Tony Taddeo

It dawned on me that I made a significant omission in my April 2012 post on local area manufacturers.

   I was reading this month's issue of Stereophile, the industry update section, when the words "Digital Antidote" jumped out at me on page 16. "Wow", I thought. That was Tony Taddeo's biggest claim to fame years ago, and someone is reusing the moniker! Reading a little deeper, a company in England- iFi - is actually using his technology! Their Digital Antidote Plus  is based on his work and credits him accordingly.  

Tony started the Taddeo Loudspeaker Company, with an office on Elmwood Ave. in Brighton. The early antidotes he assembled himself. I would see Tony often in the shops around town, and if you have been following this blog you know that I don't have a great affinity for things digital. He always tried to get me to try one of these. I told him I had no use for CDs.

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Basically a buffer stage that goes in between the line levels of your cd player and the preamp input, this was a filter that made digital sound presentable, kind of like unhooking your tweeters. As I shunned the equalizer/dynamic range expander/processor band aids years ago (I haven't even had bass and treble controls on my equipment in 40 years!), I wasn't quick to want to jump on this one. To this day I have not tried one, but there have been numerous people over the years that swear by these! Good to see that his technology is live and kicking- sadly many years after Tony's passing.

Tony was kind of special to me. As coincidence would have it, he was a counselor at camp Pathfinder in Algonquin park, Ontario Canada years ago. For one of the  seasons I was one of his campers. This goes back probably 45+ years. I remember laying in bed one night with him telling us a story, Dracula, aka the Bram Stoker version. In great detail, as I later read the book and he didn't leave much out. He definitely made life there a lot more bearable, I was a young kid who really didn't want to be there. 

My first re-acquaintance with him was at JB Sound, where his first attempt at an audio product was a pair of speakers. He wanted to bring them in and play them for us. "Sure", I said, really great to see him again after 

all those years. 

We put them on the shelf,probably next to a pair of Advents,one of our best sellers in the mid priced segment. Set up the comparator to flip back and forth, and his speakers sounded AWFUL. Mind you not a completely finished product by any stretch, more of a working prototype. He had been hyping these to me for months before he brought them in, a technology so "revolutionary" that he couldn't tell me any more about them. I remember them being extremely efficient, the top part of the cabinet being somewhat horn loaded.You could see the look in his face as we switched back and forth. He tried to keep a poker face but couldn't. A few years later, I remember seeing a pair of these as empty cabinets for sale at The Speaker Place parts store in Henrietta.  

 In all fairness, there have been some great speakers over the years that sounded lousy when you A/B'd them. The DCM Time Window is one that comes to mind. Yamaha NS 10Ms.  Energy, with their first model 22's demanded a separate room as part of their franchise agreement. A/B'ing  was not the way to accurately evaluate a speaker, but it is what sold them. People would pick the most impressive sound, later to realize listening fatigue after an hour or so. 

As time went by, he came up with more refined speaker designs, I saw a few at Soundworks, but never heard them. A few products came along that impressed him, I remember him spending an hour with a tape measure with a pair of Von Schweikert VR-4s. 

I remember him telling me that blue leds are more expensive than red ones.

His claim to fame will always be the Digital Antidote, and to have had some enduring success with an audio product in this industry is impressive. .