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go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards EQUIPMENT REVIEW - Raidho C 1.1 Mini-Monitor I thought durations were the key. At another, dynamics. For a while I thought it was what I called “action,” the way that imaging changes with changes in intensity, pitch, and radiation pattern. Though I still think that all of these things are important, now I’m not so sure that there is any one specific answer. Instead, I think there is a general one: Greater realism results from hearing more of the sound of the instrument(s) and less of the sound of the medium whereby the instrument is being reproduced. Realism in hi-fi is always a matter of more and less. This brings me, circuitously, to the Raidho C 1.1s, which (at least when driven by Constellation Audio’s superb Performance Series electronics) are from upper bass to the top treble perhaps the most finely detailed loudspeakers I’ve auditioned (and certainly one of the top two or three). Though I’m likely to catch hell for this from some of our readers, the difference between the C 1.1 and other extremely high-resolution transducers is not insignificant. It is, in fact, considerable. To put this plainly, with the C 1.1 the “more” side of the realism equation means a lot more. Once again, at the risk of catching flack about my taste in music, let me talk about the Hungaraton LP of “Improvisations for Zither,” which plays directly into the C 1.1’s awesome strengths. (I will talk about its relative weaknesses in a moment.) As you well know from my review of the Constellation Performers, this is a test record that I use often because it is exceedingly well-recorded and because its outstanding (albeit strange) mix of transients, timbres, and long, complex decays is like a window into the soul of a speaker or an amplifier or a preamplifier. In addition, the performance style of Attila Bozay, the zitherist, is so varied and quirky and amusing—and, once again, so exceedingly well-captured—that with the right stuff you not only hear every kind of sound a zither is capable of making; you also hear every performance technique a zitherist is capable of applying to the instrument. You get, as I noted in the Constellation review, an amazing variety of sounds— from the sharp snap of Bartók pizzicatos to pizzicatos with glissandos that bend like blues-guitar notes to the rich paintcan-swirl of lightly strummed chords to tinkly, glassy, toypiano-like arpeggios that are played sul ponticello (or, to be more precise, immediately below the tuner pins of the zither) to queasy scratches and percussive col legno-like knocks on the instrument’s resonant body. All of this, BTW, as variations on a tone row! With the Constellation Performers driving them, the C 1.1s reproduce all of these things with a clarity and completeness that are unparalleled in my previous (and long) experience with this recording. What I’m saying here is that you not only hear more of everything that Bozay and his zither are doing more clearly; you hear them much more clearly. Take those glassy, tinkly arpeggios near the tuner pegs. Any really good playback system will reproduce the way Bozay runs his plectrum across these ultra-taut strings. And any really good playback system will give you a sense of the individual strings as they are being sounded sequentially. What other great playback systems won’t do—and what the Raidho C 1.1 does do—is not only clarify the intensity, color, and duration of each of these tiny tinkly little notes, but clarify these things while also lowering (almost to the point of inaudibility) the noise that other speakers seem to add before, between, and after notes (almost like a form of intermodulation distortion). The result is that notes that sounded just the slightest bit blurred together (as if played legato) now sound completely distinct and separate (as if played, as they in fact were, staccato). Again, to put this plainly, with the C 1.1 the “less” side of the realism equation is just as impressive as the “more.” I can only make educated guesses about why the C 1.1 is so much clearer, cleaner, lower in noise, and more finely detailed than other truly superb speakers, but the fact that Raidho’s brilliant Michael Borresen, who (IMO) belongs among the small handful of great speaker designers, is a world-class mechanical engineer suggests that the obvious reduction of noise, hash, and blur in the C 1.1 has a great deal to do with the reduction of mechanical resonances throughout the entire system, including resonances within the drivers themselves. SPECS & PRICING Type: Stand-mount two-way minimonitor