A night at Oscar's. And the award goes to? Not so fast. There's more ground to cover. What happens if like at the Oscars, tunes don absolutely hideous outfits? Unlike at the Oscars, they end up in our reject folder. We certainly won't wear them proudly at hifi shows. I mean music we love whose production values rub us the wrong way. I positively adore Eugen Cicero's alternative to Jacques Loussier's Play Bach canon. Unlike his French compatriot, the earlier Romanian simply wasn't blessed by the same production values or recording kit. Mostly his piano timbre sits closer to a honky tonk tinkler than groomed concert grand. It bothers me enough to spin rarely. Which is a real shame considering how absolutely brilliant the playing is in this spirited makeover of Tchaikowsky's "Old French Song".
For all its superlative resolution and whilst fronted by DAC-direct 2.5MHz DC-coupled amplifiers, the TD1.2 had other ideas than get stuck on sorry outfits to stop short. Though its tonally gilded disposition was no soft-focus lens on poor recording quality, it did move the reject threshold sufficiently to let me enjoy the piece. I didn't get hung up on its sonic mediocrity. It was a proverbial have cake and eat it moment. That soon birthed more sessions trotting out hideous threads. This speaker must pack unusually low IMD and/or avoid the higher odd-order THD which less refined metallica drivers cause. To various subtle-or-not degrees, those shout or scream instead of sing as we heat up the wick. That's back at Zac Efron & Bros. Their maintenance regime for an idealized physique is unnatural hence not long-term viable. Melgaard's makeover created idealized sonics without unnatural maintenance rules that would enforce rigorous culling of poor recordings to shrink our playable library by half or a lot more. But—and that's a capitalized neon-blinking 'but'—this friendliness wasn't bought at the usual soft-focus cost of soft cones and domes. That's easily checked. Put the TD1.2 side by side with a slashed-paper ScanSpeak Revelator mid/woofer and soft dome. Voilà, higher resolution for the super-hard driver and planar tweeter. Though at undeniable money mayhem for a wild wallet whammy, that's hi-rez done right. The means don't compromise the end. No prima donna antics. The fat lady never comes. Instead it's Zorba the Greek dancing on the beach.
So the award goes to – the quasi-ribbon tweeter? Though truly stunning in its luminosity, absence of grit and chilliness yet full extension, that would sell things short and mistake the bandwidth garnish for the central main course. So the award goes to the 6-inch TD mid/woofer? Mate it to a standard 1" titanium dome and with an unconditional 10-year guarantee, the sound wouldn't be the same. Should the award then go to the crossover? Cabinet? Our folly is self evident. The secret to the TD1.2's success isn't found in its individual ingredients but their skillful interplay and overall balance. Like musicality, balance is a weasel word. Nobody knows what it means, exactly. It's impossible to quantify with a neat 8/10 scheme. As long as a hook or handle sticks out which one can grab, balance is amiss. It's only in the attempt of describing it that we break down the summed effect to shine up contributing parts. That's like a basic math equation. Its left side shows (up) all manner of complexities, its right one a single unified number. The mastery of Raidho's TD.1.2 is how its exotic deluxe parts sum into the final experience. If that had a number, be assured that in my own experience, it'd have more zeros than I can count. Sadly that also applies to the actual bill. It's why many call this aspirational hifi. Desire. Aspire. It even rhymes. If that's where our buck stops, c'est la vie. Do we really need two kidneys?
Perhaps not. I'm an unrepentant slut for romantic Arab Pop which treats string ensembles like Western rock does guitars; as expected core attractions. Where Rock works well with some grit 'n' gristle, massed violins absolutely do not. If a system perfects the latter's handling, I find that it automatically aces high female vocals, close-up plucked strings, hot-mic'd cymbals, Cuban or mariachi brasses and similar challenges.
For about as slutty as I allow myself to get on the sugar meter before my teeth hurt—no video accompaniment in my music system, thank you!—here are Arab stars Elissa and Saad Lamjarred.
To insure that my anything-goes message penetrates even stubborn high brows, here's a Saad party number where video actually adds a dimension. Being able to just have fun come what may is key as we get ourselves ever deeper invested in premium hifi hardware. Once that inanimate stuff dictates how it is to be used properly, we've properly lost the plot. Instead let there be a dragon trying to drink our bathwater; and a chimp in the crib!
So what did I really think?
