AMPLIFIED PERFORMANCE – Tidal’s breakthrough AP1 loudspeaker

The system you see just below is very similar to the one that wooed the crowds at the Munich High End show 9 years ago or so. It would probably still rank in the last few percent of rooms if you took it back to Munich today – or indeed any other international Audio show. The cost ? With the Assoluta bass towers, around 1 million euros.

Several years after that time, TIDAL were selected by the Bugatti motor company to design and build a ‘no limits’ Bugatti branded audio system. This initiated a period of enormous R&D in order to create a system befitting of one of the most prestigious brands in the world. The result – the TIDAL x Bugatti “Royale” system – thrilled the crowds again at Munch 2023, many professionals awarding the system best of the show and some proclaiming an “industry reset” as far as packaging and sound quality were concerned. Through the enormous Bugatti effort then, TIDAL gave birth to a whole new range of products even higher performing than a TIDAL .

Mere mortal TIDAL customers meanwhile have been benefitting steadily from the trickle down process from these Bugatti products. First we had the compact Intra stereo power amp derived from the amplification inside the Royale speakers, then the Contros Streamer/Dac/Preamp, a more affordable TIDAL rework of the Bugatti MC-1 controller and it was really only a matter of time then, until TIDAL aficionados would be blessed with a ‘TIDAL-ised’ version of the Bugatti speakers. Well we are finally able to present the to you the AP1 floorstander which is exactly that. Lotus were lucky enough to take delivery of the first ever pair worldwide just a few weeks ago, accompanied by TIDAL designer and managing director Jorn Janczak and our UK partner Fraser Robertson.

AP stands for Amplified Performance. Like the Royales this new creation is absolutely not a traditional active speaker, that wouldn’t be moving the game on at all and it probably wouldn’t sound very TIDAL-like either. Instead, the amplification is a complex multi channel hybrid process with different methodologies for each different frequency range, negating the drawbacks of both conventional active or passive loudspeakers.

In form factor they are over 20% taller than the Contriva G3 with the same 30mm diamond tweeter, a smaller 80mm ceramic midrange driver and then two 170mm proprietary and unqiuely constructed aluminum magnesium woofers (versus the Contriva’s two 220m carbon fibre units). In addition, four 260mm side firing subwoofers complete the driver complement. Inside, a hybrid multi-channel amplification module hermetically sealed in its own internal cabinet provides the complex amplification. They just need a left and right XLR input from your Preamp or DAC with volume control and of course power from a single C15 mains lead.

Schematically AP1 mirror a Bugatti Royale with a similar count of elements but are built with the latest specification TIDAL TIRALIT™ cabinet technology rather than the Bugatti Royale’s far more complex decoupled construction and servo controlled subwoofers. This in turn means that they are quite a bit larger than the Bugattis to offer up similar levels of bandwidth and scale. A mains cable and an XLR interconnect feed each unit and the power cycle can be automatically linked to the TIDAL Contros or Prisma preamp so one on/off control switches on everything.

On the rear panel, AP1 sport 5 settings for Bass gain or amount of bass, a neutral position then two positions either side so that you can tune the speaker for smaller or larger rooms or to suit taste. There is also a Bass tone rotary with a further 5 positions to match room and user preference. The TIDAL website describes the AP1 as something extremely versatile. Despite the larger size, they can be used in small and large rooms, away and against walls. As we see generally, the better the quality of the speaker, the better the control, transparency and lack of noise in the bass so the less likely you are to run into problems with room acoustics.

AP1 take a new direction as far as value is concerned and any introduction to AP1 should perhaps begin with an examination of exactly what you are getting for your money and how this squares with both the existing TIDAL product range and what a lot of the industry is concurrently doing. Very recently, Tom Martin the owner of The Absolute Sound reviewed the smaller passive TIDAL the Contriva G3 and in print he placed it in the very top category of loudspeakers, a club occupied only by a very small select few. No doubt, Contriva G3 is an exceptional and extraordinary speaker and a firm favourite here at Lotus, remarkable value too.

