Blast from my past – No list of personally trend-setting audio encounters would be complete without Raal-Requisite's original TrueRibbon headphone, the open-baffle SR1a [$3.5K] with outboard resistive impedance adapter including built-in baffle-step compensation. I first met the Raal in March 2019. It proved instrumental not only for my assessment of HeadFi but even more so, SpeakerFi. After all, if a compact headphone system kicks our bigger far more complex free-field system to the curb, why would we keep the latter? Raal have since bowed Raal 1995 with its twin and triple ribbon Magna and Immanis models whose circumaural albeit 'super'-vented geometry no longer needs baffle-step correction. The resistive impedance adapter too has changed to a transformer barrel which has the driving amplifier see a benign 32Ω load. As long as an amp delivers ~3wpc just as a HifiMan Susvara likes to see, we're in biz. But the winged SR1a was first to add to HeadFi's four categories of dynamic, planarmagnetic, electrostatic and AMT drivers the fifth element of a freely suspended corrugated aluminium ribbon. Otherwise only known as tweeters in speakers, with Raal this blazingly quick driver tech works full-range within centimetres from our ear drums. The results are stunning.
