Hello Srajan, I have always been fascinated by these Raal SR1a headphones but unable to justify the purchase price. This clearance sale however just made it affordable if I sell my early serial # AKG K1000 and Yamaha B2 amplifier; the main compromise being that it would be the HSA-1a amplifier and not HSA-1b which, I gather, is a little better for the Raal headphones and much better for the quality of the conventional headphone output. With your familiarity with the market, would you suggest jumping on this deal? $3'300 for an SR1a + HS1a? Thanks for your input. Russell
As you know, these are my favorite headphones. Many people poo-poo the Schiit Jotunheim R just because it's relatively cheap. Having tried these ribbons on most resident amps including the big Pass Labs XA-30.8 via the impedance adapter box, I call BS on that. Yes one can improve on the Schiit (not by much), but these ribbons are so far ahead of the game, it doesn't really matter. So if the price is doable, I'd say jump on the ribbons. I've never heard Raal's own amp so have no opinion on that. Srajan
Thanks. I will jump on the headphones and go the Jotunheim R route as well. Your reasoning makes good sense. I wasn't sure if you still regarded the Raal SR1a as highly as you once did and it is reassuring that you still do. There seemed to be so little mention of them of late, I had started to wonder if the near hysteria accompanying their introduction was yet another transient phenomenon. But that may simply reflect the fact that I have not been watching developments so intently over the last few years as I wind my recording activities down to almost nothing.
My last big project stretched from 2017 to 2020 with a two-week session in 2017 and another in 2019 resulting in a 3-disc CD set of the complete Bach Partitas for harpsichord; the first time they have been released in full form including repeats. In previous releases repeats were skipped to squeeze all onto two discs. The harpsichordist was Colin Tilney who has been recording since the early 60s. He was 85 then (88 now) and this will have been his last recording. Mixing and mastering to his satisfaction was a five-month challenge. He loves the result. I haven't seen the reviews but then haven't looked. Russell
The Raal are my best/most resolved transducers now followed by the Super Cubes set up on their own stands off the desktop. It's good to hear that a recording artist is so involved with the final mix. If they all were, perhaps we'd have better-sounding recordings? Srajan
Gratifying again to see you rank the Super Cubes so near the Raal. I guess the effort in the recording was worth it for Classics today to give the recording quality a 10; they don't often do it seems. Tilney's musical interpretation creates widely varied reactions. Like Aram Gharabekian, he tends to choose slow tempi and to draw out the maximum meaning and emotion to disregard the 'danceability' of the piece. Aram consciously did that with his interpretation of Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet suites, which are usually (reflexively) played at tempi appropriate to ballet dance demands, sacrificing potential musical nuance. Here's a favorable review of Tilney's interpretation. Russell
Classical music is, at heart, an interpretative business I think. One plays not one's own music but someone else's who lived in a particular time, place and culture. Today's historical music research is well informed on things like instrumental tuning, original timbre, how fast or slow things were played, what kind of embellishments were popular at the time and more. That limits the scope of allowable deviations from the perspective of the notated score. Great musicians of course make other people's music their own. Shy of composing new solos for concertos, one can't really play any new notes though. The most obvious parameters of interpretation then become phrasing and pace. On top of that, musicians age and mature. Young ones are often prone to playing fast just to show off technique. Older ones often prefer to say more with less, to let silences between notes speak more. And routinely that means slower tempi.
I always find that whatever reading we're exposed to first tends to imprint us. If we fall in love with it, any subsequent interpretations can seem wrong. Hence so many different responses to individual classical recordings. When I played in an orchestra (we did Bruckner's 4th, Tchaikovsky's 4th and 6th, Schubert's 8th, Brahms 3rd, Pictures of an Exhibition, Ravel's Bolero, Debussy's Le Mystère de St. Sebastian, Rach's 3rd Piano Concerto with Alexis Weissenberg, Beethoven's 9th, Prokovieff's 5th and more), I remember how intently the conductor shaped our reading to conform to his ideas. When I subsequently heard these symphonies played by other orchestras under other conductors, I had this inside view on the composition as bestowed upon me by playing it. So any deviations by another interpretation caused an immediate emotional friction. It's how imprinting works, isn't it? Srajan
You've said a lot in those five paragraphs! I agree with your analysis. I sometimes ponder the difference between what we refer to as 'art' and as 'craft'. I think the notion of the distinction might be illusory but so far I have not had any blinding revelations; still I wonder. I went ahead today and ordered the Raal SR-1a after agonizing for a couple of weeks over the choice: am I crazy given how little time I spend using headphones? Could my money be better spent on something more convenient like Bluetooth cordless, noise cancelling? But then my curiosity and idealism prevailed, plus the idea that I can pass them on to my son Simon when (and if) I'm done with them. That and I have always valued a beautiful midrange. I imagine the highs and the bass will be welcome qualities, too.
