As I put it in my retrospective on 2019's most exciting discoveries, "I'm fond of saying that for us consumers, the only way to know what's actually on any of our recordings are superior headphones. They eliminate the room's unpredictable EQ on the frequency response and nonlinear decay times, lower the standing noise floor, avoid multi-driver, crossover and loss-over-distance effects, thus present maximum detail at maximum linearity. With our resident headfi collection including flagships from Final and HifiMan as well as models by Audeze, Beyer, Meze and Sennheiser, the arrival of the world's first true-ribbon headphones from Raal Requisite displaced the lot. After next reviewing the Dan Clark Audio Voce estats on an EL84 OTL Blue Hawaii SE from Headamp, the SR1a's top spot remained unchallenged. The twin reasons for this seem to be the floating design which eliminates the ear-muff syndrome of enclosure reflections and pressure build-up behind the membrane; and the operational principle of a transformer-less open-backed ribbon which puts nothing between membrane and ear not even magnets; and which stores no energy. The upshot of this radical design is the fastest most dynamic and linear transducer in our arsenal bar none. Whenever I want to hear all the detail separated down to the proverbial bone in dense mixes and know what the recorded tonal balance is really like, the SR1a is my microscope and truth teller. Extension to 30Hz completes that picture."
Jotunheim R delivers a whopping 13 amperes of current and 5Vrms into the SR1a impedance (3.2 watts into 8Ω if you were a loudspeaker) and -3dB bandwidth of 2Hz-500kHz. THD @ 1A is below 0.026% and IMD less than 0.04%, S/NR at 3A better than 110dB. Output impedance is less than 0.015Ω for optimized power transfer. Input impedance is 50kΩ and voltage gain a low 6dB. Inputs are on XLR and RCA and aside from the requisite male XLR4 output for these unique ear speakers, there are switchable XLR and RCA passive pre outs.
48VA transformer with 6 stages of discrete or integrated regulation, more than 120'000uF total filter capacitance, balanced attenuator
So on the desktop, Jotunheim R can double baton duties into active loudspeakers. Current sensing and shutdown for over-current conditions as well as thermal sense and shutdown for over-temperature conditions make it ideal also for professional applications which could run very loud very long. Ditto XLR i/o. Defeatable baffle-step compensation anticipates a potential future circumaural Raal ribbon model which won't need it. Then you can turn it off. That's a whole lot of Schiit for most singular use. You might call them crazy. Why roll a specialty product and bake in such single-purpose tech for just one expensive headphone they don't even make or sell themselves?