Power amplifiers: conrad-johnson ART, Constellation Perseus Drivers: One sealed ribbon tweeter, one Lamm ML2, Constellation Centaur, Audio 115mm ceramic mid/bass driver Research Reference 250 Frequency response: 50Hz–50kHz Analog source: Walker Audio Proscenium Impedance: >6 ohms Black Diamond Mk III record player, Da Sensitivity: 86dB 2.83V/m Vinci AAS Gabriel Mk II turntable with Crossover: 3kHz, second-order DaVinci Grand Reference Grandezza Mk Recommended amplification: >50W II tonearm, Acoustic Signature Ascona Enclosure: Vented design with port in with Kuzma 4P tonearm rear panel Phono cartridges: Clearaudio Goldfinger Finish: Walnut burl veneer, piano-black, Statement, Ortofon MC A90, Benz LP white high-gloss, all possible paint S-MR, colors Digital source: Mac Mini/Wavelength Dimensions: 200 x 370 x 360mm Audio Crimson USB DAC Weight: 12.5kg Cable and interconnect: Synergistic Price: $18,000 (including stands) Research Galileo Power Cords: Synergistic Research Tesla, Raidho Acoustics Shunyata King Cobra Bransagervej 15 Power Conditioner: Syner-gistic 9490 Pandrup Denmark Research Tesla II +45 9824 7677 Accessories: Synergistic ART system, raidho.dk Shakti Hallographs (6), A/V Room Services Metu panels and traps, ASC JV’s Reference System Tube Traps, Critical Mass MAXXUM Loudspeakers: Magico Q5, Raidho C equipment and amp stands, Symposium 1.1, MartinLogan CLX, Magnepan 1.7, Isis and Ultra equipment platforms, Magnepan 3.7, Magnepan 20.7 Symposium Rollerblocks and Fat Padz, Linestage preamps: conrad-johnson GAT, Walker Prologue Reference equipment Constellation Virgo, Audio Research and amp stands, Walker Valid Points and Reference 5SE Resonance Control discs, Clearaudio Phonostage preamps: Audio Research Double Matrix SE record cleaner, HiFi- Corporation Reference Phono 2SE, Tuning silver/gold fuses CLICK HERE TO COMMENT at www.theabsolutesound.COM 56 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com previous page NEXT page
go to: Contents | Features | Bookshelf, Stand-Mount and Desktop | Floorstanding | Editors' Choice Awards EQUIPMENT REVIEW - Raidho C 1.1 Mini-Monitor For instance, the magnetic motor of the ultrarigid ceramic/aluminum composite mid/bass driver that Borresen designs and manufactures isn’t located horizontally at the back of the cone (as it is in virtually every other dynamic driver I’ve seen); instead, two rows of very strong neodymium magnets, in a push-pull configuration, are arrayed around the magnetic gap vertically. Why did Borresen make this change Because when a large magnet with a flat faceplate is situated directly behind a driver it acts a bit like an acoustic mirror, reflecting the signal generated by the rearward movement of the membrane (remember dynamic drivers pull as well as push) back into and through the cone. Borresen’s ingenious, patented vertical magnetic system (called the Raidho Ceramix Magnet) eliminates this source of resonant energy, reducing the distortion and compression that come with conventionally situated magnets and increasing resolution and dynamic range. Now, I can already hear some of you saying, “So what So the thing is a mechanical and analytical marvel” Well, yeah it is. But (and contrary to certain other Raidho C Series reviews I’ve read, in which you have to seriously wonder what small havoc room and electronics may have been playing with overall tonal balance) the C 1.1 is, like the Constellation Performance Series electronics driving them, that rarest of ava, a speaker that is not only standardsettingly finely detailed but also so transparent to sources that, given a beautiful recording, it sounds ravishingly dense in tone color. Indeed, the “.1” version of the speaker was, according to Borresen, designed not only to lower resonance and increase resolution but to fill out tone color (particularly in the midbass and lower midrange)—and so it does. (For more on the differences between the C1 and C 1.1, see the sidebar “A Chat with Michael Borresen.”) If you want to get an idea of how gorgeous and, yes, “realistic” this thing is capable of sounding just listen to a great solo violin recording (such as Charles Wuorinen’s The Long and the Short on Mainstream, which is astonishing via the C 1.1) or a great piano recording (such as Vilnius Noir on NoBusiness, reviewed in this issue) or a great orchestral recording (such as the Janácek Sinfonietta on Denon) or a great folk recording (such as Joan Baez In Concert, Part 2 on Vanguard) or a great pop recording such as “Lover, Lover, Lover” from Songs From The Road (on Columbia, if you can believe it!), and feast on the breathtaking beauty and naturalness of