But as the specs hint at, AP1 is a speaker that is quite different and many steps of evolution beyond a Contriva G3 on the performance ladder. No matter what system and fancy monoblocks you furnish a Contriva with, they can never match the larger AP1 with its inbuilt amplification, and that’s in ALL metrics of sound. But a set of Contriva with a pair of Ferios mono amps and 2.5m of TIDAL speaker cables is pretty much exactly the same price as a set of AP1, £179,000. Even against the mighty TIDAL Akira and La Assoluta the AP1 will trade blows. You can see where this is going then; AP1 already look like great value when compared back against TIDAL ’s own range of illustrious loudspeakers.

“In a sense the Contriva G3 produced the best sound I have heard from an audio system. I listen to over 100 systems a year, they range in price from $300 to $3,000,000 … it is rare to listen to a system extensively and think that it is amongst the best in a range of highly valuable properties, and that was the conclusion that I wasn’t expecting but did arrive at after listening to a bevvy of albums on the Contriva G3’s.” Tom Martin, The Absolute Sound

But what about other speakers of this calibre ? Looking beyond TIDAL at other manufacturers it is not uncommon to see flagship designs costing many hundreds of thousands of pounds more, some close to a million dollars or pounds. Other statement designs might have a bigger cabinet and even bigger subwoofers but the actual quality level won’t be appreciably higher, and almost none of these other speakers can be ordered with an optional pure diamond midrange woofer, the pièce de resistance when it comes to chasing the lowest levels of driver distortion that current technology permits.

Purchasing at this level has already strayed into the partly irrational of course so, if the 0-60mph times are all similar but the retail prices anything but, then for some it probably matters not. People just like what they like for a whole multitude of complex reasons. However, if the mission statement is to buy a state of the art ultra High End, large scale loudspeaker that is the most natural it can be, possessing a dynamic headroom as cavernous as current technology will allow, and with the ability to lift all the veils off the music without a gram of artifice or character stuck in the way of the music, destined to do justice to the world best DACs and Turntable setups, then the AP1 whilst undeniably expensive in isolation, are offered at much lower pricing than current trends would have you expect.

When comparing to statement designs from other manufacturers, we should also remember that inside each AP1 is a complex multi-channel monobloc amplifier of ‘Ferios plus’ quality. You literally just need ONE box to complete the entire digital AP1 music system. Think of these internal amplifiers like a pair of Intra amplifiers (£32,000 each) but more complex and built with even better components. So approaching £100,000 of mono amps then if you had to buy them as separate TIDAL entities, and they would surely cost well into six figures if you had to match them from your chosen Swiss or American amplifier brand.

This means then, that you don’t need to buy amplfiers and therefore the actual AP1 speaker part is theoretically costing you £80,000 or so, or about the same as a pair of TIDAL Contriva G3. When you look at it this way, AP1 actually begin to alter the landscape of the ultra high end sector and what customers can expect for their money. Add a Contros and the bill before cabling is just £250,000 yet most of the big hitter rooms at Munich will have speakers alone costing double or triple this and a complete system price tag approaching or well into the millions. £250k is not even that much more than Naim’s best system… before speakers. It’s almost laughable.

And this then is beautifully emblematic of the sort of company who TIDAL are. They are simply not motivated by financial wealth, marketplace domination, fame or power. They don’t over populate different price strata with a flood of too many products, they don’t chase the preposterous pricing trends set by other corners of the industry, they aren’t interested in having a huge number of dealers and a huge number of sales and they do not force feed their products into people’s consciousness and house by dubious methods. Their purpose and aim is of a much higher order, far more principled, more aligned with personal contentment, to make the very best things possible and bring them to you the consumer as quickly as technology allows and at a price that is as fair as possible. Above all else, they want their products to be understood and cherished.

£250,000 for AP1 with a Contros, just over £300,000 with cables and power. And how does it sound, at just a third of the cost, compared to our 1 Million Euros rig from Munich 2016 we spoke of in our first paragraph ? Well if you have a 100 metre square room which is perfectly tuned then there might be a case for the older system in some sonic respects but for everyone else, save yourself well over half a million pounds and experience AP1.

