LOUDSPEAKERS

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FURther ThoUGHts
Acoustic Zen Crescendo ($16,500)
There is something fundamentally right about the Crescendo, a threeway,
5-driver transmission-line design. It speaks with one voice, a
rarity for any multi-driver system, and obviously the consequence of
superb driver integration. The transition from the bass to the midrange
is seamless. It maintains a realistic tonal weight while doing justice to
the power range of an orchestra. After reviewing the Crescendo in Issue
229, this loudspeaker continues to re-calibrate my expectations in the
bass range. Tympanic strikes are peerless in control and definition. While
the Crescendo lacks ultimate bass extension, it makes up for that by
superlative time-domain performance.
—Dick Olsher
Raidho C 1.1 ($18,000)
Alongside the $26k Magico Q 1, the $18k
Raidho C 1.1 is the finest two-way mini-monitor
I have heard. However, the two speakers do not
sound at all alike. The Magico sounds, well, like
a Magico—which is to say, that it is rigorously
neutral, leaning neither to the dark nor the light
side in balance, remarkably seamless in blend (in fact, the
best combination of a beryllium tweeter and carbon-sandwich
driver in the Magico line), and paradigmatically transparent to
sources ahead of it. The Raidho, on the other hand, is darker
and considerably richer in balance; though very well blended
its ribbon tweeter is not quite as much of a piece with its
ceramic mid/woof (you can hear a very slight discontinuity
between the two drivers, probably because of a difference in
dispersion patterns); and while transparent enough to reveal
tiny differences in musicianship, recording, and mastering, it
has more “personality” of its own than the Magico. And yet…
the Raidho is every bit as lifelike as the Magico (on great
recordings), if not more so. Indeed, outside the $140k Raidho
C 4.1, I haven’t heard a cone or cone-hybrid speaker that is
more jaw-droppingly realistic than this mini from Denmark.
That the Raidho C 1.1 is capable of sounding so much like the
real thing in spite of its deviations from “textbook” neutrality
raises a rather disturbing question—at least for a transparencyto-sources
kind of listener like me. How is it that, in spite of
my biases and convictions, I prefer a less (albeit only slightly
less) accurate loudspeaker to a more accurate one I will
address this question when I review the C 4.1. In the nonce,
my enthusiasm for the C 1.1 has done anything but flag in the
year I’ve been listening to it. As I said in TAS, this is a truly great
loudspeaker, capable (with the right sources and ancillaries)
of nearly unparalleled realism—and (regardless of source)
consistently enjoyable to listen to.
—Jonathan Valin
13 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com
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