Parsing the parsimonious persimmon. What's left is magnitude. How much farther did the TD1.2 take me down the digital pits and bits? If you've been at this for 20 years during which your blue-collar upbringing set a discovery ceiling on price, you end up with mostly more sameness. Over the years, advances based on better simulation software and novel driver tech share equally between competitors. That improves the pack at large. Differences remain but their scope locks to a given bandwidth set by price. Things can still stand out. How much taller a particular specimen may grow beyond the best of the rest is simply restricted.
Bracketing two prior award winners in the Acelec Model One and sound|kaos Vox 3awf.
Or was; until today. The TD1.2's extra growth past my comfort zone of prior encounters set a new mark. It had me play in a higher league and octave. It meant a jump not a step. To me, putting any hard number on it is simply impossible. Sorry. Talk of diminishing returns and not getting twice as good for double the money is trite². It's real as far as it goes but here misses big. That's because in my experience, meaningful advances in playback resolution stick invariably at the final transducer. It's here where electric signal converts to mechanical motion. That's the major bottleneck. It's where things are lost in translation. The proof is with headfi always winning. So eliminating the room looms large. I manage to a surprising extent with my cardioid very directional subwoofer which is already in by 6dB at 80Hz. In many ways, solving the conundrum of the most troublesome lower 2-plus octaves becomes the great equalizer. It's the immovable rock upon which playing musical chairs higher up factors far less. That's because the biggest variable of how sundry speakers dovetail with our room—or rather, refuse to—is bass. Fix that and the rest is peanuts. They're still tasty but more grubby than grandiose.
And yet. The TD1.2's resolution gap was unexpectedly pronounced. It rejigged my own game and appreciation for what's possible. Being sold on the stereo 2.1 concept via an external high-quality active filter box, my personal speaker interest is down to bandwidth-limited monitors. My strategic division of labour doesn't want to first pay for then throw away hard-earned monitor bass. I only want the very best 80Hz-up coverage possible when I'm 110% convinced that no passive multi-way speaker could possibly compete with active Ripol bass. Now Raidho's diamond over tantalum over ceramic over aluminium tech with wind-slip high-gauss motor and big planar tweeter represents my very best possible. Its legitimately higher resolution and lower distortion also mean that fully present conditions establish at already low SPL. There's virtually no shift as one manipulates volume inside a range suited to a 40m²-plus room. Things just get louder or quieter. If you're observant and experienced, you know how that's usually not the case. That slide ruler is badly broken. Turn the volume down and things go pale and thin. Turn it up beyond the happy median and dynamics go nonlinear, distortion shoots up, hardness creeps in, tonality morphs. If we can hear all there is to hear at already modest levels because our speaker doesn't first gauze up the tunes with soft drivers to enforce higher volumes just to strip off the gauze again—how stupid that would be—it cancels our ear/brain's need to go louder. That means less obnoxious sound leakage for co-dwellers and neighbours; less fatigue for the primary listener/s. That's how higher resolution should work. Alas, what's so often mistaken for it really doesn't. The flipside is that one can easily end up listening a lot louder than one thinks simply because the usual smoke signals of minor distress are entirely absent. It's still not good for our long-term hearing though!
Peeling the prim potato. What's left are final words. There can be no night at the Oscars without an award. My inner enthusiast sees a rare celestial alignment of a lunar eclipse. Done. The hardboiled critic feels rather happier instead with a blue moon since to be sure, he really ought to first canvas all other €20K+ über monitors. Yet having hit pay dirt with Raidho, there's strangely little compunction to do so. One soulmate is enough. Get a room already. Then call a priest and exchange vows. Why bank on the off chance that you'll meet another soulmate?
Pimping the positive poodle. I'm reminded of a famous Sitting Bull quote in which he talked of two dogs living inside him. One was evil and mean, the other good. Both fought incessantly. "Who wins?" was he asked. "The one I feed most!" Critic. Enthusiast. Critic. Enthusiast. She loves me. She loves me not. Which one shall I feed? The TD1.2 and its stand are a most handsome contraption indeed. Wisely no grills can cloak two of the world's best drivers behind black muslin as though they were wounded to need bandaging. Build quality is prime, sonics are stellar. Except for the tab, I couldn't find one thing I'd change. Good dog. All of that deserved stepping up and out.
The end.
