RAAL requisite audio CA-1A Impressions

Yesterday at CanJam I was able to hear the (nameless?) prototype. While these still won't thump, they're far more listenable for me than the SR1a. Fantastic with vocals.

 

It has a name: CA1a.
It’ll be released in the coming weeks.

 

Interesting you didn't think they had enough bass. I was reading on Head-fi how they were struggling with the earpad design because they had too much bass. It would be unfortunate if they made them bass light when they could be very well rounded headphones with that fast transient response. Of corse, there is always pad rolling and modifications

 

For full context, I was listening to Bob Marley & The Wailers – Exodus (the best intersection of my taste, boomer classics, and show collections) The bass guitar lines and kick drums weren't rumbling like I'd expect, but show conditions, yada yada.

 

With regard to bass response on the RAAL circumaural CA-1a, they will be including 2-3 different earpads with them when you purchase a set so you can dial in your preferred level of bass.

Also, SBAF will be getting a loner as soon as they are finalized in 2-3 weeks along with all the earpads they include with purchase. I'm hoping for a TI-1as well so more people can hear it, but we'll see.

Danny and the whole crew at RAAL are so great to work with! Great company.

 

So some early thoughts on the Raal CA-1A:

Sound:
These are phenomenal. ESPECIALLY for the money. At 2.5k these are comfortably competing with Susvara and other top tier cans.
Resolution is competing with good estats, and timbre is excellent too. With an overall tuning that comes across as something of a 'transient-emphasised' neutral.
Overall spatial presentation is excellent. Great size of soundstage, excellent imaging. Only downside is layering capability isn't quite as good as some other headphones, but not far off.
The biggest surprise (particularly if you've heard SR1A) is the low-end. These things SLAM. They're punchy, clean, deep reaching and just excellent here. Putting the fully sealed pads on though does give a bit too much bass and I'd only use those for movies and games probably, not music. I would say that maybe just a sliiiight bit more lowend would be ideal from the provided 'coffee bean' pads but it wouldn't be hard at all to tune it yourself by just cutting a couple bits of foam to put in the gaps.
These are imo going to make a lot of headphones somewhat redundant as the performance/$ ratio makes a lot of headphones either side of their pricepoint a really hard pill to swallow.

Build/Comfort:
They're super comfy. Build doesn't LOOK that impressive, but it's made of polycarbonate, you could drive a car over these and they'd be fine. They have not at all cheaped out on the build, they've just not added un-necessary fluff. Very light, pads are memory foam and when combined with the soft leather headband these effectively float on your head. Just don't go headbanging cause they don't clamp much

I have mixed thoughts on the leather headband. On one hand, the fact that it's soft and loose means it doesn't hold a shape and you sometimes have to lift it before putting them on. But on the other hand, it means there are no pressure points and it's more comfortable than 95% of solid headbands.

Power:
These are probably the hardest to drive headphones you'll come across. Not as in the Susvara/Stealth style 'you can get it loud on most stuff but it needs power to sound right', no, I mean these things just outright need a TON of power to drive, and you WILL need to consider the amp you'll run these on before buying.
Listening at moderate volumes they're pulling about 0.6W constant, but when listening louder they're pulling about 3W constant.
So not only do you need an amp that can do that, you need one that can do that for long periods of time and not fall apart or distort. Most 6W headphone amps have vastly higher distortion when delivering 3W than when doing 0.1W etc, so just having a '6W' amp might not be enough. You'll also need to ensure that the amp can handle that load for long periods of time, so stuff with little thermal management might not work.

 

Over on the head-fi page for the CA-1a, Aleksandar R., the owner of Raal, confirmed that the Jot R can be used to drive the CA-1a (see here). Just make sure to turn off the baffle compensation switch.

Thanks for the excellent impressions @GoldenOne.

 

It can be (and it can also run directly on the VM1a and HSA-1b) but the Jot R seems to get somewhat mixed feedback compared to other options.
It might even be better to run it via the trafo on a Jot 2 than directly on the Jot R

 

Video incoming?

 

There will be a video for SR1B and one for CA1A too.

It'll be a little further down the line though as I've got a couple other products ahead in the queue