Jwm, don't you think making a sweeping statement after hearing a pair of speakers under show condition is premature, if not unfair to our fellow readers? I have heard the Raidho C1.1s (with proprietary ceramic mid/bass instead of diamond, same tweeter) at length, and I have compared them to best out there in terms of naturalness in reproduction (eg, Quad ESL 57s, Sound Labs, Magnepans, Harbeths, Verity, Apogee, etc). The Raidho's IMO competes with the best out there, regardless of cost. I think we agree that Valen's choice of speakers in the past have been on the wrong side of natural (eg, Magico), but I think he he's spot on about the Raidho's. I can't wait to hear the D1s.
Raihdo is one of the very few company's that design their drivers in house from ground up, which gives them so much more control of the sound of their drivers than most other companies. Their planar magnetic tweeter is one of the best I've heard and is not fatiguing. And I've heard the best out there including AMT, plasma, ribbon, electrostatic, diamond, and beryllium tweeters. I think the new diamond mid/bass driver is ground breaking. No one else has done what Raidho has with diamond. But I will hold off on judgement of the sound until I hear the D1.
As for the crossover in the Raidho, I discussed the choice of crossover parts with the designer at RMAF last year. He's thinking is different than most designers when it comes to crossover component choices. He has tried the Duelund cap, but he said it made his speakers sound "slow". He prefers tin foil film caps rated at low voltage just enough to do to do the job, because this results in faster truer response according to him. He likes tin over copper because it can be manufactured with closer tolerance than copper. I think the caps in Raidho speakers have tolerance less than 0.5 %. Not sure about the resistor type used in their speaker. Wiring is by Nordhost, not a big fan of this wire, but I can't complain.
I looked at the construction of the C1.1 cabinet carefully. The slanted mid/bass baffle reduces floor bounce and integrates better with the tweeter. The thick aluminum baffle is stiff and nonresonant. But the HDF cabinet is resonant compared to Magico or Wilson and is designed to dissipate resonant energy through the specially made speaker stand, in contrast to the brute mass loaded speakers of most high end manufacturers. It's pretty impressive how much vibrations are dissipated through the stand. I think it's clever engineering and seems to work well.
The price of the D1 has given me pause, but I think it is still less than the Magico 2 way monitor.
