Le plus dangereux; if you curate wrong ideas about music subs and a bad attitude to go. Upstairs and down, the X1t integrated without fail to ask what more could you possibly want. Likely being Raidho v2 or v3—not having reviewed any of theirs before, I'd not know—it also surprised by not conforming to my Børresen-born expectations. This wasn't the groomed-for-speed sound I'd envisioned illuminated from the top down. This was relaxed and slightly sweet. In fact, were I allowed just one word to shoehorn the compound effect into, it'd have to be… beautiful. Sure, one guy's beautiful is another gal's yawn. I'd simply expected vocabulary like visceral, propulsive, punchy, snappy & Sons. Sprinkle on the cayenne. Instead my wordy searchlight moved past that entire sector to hover over elegant, romantic even dreamy. No sooner had I locked down those coordinates and tightened its screws than the scintillating Manouche guitars of Patrick 'Romane' Leguidecoq & Stochelo Rosenberg threw down blistering reflexes on rapid arpeggios, twangy snarls and the occasional glassy undertone which is a trademark of their particular Selmer guitars.

When asked to, the X1t could downshift with its dual clutch, rev up and kick in the turbo. It simply wasn't the default tuning. It didn't make everything feel hurried and driven forward. I'd been had by my own erroneous notions. That's fantastic fun. Shopping on assumptions buoyed up on specs can really be a kick in the gonads not arse. In this instance, it'd be the Accuton curse. It 'knows' how all ceramic drivers curtail harmonics, overdamp bloom and present as clipped and lean. Throw in tantalum to further harden the ceramic. It's oil into this fire. Flare-out!

It's the rare listener to diamond tweeters who knows better. Stiffening softer metals has them break up still farther out of band. That makes them sound sweeter and more generous without sacrificing detail. The problem isn't hardness. It's insufficient hardness. So I wager an educated guess. 'Tantalizing' Raidho's Ceramix driver has done exactly the same for its bandwidth. So insisted my first impressions across two different systems.

To throw oil on that fire called for jubilant power vocals. With Ishay Ribon and Motty Steinmetz I had the right extra-virgin kerosene. Had the X1t been voiced different, playing back Motty's unbridled high register at stout SPL might have overcooked it or polished up an unnatural gloss. It didn't despite a deliberately minimalist high-resolution signal path. I had DAC-direct drive via 16Ω output impedance off true variable gain on an R2R ladder's flexible voltage reference into a wide-bandwidth amp of exceptionally low noise floor [Sonnet Pasithea, Enleum AMP-23R].

Upstairs I'd used autoformer passive-magnetic volume control into a Goldmund/Job 225 DC-coupled wide-bandwidth amp. It'd been a similarly 'non-padded' signal path. If the X1t identified with lean tendencies, either system would have loudly said so. Neither did. Naturally the Dutch DAC prioritizes more resolution/speed than the upstairs also R2R Denafrips Terminator +. That netted me even more specific depth cues and ambient recovery. Add extra room width and increased front-wall clearance. That couldn't help but play up the enormity of soundstaging which virtually all small speakers do under such conditions. Far more relevant was that in two systems tuned for speed and accuracy, the small Raidho bedded in without any adjustments other than match the respective sub's volume to a less sensitive monitor. Without a sub and the bass-extended music I fancy, the results wouldn't have been remotely comparable. Dream on. Sorry. Let's just say that I checked it out to leave solo commentary to other writers. For this kind of dosh, I want the whole posh. I don't want a version castrated by a full 1.5 octaves that won't do Hans Zimmer's Dune Sketchbook in all its otherworldly power.