That’s not only technological progress but it’s also where I think High End is going full stop. People are fed up with the spiraling costs and some of the ludicrous numbers being asked for things and it’s not going to last. The world in all its turmoil really doesn’t have the stomach for it right now. Wadax Studio Players, Soulnote pretty much everything, Supatrac tonearms, Thrax Integrated amplifiers and now TIDAL Contros and AP1 … this is exactly where it’s going at the moment, more value than we ever had before. Performance, or better performance that we had just a few years ago from several boxes at 2,3,4 times the price. I am constantly looking for this value and you should be too.

TIDAL leaves a huge impression on people when they hear it at my showroom. It exudes a very rare quality of the highest performance levels – detail, transparency, dynamics – coupled with a presentation which is uncanny for its sense of beauty, naturalness and ease. A TIDAL system properly set up possesses a freedom from the sense of “process” or “recreation” that is seldom experienced in all walks of this hobby. This applies even to the basic recipe of a Contros front end with Intra stereo and 2 way Piano G3 speakers. The main reason my preloved list is continually bursting at the seams with a never ending cycle of big juicy part exchange is TIDAL Audio. Almost everyone who builds a relationship with me ends up on that same trajectory.

By the time you get to Contros, Ferios Monoblock and Contriva full range floorstanders, you have reached an extraordinary level of system that becomes quite difficult to put into words – I think it was Parttimeaudiophile who pronounced this modest looking system their second best after the Bugatti setup at Munich 2024. A tough act to follow then, but for the last 6 weeks, I have been in heaven playing with this next stage in the game, the first ever set of AP1 delivered to the outside world. It has been an instructive and deeply satisfying time, and there’s been customer demos too with 2 confirmed orders to date, one specified with the Diamond Aterlier option incorporating the unique 80mm diamond woofers as per TIDAL ’s famed Akira and Assoluta models.

In a casual way and for car nuts, the move to AP1 can be considered analogous to Porsche GT3 to GT3RS. Faster, purer, more performance, and even more beautiful, delicate and nuanced to drive. Like all the best upgrades, AP1 bring you even closer to truth than you were before, to a place you didn’t think existed, and there is a distinct feeling that the last few percentage points of character and equipment “mist” have finally been eradicated. People have been paying large sums of money to acquire TIDAL from me for a whole decade and much of the reason would be down to the level of purity that the equipment can achieve but AP1 are even purer again and like the first time you fire up the Wadax Atlantis Reference DAC, it is an incredible moment, a first step out into the epiphanic unknown.

With an AP1 amplified system you completely stepped off the merry go round and left the chase for a good sound forever. You have completely left behind the ethos of a little warmth here, some richness there, extra body or harmonics and indeed anything else that is not in the music. This is pure truth. That is not to imply a sound which is disinfected and devoid of niceties though because AP1 are even more expressive, even more gentle and more beautiful than a TIDAL passive system. With this new unprecedented level of connection and honesty, beauty and colours come from the music more than ever before. And AP1 has such tremendous clarity, speed and limitless bandwidth that it completely removes itself from ones perception as a transducer. It is almost as if the process of the music’s arrival has been rendered completely undetectable. Instead, the music is just “there” in a form that is divorced from the notion of electronic equipment or reproduction. Like La Assoluta, the sheer ability of AP1 seems boundless the more you listen. The system never creaks or strains, it never feels like it is calling on its reserves or hints at any boundaries or outer edges and it will play as loud as the Contros volume knob will allow without a single ounce of distortion or alteration in sound. The only limit will be your ears and your room.

As dealers we are lucky in that we are constantly rummaging around the highest levels of sound, whether that be through our own demonstrations or with customer’s systems we have built, or investigating new products from time to time, and more infrequently, visiting shows. So we rarely have the enjoyable upgrade moment that a customer has with his system. It is not often that we experience something that changes our mental calibration of what is possible, that moment where we banish the system another 5 or 10%, and we feel another few feet closer to absolute realism.