Simon is also engaged in recording, having completed a degree in music production in Berlin a few years ago. Particularly though, I know he would find them very useful in his music-transcribing activities. He is amazingly good at unravelling complex music and particularly likes Cuban music. He has shown me his work, pointing to where we are in the music. For the life of me I can barely hear the keyboard part at all, let alone have the ability to write it out. He was involved in transcribing a lot of Cuban music for a publication coming out of Los Angeles after having passed the test of transcribing a piece written by a friend of the compiler which had never been written out (as most popular Cuban music never has). The composer agreed that it was correct. In Cuban written music, all the percussion parts are explicitly written out as opposed to the N.A. jazz tradition where all the percussionist gets is 'swing' or 'slow shuffle' etc.
Danny McKinney of Raal Requisite is including as a bonus his favorite cable for use with the Jotunheim R. The cable requirements are unusual here as the headphones have a lower resistance than the wire so a fair amount of the amplifier's energy is lost in the short cable driving the 'phones. After talking at length, I think he saw himself in me and thought I would appreciate the difference. I think he was impressed by the fact that 30 years ago, I made custom microphone cables for myself that cost me $700 in 1992 dollars for the materials for the 35' stereo pair. I feel I made out well getting the headphones and the better cable for $1'700. Tomorrow I'll order the Schiit Jotunheim R, probably with the digital input for the occasional convenience unless you know of D/A converters for $200 that are better. Then I'll try again to order a pair of Super Cubes from Andrew. I tried on April 28th but got no reply. Maybe he is overwhelmed with orders after your review? Russell
Andrew could be under water since, I believe, he resides in Russia. It's probably why he hasn't replied. Camerton Audio's designer is ex Ukranian now living in Berlin. Lots of his friends and family still live in the Ukraine so he's been involved in providing humanitarian aid and doing whatever else he can to help. Hopefully both gents will pop back up in audio when current events let them. To me, craft is technique as in, practice a thing 10'000 times or for 10 years and become proficient at it, be that baking bread or painting. In Bali I saw crafts villages dedicated to different crafts, so woodcarving in one, metal sculptures in another, textiles in another, batik dying in yet another and so forth. They were incredible craftsmen/women who could produce 100 Buddha sculptures looking virtually identical yet fashioned by different individuals. That's craft. Change one letter and it becomes graft. Nearly the same thing.
Art relies on more. It sits atop craft so craft is a prerequisite. The added ingredient is true inspiration so creativity. It's not about copying or acquiring skills that can go on near automatic based on muscle memory and other patterns in the nervous system. I often think that without free improvisation, musicians aren't real artists. My brother and sister are French horn players in German orchestras. My brother is the 1st/solo horn in the Hamburg Elb Philharmonic. My sister is the 3rd horn in the Wiesbaden Opera. They're civil servants who play the music of others for a living; never their own. I've often regretted not having ordered my Schiit Jotunheim R with the USB DAC. I actually needed an S/PDIF input which they didn't offer. I don't listen to the Raal on my desktop. I'd not get any work done. And upstairs I don't use any USB. But for $200 it seems like a real no-brainer and like you said, what else is out there for that money? A Topping perhaps or another ChiFi wonder? Srajan
Hello Srajan, I've ordered the Raal SR1b to be shipped when Danny McKinney returns from Munich. I'm also ordering a Jotunheim R and was on point to include a Bifrost 2 based on a few strong reviews, the inclusion of absolute polarity reversal, sophisticated USB with galvanic isolation, matching size, future-proofiness afforded by modular analog and USB cards, firmware updates enabled by micro SD card and finally the fact that Mike Moffat is the designer. I have respected his work since I heard a Theta CD player back around 1988 or 89. Up until then I had never heard much difference between players but this sounded obviously better and not by a little. I was skeptical of my impression to mentally shelf it, thinking it was a kind of anomaly but I never forgot it. Another factor was that I couldn't afford the player so it was convenient to think that I might have been mistaken. Anyway now I respect him and I take comfort in knowing that this, 40+ years later, is his latest thinking. Once again I take advantage of your connections and vast experience with all manner of gear to seek your blessing regarding this combination of equipment.
