I was speaking with Danny McKinney at RAAL Requisite on Friday. He told me that he had spent that last 6 years designing an equalization system. The tech details were a little over my head, but he was using some 1930s tube magic and other things that I did not understand.
He sold the first unit to a very famous musician last week. He told me I need to hear this and he will build 7 more units. I hope to hear it next Saturday along with the Star8 XLR's for the VM-1a tube headphone amp.
Now if you want what a lot of people consider the state of the art in headphones. Talk to Danny about doing a home demo of the RAAL VM-1a tube headphone amp and the SR1a earphones (a 2-channel replica sound) or the traditional headphone sound from the CA-1a.
I was watching the Darko web site's coverage of the recent 2023 CanJam NYC show and I saw Danny in the video. He was demoing the SR1a using the Schitt Jotenhuim R RAAL only headphone amp. A bit shocking since I also have this $300 amp, but it is exponentially lower in sonics to the VM-1a amp.
People supposedly loved the sound at the show from music playing from a RME DAC via an iPad. Way worse than what is an uber level setup, but it still sounds really good.
My home uber level setup is Lumin X1 fibre stream to the VM-1a. I am going to upgrade the Lumin DAC to a PlayBack Designs MPD-8 DAC with fibre stream specifically, for the VM-1a headphone amp. For me, the very high cost of this DAC is worth it. Just extraordinary sound whenever I add better gear to the SR1a or CA-1a. I try to work with these earphones on, but I stop so many times to just listen and then it is about an hour later.
Amplifiers Archives • RAAL-requisite (raalrequisite.com)