RAAL requisite audio SR1a Review: HOLY MOLY! Buy this now!

The QSC RMX class AB stuff you recommended a while back was good and super reliable. You just need to swap out the fan if you want to push it.

Also excellent are the cheap TI class d chip amps. The 300 wattish or so ones are quite good, especially the newer one, if you don’t push them too hard. They’re better than a ton of cheap class ab and class d amps. They murder the old hyped ucd and icepower stuff.

 

Hey Psalm, you got a link for this? Interested...

 

Can't blame you...

 

Possibly the TPA3255: http://www.ti.com/product/TPA3255
https://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=152869.0

I talked to someone locally who has built a bunch of amps over the years and he likes it alot.

 

Had a little event in store today with Raal's Danny who brought a few extra SR1a and something really neat.



New prototype amp/dac specially made by Schiit for the SR1a. Using the Jot body so pay no mind to that for now. Here is a top down view of the sticker.



For the event I had a few setups with the Schiit prototype amp, McIntosh MHA150/MA252, Moon 340i/600i, and Chord SPM3350.

Best feedback I had was for the Schiit, MA252, and SPM3350. The Moon 340i I wasn't too pleased with so I swapped it out with the 600i. Had an attendee bring in his Schiit Ragnarok but didn't hear that one myself.

The MA252 I had it with the Wisdom S10 subwoofer with a 2 channel setup and it happened to be on while doing a demo and ended up being quite popular with the SR1a. Happy accident.

The prototype Schiit was nuts though. It had overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees and it freaking rocks with the SR1a. $1400 was the projected price point, will be available to Raal dealers, possibly 60-90 days away from launch.

 

Protoheim looks awesome. I didn't imagine it realized this early (thought of next year or so) ..

 

Cool that Jason has a prototype going already... haha no wonder seeing his wow reaction: ~0.25secs into the vid.

Does it still need that crazy resistor/trans interface box, or direct to the headphones with it (protoJot)?

 

Wow. Didn't expect this to happen so quickly. I'd buy one right now for the office.

How do you think it compares to running it off a nice-ish speaker amp, e.g. the 600i or 252?

 

That sticker tho

Schiit people know their marketing onions, that's for sure!

 

I'm probably in the minority on this issue, but one potential barrier for me is my steady diet of music that either sounds like it was recorded in a shed or contains a lot of blast-beats. Maybe 20% of what I listen to could be considered well-recorded. Some of the FR characterizations make me wonder if this guy would be a good match for my music.

I mean, has anyone thrown some Jane Doe era Converge on one of these, to enjoyable result?

Edit: more contex/better framing: speed and impact with congested recordings seem like they would be troublesome here, given the previous comments, though not certain. Anyone have the opportunity to test with metal/hard rock and enjoy the more exciting qualities of these recordings?

 

The short answer is that I keep the Mysphere 3.2 around for that stuff.

Only about 15-20% of the tracks I listen (metal, light rock, some JPOP, Asian vocals from the 80s/90s) to are what I would call "unlistenable" on the SR1a, mostly the ones with poor processing on top of subpar recording setups. But the resolution and speed does make at least a plurality of the kind of music I listen to less than perfectly enjoyable. If you listen to metal and hard rock, some of it is going to sound really bad on the SR1a's because they aggressively expose flaws in the music production process.

On the other hand, with the good stuff performance is incredible, and you can run a K1000 or HE5/6 on the same chain and use them when you do want to listen to the bad recordings.

 

Another way to phrase the question with a well-known reference:

Is Raal worse than Sennheiser HD800 with bad recordnings?

 

They expose far more flaws.

 

I wasn't commenting on FR specifically - the SR1a's imaging is more precise and weirdness of placement is indeed very readily noticable.

There's also the matter that the HD800s is simply not as resolving, and doesn't put compression artifacts in your face to the extent that SR1a's do.

The treble spike's role in compatibility with poor recordings I consider third fiddle to the imaging and resolution. I guess a more precise answer would be that more often than not the HD800s sounds bad on recordings because of the heat in the upper range, but the SR1a sounds bad because artifacts and bad mixing is 100% in your face.

I would add that the Mysphere feels more forgiving not because of poor resolution but because the open frame imaging and the mid-range emphasis allows vocals to be well defined even when recordings are mushy. Bad instrument recordings still sound bad on them.

 

I feel similarly about HD800s. I have also found a similar background noise to be frustrating, but for me it was correlated to OS DACs. The Nagra you have is a pretty expensive DAC, but I wonder if you would hear these “mixing errors” with an analog source? Maybe it’s the reconstruction. If you want to try a Metrum Adagio NOS, I’m local to you.

 

Catching up with this thread, and sorry if this has been previously answered/explained re burst response measurements. But does the x-axis position of the leading edge have any relation to how "fast" the headphones are?
i.e. Elex < LCD3 < SR1a