In the last 12 months though there have been 2 things that have made it to my demo room which represented a whole new chapter of performance and set a completely new bar inside my own brain. One of them is the Wadax Atlantis Reference Streamer/Dac and then the other, TIDAL Contros into TIDAL AP1 with TIDAL cables, Shunyata T30 power and Melco S1 Dataswitch. New levels of everything … expression, scale, depth, resolution, neutrality and most of all invisibility. Simply the best I have ever had in my shop, the closest I have ever felt to my favourite music and amongst the very best I have heard anywhere at any price. The system asking price though would have you believe that it is the TIDAL option for a certain listener, the person who lacks floor space, for the customer who cannot afford to go the whole way with Assoluta Monoblocs into Akira, Sunray or La Assoluta but that would be very wrong. AP1 is a beacon, second only to the Bugatti system at over 3 times the price, a gift from the factory at a cost that arguably has no real right to be at the low level it is.

I discovered fairly early on that the quality of the power in the system is even more critical than other systems. Moving from the already exceptional Shunyata T2 Typhon power conditioning unit to the uprated T30 model furnished the system with quite frankly a shocking uplift in control, depth and iron-clad stability in the sound field. It would be a must in the system and I will soon be trying one T30 on each channel which will I am sure will get even more from the speakers.

This fine sensitivity was also apparent in an inverse way too. At one point we put the Contros on a highly regarded set of footers but they were the wrong choice for the TIDAL DAC and the flow and tactility of the system was totally ruined.

The speakers were so direct, transparent and devoid of artifice, in a way that was genuinely new for the demo room. Many favourite tracks had to be reassessed for their true composition and nature. Any specification changes we made to the system upstream, no matter how small, cast very large changes in the sound overall. To this end, when we swapped out the already exceptional Melco S10 dataswitch for the new flagship Melco S1, the further increase in realism, immediacy and fine expression was quite startling. This is a deeply impressive network switch though probably in nearly all systems.

Some people will always like the optics of separates and big mono amps and some customers like a little seasoning, even in the extreme subtle TIDAL way of a few grams of richness for example from a set of Ferios. But for everyone else, for the ultimate laptime, the GT3 RS is the way. The Bugatti Royale technology has already set this new course in stone. One box, two speakers with amplified performance. Shorter pathways, less cabling, less equipment. Indeed, looking at the system price below, if you crossed off AP1 and instead bought a set of Contriva G3, Ferios mono amps and required TIDAL speaker cables, the total price would pretty much be the same but that system, as wonderful as it is, will not match AP1 in all aspects of sound, especially scale, speed and bass ability. TIDAL know this and yet they choose to price everything at a similar cost. Something to think about.

AP1 like most TIDAL products can be ordered through the Atelier programme whereby the customer receive a a unique specification over and above the standard product. The AP1 Diamond Atelier package incorporates uprated silver crossover components, adjusted topology and two 80mm diamond woofers as per TIDAL’s Akira and Assoluta models. The TIDAL diamond midrange is not a coating, but rather actual pure diamond, the real stuff front to back ! I believe one of a kind in the industry and I do not know of anyone else employing this technology partly because of the huge expense. It is the holy grail as far as purity, clarity and lack of distortion is concerned. Diamond is also the best natural heatsink there is, the best thermal conductor known to man, There is no other driver design which can match it and it takes the AP1 a step further to the Bugatti Royale which has diamond mid-woofers as standard.

A final parting shot …. all of this value and performance is all well but AP1 obviously demand that you have a generous size room. I am guessing that is what might be on some people’s lips ? Well the response there is that if you really can’t accomodate AP1 and their 163cm stature, then wait a little while to see what the factory might have for you in the near future !

FULL SYSTEM PRICE

TIDAL AP1 (Piano black) £189,000
TIDAL Contros digital music controller £60,000
TIDAL Assoluta XLR 192 £14,000
TIDAL PC192 x3 £18,000
Melco S1 Dataswitch £12,500
Hemingway Z-core Ethernet £3000
HZ-Project Lan Isolator £520
Shunyata T30 Typhon + Amphenol T30P £9500

£307,520

AP1, TIDAL Piano lacquer: Midnight Black £189,000
AP1, TIDAL Piano Veneer Lacquer: Macassar / Cloud Macassar / Cloud Rosewood / Mahogany £199,000