The core objective of IO Design is to replicate the immersive energy and emotional impact of a live musical performance within a home environment. Their speakers generate authentic acoustic presence, faithfully capturing dynamics, micro-dynamics, and harmonic nuances, thereby bridging the gap between live sound and home audio reproduction.
IO Design’s meticulous engineering ensures consistent sound pressure at any listening position, maintaining purity, clarity, and naturalness of sound without compromising dynamics or detail. The result is a truly immersive and emotionally compelling listening experience, distinctly superior to conventional speaker designs.
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
The concept itself, we are the first and (as of today the only ones) able to produce huge bass and devastating energy in the room with a dipole/baffleless architecture. Design is a factor, crossover another pillar, vibration control and many other points. Every mm2 in the speaker is discussed to the bone always for improvements. Our aim is a formula 1 car no other point than performance, design and crafting.
What's your approach to customer support?
We have distributors and dealers in some countries already and we are evaluating new ones. Being IO Design dealer/distributor is a mission because you are not selling normal hi-end loudspeakers but truly F1 devices. The network will hopefully grow, in the meanwhile, where we don't have dealers, we manage the customers directly or, even better, we ask the Customer to put his dealer in contact with us to make him safe and easy.
If a Customer needs setup advise, we follow up analyzing also the acoustics if needed. Should any tech issue happen, we would support the dealer with parts and repair advise or we would ship back the units for check and fixing.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
It depends from system to system and ambient to ambient. We always choose the more extreme quality tracks to show the true potential of the speakers because it's way above the current competition. Usually we prefer tracks where bass is very evident because it is a strong point (even if it might seem counter intuitive for a baffleless design). Also high transients, because the energy the speakers pushes in the room is much higher than anything else on the market.
What other products pair best with yours?
Any high quality amplification works, digital, tubes, solid state. The important is that the amp has control and current, watts are not so important, even 40-60 can do but the quality of the amp need to be xcellent to get profit of the shocking realism of IO Design speakers. Ypsilon Electronics is well tested for instance. Tubes also perform well, however they are usually a bit more euphonic on bass and they have more distortion; this is a pity because IO Design speakers are so clean and distortion free... In normal boxed speakers you don't notice, because those speakers are themselves distorting music with the box compressions...
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
Marten uses high quality drivers that are custom to our models often in exotic materials like diamond, beryllium, ceramics and aluminium. Marten is one of very fiev manufactures that is implementing first order crossover filters. This we do in all models in the Mingus and Coltrane range.
What's your approach to customer support?
Initially customers are advised to contact the dealer they bought their speakers from, when support is needed, if they have bought speakers second hand it's recommended to to contact the appointed distributor. Of course customers are also welcome to contact Marten directly via our info email and get support that way. We value customer support highly and help our dealers and distributors to take care of customers if something has happened. Customers should never ever hesitate to contact us or our partners.
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
We have many but here are three of our test tracks, St James Infirmary (live edition) Angela Brown, Someday you'll be sorry Harry Connick Jr, V. Panis angelicus (Soprano) Ensemble vocal de Lausanne.
What other products pair best with yours?
We do a lot of testing and development on brands like Halcro, Audiaflight, MSB and CH-precision. But we also know that customers use Gryphon, Goldmund, Soulution and Esoteric among many other brands in their home systems.
Featured products
About the brand
Our interview with the brand
What are two key technological innovations or strong opinions that differ you from other brands?
What's your approach to customer support?
What are your favorite tracks for showcasing the strength of your products?
What other products pair best with yours?
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