RAIDHO D-3.1

There are 4 types of speakers. The ones that pull, invite and absorb the listener in their soundfield so that he could travel in the soundscapes they paint. Then there are the ones that are communicating – the listener becomes the part of performance, he is not just invited to witness it, he co-creates it. And finally, there are speakers let the sound travel to you with all the urgency, like the Raidho D-3.1s.

The D-3.1s are very dynamic speakers that seemingly let all the energy leave their cabinets, not storing a single bit of information, as if the sound was totally decoupled from the speakers. The great thing is that the same principle is applied to the D-3.1’s bass.

The bass of the Raidho is lean like an athlete. It is entirely focused on performance, not on art (read coloration). There were moments I missed a bit more substance to the D-3.1’s bass, like with John Rutter’s Requiem or Saint-Saens’s Organ Works, but on the other hand – if I was asked – I did not want to lose surrealistic resolution that the Raidhos provided. I understand that everything in the Raidho’s design evolves from the ultra-fast tweeter and it was not easy to match other drivers’ speed and transparency to it, so here the designer made the choice of sacrificing the volume and bloom to tautness and articulation. It does not mean that the D-3.1s are thin, quite contrary, yet their bass benefits more from reactive speed than from sheer weight, as if it was overdamped slightly.

Note on the amplifiers
To get the most of the Raidho D-3.1’s sound I had to use quite powerful amplifiers. In this aspect the Raidho’s are like a black hole, they eat all the energy from your amps before you know it. Which also means that they are not easy to match. Though the manufacturer suggests that they can sound beautiful with low-power valve amps, I doubt it unless your listening levels are really low. From the bunch of amps I had on hand during the review I also had to rule out beauties like McIntosh and Luxman integrateds as the Raidhos mercilessly asked for a ‘real’ amplifier if I did not want to listen to soft and lifeless bottom end. The best bass I got from a pair of ML’s No.53 monoblocks, but I could not stand out their sketchy midrange and grainy top end. From all I used the VTL amps or Spectral worked flawlessly. At the Munich show last year I heard the Raidhos with Aavik U-300 Class-D amp (belonging to the same stable with Raidho and Ansuz) and the result was more than impressive.