Raidho D3 version 2

Mint with the newer black trim. Price reduction from $23995 to $19995

I am pricing it aggressively to finance other interest.

Review:

Well, it has been almost 72 hours since I first started listening to my D3's. They have been playing non-stop ever since. I haven't had as much time to play with them as I would like, but I have learned some valuable information.

If you are planning on purchasing a pair of Raidho speakers, you need to literally forget traditional audio thinking - isolation, room treatments, expensive stands, stillpoints and even specific cable risers. After multiple discussions with Lars and Michael from Raidho, I am on a steep learning curve and realized that I have to literally forget traditional audio thinking. Raidho speakers are built around certain principals, those being:

* Mechanical Grounding
* Electrical Grounding
* Energy
* They can be placed in any "normal" living room or family room and sound great. A dedicated room is not needed and expensive treatments will only produce a negative result.

So what does this mean? First, spending thousands of dollars on room treatments will bring negative results. Raidho speakers are designed around the energy the room can produce. Dampening is bad. Absorption is bad. Reflection is bad. However, simple (and inexpensive) diffusion is good. Michael explained that silk plants at the first and second reflection points is all that is needed. They work as wonderful diffusors that are not only inexpensive, but look good! Second, two large vases with bamboo sticks spread out at the front of the wall, directly in line behind the speakers works wonderful as diffusors (and looks good too!). In the Raidho testing room, that's all they have.

I was all set to hire an acoustic engineer to measure my room and provide very detailed (CAD drawings) of the appropriate treatments needed. This may have been the right approach for most speakers, but certainly not the Raidho's. I learned this lesson first hand when I removed all my bass traps and acoustic treatments. The room became more focused, more tighter, but quite simply, just more alive (in a really good way).

** SETUP ** - In terms of positioning, this is one of the most important factors I have learned. I have completely ELIMINATED any "boominess" I originally heard by adhering to proper placement of my Raidho D3's. Raidho's like to be close to side walls (if possible) - mine are approximately 1 foot measured from the side of the speaker closest to the wall to the actual wall. MOST IMPORTANTLY - Raidho's like to be close to the back wall. I found the best spot to be 3 feet (exactly) measured from the back of the speaker to the back wall. When I moved them to 4 feet, I sensed a titch of boominess coming back. More exact experimentation is needed, but this has been my findings. The difference between 5-8 feet out in the room to exactly 3 feet is night and day. Night and day. Obviously, if you have other things behind the speakers (big wall unit, rack, etc.) - you can safely, I believe, measure from the back of the speaker to the front of that rack/wall unit/etc.

Electronic devices (and even cables) produce energy, and stands which are designed to keep that energy in the device have negative results because the energy from the device cannot escape. The folks at Raidho believes that racks and other devices which keep the energy in the device or the wires produce negative results. The energy needs to escape. Keeping the energy in the device can have negative audible results.

How are they sounding? Sublime. Top to bottom they are coherent, balanced and very musical. You can listen for hours. The Raidho tweeter ensures that! If you haven't seen the specs on the tweeter, it's interesting to see how quickly it dissipates energy. Tweeters which hang on to energy or store energy can often be fatiguing. See: http://www.raidho.dk/uploads/Raidho-...eter-FTT75.pdf (Page 4, LspLAB VOLT test). I will have more to say on their sound as I continue to cycle through my music, but I will echo what Jonathan Valin has to say in next months TAS: although no speaker can reproduce the sonic quality of being at a live symphony, the Raidho comes as close of any speaker I have heard. The first time I listened to Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 - my jaw dropped. The Raidho's however, play all genres of music well and even raise the level of performance of bad recordings.