string, wind, brass, percussion, and vocal timbre and texture. Given the right source, the C 1.1 doesn’t just sound lovely; it sounds exceedingly lovely. So what are the “kickers,” to quote one of my so-called fans Well, the C 1.1 is a two-way—a great two-way—but still a two-way. While it has remarkable bass for a speaker its tiny size (with useable response into the upper thirties and more-or-less flat response into the upper 40s), it, like the Magico Q1, simply won’t move the kind of air that a bigger speaker with a separate woofer moves. Oh, the C 1.1 will shake walls on big drum strikes, such as those on Clearaudio’s Percussion Record, but it won’t growl on Tina’s Fender ostinato at the start of “Take Me To The River” with the power that the Magico Q5 does. Don’t get me wrong: As two-ways go, this tiny number has exemplary bass, with exceptional articulation of detail. It just doesn’t have all the power and punch in the bottom octaves of a big multiway or planar. Second, there is the tweeter. Borresen uses what Maggie calls a “quasi-ribbon” (built, as is everything save for the cabinet, by Raidho inhouse) for the upper mids and treble, coupled to that extraordinary ceramic aluminum/metallic aluminum mid/bass driver I just talked about, all in an elegant ported enclosure. The C 1.1 tweeter may be the finest I’ve heard, and its implementation here is sensational. Where you would expect a marked seam in the crossover region between planar tweet and cone mid/bass there is none. Zero. (As a point of comparison, the Raidho tweet never stands out the way the beryllium tweet of the Q5 or the Maggie ribbon can on-axis.) This said, there is something subtly different—perhaps it is a question of dispersion patterns, perhaps it is a very, very low-level material coloration—about the sound of the C 1.1’s two drivers. It’s as if they have very slightly different textures, as if one were silk and the other gabardine or one were color-slide film and the other very fine grain color-negative film. I don’t want to make a big deal about this because these slight textural differences are way too subtle to amount to a discontinuity (anymore than the slight textural differences between a ring-radiator and a carbon-fiber-sandwich cone amount to a discontinuity). As noted, they certainly don’t seem to affect the lifelike reproduction of the color or intensity of notes, the retrieval of fine detail, or imaging or staging. Third, there is the question of dynamics. In my moderately-sized room, the C 1.1 seems to lack little on large-scale swings (save in the low bass)—and is a paradigm on small-scale dynamics. But bigger speakers with more drivers will undoubtedly give you more low-end extension, more clout, more “floor.” Fourth, there is the matter of image size and height. Like the Magico Q1, the Raidho C 1.1 is not a miniaturizing speaker, probably because (like the Q1) it is perched relatively high on its dedicated stand, is well-aligned in phase and time thanks to the thick, angled, aluminum drivermounting plates on the front of its heavily braced MDF enclosure, and has its port located at the top back of its cabinet, mitigating floor-bounce and the reduction in bass-range clarity and image height that floor-bounce often entails. Still and all, while instruments are not greatly reduced in height they do tend to start imaging a little closer to the floor with the C 1.1 than they do with larger planar and dynamic speakers. Also, the C 1.1s (like the Audio Physic Avanteras) prefer to be a little more widely separated to achieve the roomfilling soundstaging they are capable of. I started off by saying that greater “realism” in hi-fi is a matter of more and less. The Raidho C 1.1 gives you both—more detail and less electromechanical noise—to a truly astounding degree, and without any bleaching of tone color. The result, on select great recordings, such as the Bozay and the Wuorinen I’ve mentioned, is a “realism” that not only raises goosebumps but that can actually extend beyond the momentary to an entire cut. Trust me: I have heard few (actually, no) other speakers in my home reproduce a violin like the one in the unbelievably well-recorded Wuorinen piece with such unstinting, uninterrupted realism as this Raidho. If you’re looking for a highest-fidelity two-way in a stylish package for a small-to-moderate room, I can’t recommend the Raidho C 1.1 highly enough. This is an honest-to-goodness great loudspeaker. (BTW, the $18k price includes the purpose-built and very handsome stands.) 57 Guide to High-Performance Loudspeakers www.theabsolutesound.com previous page NEXT page
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