JV Visits Raidho To Hear Its New Flagship C 4.1

Posted by: Jonathan Valin at 10:10 am, September 6th, 2012

A vented design (with two front ports, top and bottom), the C 4.1 uses four 160mm (roughly 6.3") ceramic bass drivers, two 100mm (roughly 4") midrange drivers, and Raidho’s incomparable sealed-ribbon tweeter in a quasi-D’Appolito array. With familiar sources played back via a Burmester CD player (I did not get the chance to hear LPs in Denmark, although I will when the C 4.1 arrives in a few weeks chez Valin), it had the ease, richness, power, and extension of the finest large multiways coupled with the speed, resolution, vanishing act, and in-the-room-with-you (depending on disc, of course) presence of Raidho’s own C 1.1 mini-monitors.

The C 4.1 also has the dynamic range and scale of the very best speakers I’ve heard and/or reviewed. It simply sailed through tough-to-reproduce recordings, like my Mario Lanza Live in London [RCA] CD, which (at lifelike levels) can and has made less dynamically-capable speakers sound like they are either compressing or shattering on fortissississimos (and, brother, the peaks on the Lanza are fortissississimo!), while at the same time reproducing subtleties such as Guitar Gabriel’s head movements vis-à-vis the microphone, the timbre and texture of his cracked, slightly asthmatic tenor, and the expressive little micro-dynamic leaps and recessions in his delivery that help to make him sound so incredibly “there” with Magico/CLX/Raidho C 1.1-level resolution and realism.

Speaking of the C 1.1s, I did not detect a very, very slight difference between the sound of the C 4.1’s ribbon tweet and that of its midrange and bass drivers as I did with Raidho’s superb C 1.1 mini, perhaps because the D’Appolito config made dispersion pattern and phase response more correct—or maybe because the additional bass extension (which, on deep-reaching cuts from Thin Red Line and The International, appeared to go down smoothly into the room-shaking 20–30Hz range) was “covering” it up. In any event, this was a seamless presentation.

Also new from Raidho is its X-Monitor LE, a $5k ribbon/ceramic stand-mount/desktop monitor that sounds exactly like a smaller C 1.1. This, I predict, is going to be a hot-ticket item.

Obviously, I will have much more to say about the Raidho C 4.1 when I’ve heard it in my own digs. It is an experience that even a jaded old reviewer like me eagerly looks forward to.

Those of you interested in Raidho can go to my Web site at http://jlvalin.zenfolio.com/p897666072 to see more photos of its facility and products.