First heard speakers from this Danish company (what’s with Scandinavia and audio?) some 7-8 years ago at someone’s place. They were floorstanders from the first series called Eben with an YBA amp and Chord DAC. Now I listened to the X2Ts on Chord electronics (streamer/DAC and amp).
First thing that comes to mind there something about those tweeters. Tons of detail without the slightest harshness, exactly what I noticed the first time. I understand that implementation is everything but there must be a reason they make their own non-dome tweeters.
What’s funny is that at the showroom they also had bookshelves from the company’s upper range that cost EUR 25k/pair. There wasn’t enough time left to listen to those but you’re left wondering. I mean WTF can be better.
I definitely can’t afford anything like that but this made me start browsing hifishark again. Something tells me I’ll pull the trigger sooner or later.
I now have older Dynaudios but I think they’re underamped. Everyone including the guy who sold them to me said they change dramatically with good (read very expensive) amps. Unfortunately where I live the audiophile comunity is sublime but nonexistant so I have zero chances to try another amp and at that price level it’s crazy to buy without testing.
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I can highly recommend Scansonics if you’re budget is not up to Raidhos. They are not on the same level, but are under the same umbrella.
I’m listening to them now, and they sound amazing!
Listened extensively (hundreds of hours) to the TD3.8s and found them just terrific. Then I had occasion to hear the TotL Raidho TD6s and those floored me. Way outside my budget but they’re easily among the best, most revealing / most natural speakers I’ve ever heard. As they should be at that price.
Great speakers but they are expensive and require a small car’s worth of electronics, source and wiring.
The American company Nordost used Raidho with high end Moon amps to show off their speakers to demonstrate the differences.
Another Danish brand which is a lot more affordable (but not cheap) is Audiovector. Excellent top end.
Hey! If you’re up for it, you can always DIY your loudspeakers. At the high end you can make yourself something insane using the best components. You will need woodworking skills and some basic soldering. You could possibly even hire a woodworker if labor is cheap where you live.
A great entry for you would be a kit. Since designing your own would be quite difficult. Diyaudio.com is a great site.
I build a few speakers before. IMO it’s a hit and miss thing, I’d personally be very cautious about spending a lot on top of the range drivers for DIY. My experience is that used speakers beat DIY at price/value and that’s disregarding the effort and the fact that you can listen before buying. I have this project in the back of my mind, something with extreme quality drivers and active amplification/digital XO but that would be many thousands of euros in parts for a questionable goal. I’m not a snob, if someone told be you can reach that level of sound quality with this specific DIY project I’\d go for it without thinking twice about it but oh well…
That’s exactly what I did, I went with all in with Scanspeak Ellipticors Active XO. Can’t beat that in my book. Linear phase, wide dispersion, all the detail you can ask for.
Source has to be top notch otherwise it’s gonna stick out real bad. Took a while to finalize my design and learn how to do it but I had time.
Scanspeak Ellipticors Active XO
Can you share details about the project? I looked up those drivers and holy shit they look on another level compared to what I used to know when I was into audio DIY.
You don’t have to do that crazy, you can absolutely create a top tier design using less expensive components.
But yeah, it’s a simple two way ported bookshelf right now with a Dayton Ultimax UM 18 sealed 5 cu. Ft. subwoofer. The tweeter is a D2404 and the mid is a 18WE 4 ohm version. Active XO is not finalized since I keep playing around with the settings almost every week. Messing around with the slopes. Mostly looking at a 2nd order around 3000 hz.
There is a lack of mid bass but that is a given due to the small drivers which is why I will add more drivers later on for a 3 way or 4 way.
But since this was my second project after my subwoofer I wanted to see what it’s like before I drop insane cash on a 3/4/5 way design.
My source is a Computer which also does all the XO using EQ APO, which feeds into an AV receiver with HDMI. The drivers are wired using individual channels so like the mods are FR AND FL on the AVR. The tweeters are SL AND SR. The AVR does no processing whatsoever. I use a UMIK-1 to measure in room response. A measurement microphone is critical IMO.
Let me know if you need more info :) glad to help. I had the same problem, didn’t wanna drop 50K on speakers. Didn’t know what made 50K speakers so special. Took some figuring out but now I know almost everything about loudspeakers. It was worth it.
I’m sure there’s nothing really special about expensive/absurdly expensive speakers except careful design and a lot of trial and error. I’m not the type to think there’s “magic” there. I obviously took apart my speakers which were about 6-7k new. Nothing special except very solid cabinets with internal bracing, impedance-equalized (rather complex) XO, no ultra fancy unobtanium coils or caps with bamboo dielectric. Hell there are coils with ferrite cores in it. The only problem is time and a place to work. I’m in Europe in a small apartment by US standards. I did turn my place into a workshop before but I now value comfort more. Oh and the fact that one needs to accept possible failure. The fact that I mentioned digital XO and active amplifiication is that you can go wrong with passive XOs and it’s a lot of work to tweak them. They can mess up phasing so the speakers can sound flat or weird spatially. Ask me how I know.
D2404
Now that shape is something new to me.
Yup I agree with you.
I still haven’t learnt passive XOs since I knew from the beginning I will go the digital route.
Also if you look carefully you will see the dust cap on the mids are the same shape as well, the entire voice coil and motor assembly behind them are also elliptical shaped. Hence, Ellipticor. They claim it’s revolutionary, all I can say is that I don’t have much experience with high end speakers and it sounds good to me.