The other apparent contender to replace the Bifrost 2 seems to be the Topping D90SE which as far as I can see may lack the polarity function and galvanically isolated USB circuit and nice metal remote but includes level control, Bluetooth and the ability to play certain to-me-exotic digital streaming formats. Being a Luddite by nature, digital streaming is something I haven't kept up with. I can barely keep up with computers. I'm a very late adopter partly because I put all my money into buying the very best recording chain I could afford. I figured I'd rather make the best recordings I could even if I couldn't actually hear them on my own system. The closest I got to actually hearing what I had captured was on my Etymotic Research ER-S IEM. I got my first smartphone only a year and a bit ago. Anyway, have you had opportunity to check out these two DACs? Thanks and cheers, Russell
I've not heard either the Topping or Bifrost 2. I think you'd be well served either way. To my mind, it's more down to money, looks and features. I didn't know that the Raal were now in gen 2. Mine are still the SR1a. Do you know what's different? Either way you'll be in for a real surprise. But do yourself a favor. No matter your first reaction, allow the sound to grow on you for a few days before you come to conclusions. If you're anything like me, you'll never have heard this type of playback purity, speed and dynamics before especially in the upper ranges. If so, it takes a small mental reset to get your bearings; and after that, everything else sounds, to varying degrees, slow, muddy, bloated and fuzzy. Also, the steel headband can be shaped to fit your noggin so don't hesitate to bend it. It's very strong. Srajan
According to Danny the only differences between SR1a/1b are the metal grill which has been altered slightly to more closely match the circumaural version; and the internal wires connecting the ribbons to the input jacks now being silver. He said the sound was virtually identical. I wonder. I remember 30 years ago when wire was just being discovered as being significant and hearing the difference between good copper and good silver interconnects which our tech made in the high-end stereo store I briefly worked in. Visiting salesmen from other high-end stores thought our demo was rigged, so obvious was the difference even in apparent loudness. Around this time I read of microphone designers discovering to their dismay that they could hear the difference an inch or two of silver made inside their mics. I also heard a power cord made by our tech seemingly adding an octave to the bottom end of the sound from a turntable although I confess to not remembering whether the power cord went to the turntable or amp. Inconvenient truths have a way of being forgotten. I always lusted after the idea of six-nines silver mic cables but that was never to be.
As to getting used to the Raal, I have a hunch that I know what to expect. I have experienced how 'empty' a bass minus resonances can sound; and the equivalent in the midrange too. When I was designing loudspeakers in the 70s I made a few whose bass resonance was extremely curtailed. One followed an English designer's idea which put two woofers in an enclosure back to back so their mutual resonances (if they had identical fs) would cancel as proven by the flat impedance curve through what would have been the very high peak at resonance. It made all other speakers, ported or sealed, sound frankly stupid. The other design was one of my few genuine innovations. I made a coffee-table stereo subwoofer with the drivers' rears facing the holes in the baffle board stood off by about an inch so that the box which was filled with acoustic absorption functioned not to absorb the back wave completely but only by maybe 90%. The payoff was that the cone almost completely decoupled from the vibrating air mass inside the box and thus the bass was super clean. Imagine a cubic box with one corner chopped off and a baffle board across that corner so the back of the driver fired into the opposite corner, not an opposing flat surface. The rear wave of the driver sees a primitive anechoic chamber.
I was doing open-baffle line-array mids at the time and tried this to similar good effect. I termed this design principle an acoustic black hole and offered it free to Allan Shaw of Harbeth and Anthony Gallo but neither utilized it. I modified a pair of Martin Logan we had in store by standing off the bass drivers by ½" or ¾" and everyone agreed they sounded much better. Anyway, all these experiments aimed at reducing resonances and creating a more open articulate sound so I think that I am prepared somewhat for the Raal. And I think I have convinced myself to buy the Bifrost 2. Cheers, Russell
Indeed, given your explanations I think you're very much ready for the Raal. I'll be interested to hear back once you've lived with them for a bit; about whether they met your mark and expectations. I've lost touch with Anthony Gallo who I always thought was a very smart cookie. I know that the original investor lost interest and the company sold to their UK importer who've continued primarily with the small spheres. But whether Anthony is still in audio, perhaps elsewhere behind the scenes as a consultant or ODM, I haven't a clue. Srajan
