Raidho speakers SPL Limited; Company admits; Egg on face of many…

caesar

Well-Known Member
May 30, 2010
4,290
767
1,698
Trying to catch up on my audio reading this weekend, I found a disturbing post on the audio shark site regarding Raidho speakers. Raidhos have been very favorably reviewed by many “famous” reviewers in a variety of magazines. They have been declared the new “BEST” by a certain Analytic Sound reviewer who took Magico out of obscurity, and through non-stop publicity put them into the big leagues. Now that Raidho's have trumped his beloved Magico, he is starting to pump up the publicity machine for Raidho… but there seems to be a problem with some Raidho models...

The shame is that guys who have actually paid $40K, $60K+ for various Raidho models, have found them not able to withstand high SPLs. These owners have reported woofer pops at 90+ db, depending on the music. Some of these owners have dumped their Raidho’s and moved on to other brands, while others are living with sub-optimal results. In one of the posts on the mentioned site, a guy calling himself Lars from Raidho has chimed in, saying that Raidho will make the necessary corrections if speakers are shipped to them. However, Raidho should pay for shipping both ways, IMHO.

Many folks are working very hard and saving their money to get that ultimate musical experience in their home. When paying luxury car prices for a speaker, one expects not only the inherent value of a product but also quality and craftsmanship. It seems to me identifying whether a speaker can play loud and scale the dynamic peaks is something every reviewer should test before whole-heartedly recommending a product.

Building trust takes a long, long time. Destroying it is very fast. And re-establishing it is not like hitting the undo button on your computer or shaking the iphone and tapping undo. Very sad. I know that many of the Raidho owners are feeling the opposite of “delighted”, “excited”, and "exceeded expectations" about their purchase. I hope all the impacted Raidho owners can get their problems resolved and have the speaker they always dreamed about.
 

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
20,806
4,698
2,790
Portugal
Trying to catch up on my audio reading this weekend, I found a disturbing post on the audio shark site regarding Raidho speakers. Raidhos have been very favorably reviewed by many “famous” reviewers in a variety of magazines. They have been declared the new “BEST” by a certain Analytic Sound reviewer who took Magico out of obscurity, and through non-stop publicity put them into the big leagues. Now that Raidho's have trumped his beloved Magico, he is starting to pump up the publicity machine for Raidho… but there seems to be a problem with some Raidho models...

The shame is that guys who have actually paid $40K, $60K+ for various Raidho models, have found them not able to withstand high SPLs. These owners have reported woofer pops at 90+ db, depending on the music. Some of these owners have dumped their Raidho’s and moved on to other brands, while others are living with sub-optimal results. In one of the posts on the mentioned site, a guy calling himself Lars from Raidho has chimed in, saying that Raidho will make the necessary corrections if speakers are shipped to them. However, Raidho should pay for shipping both ways, IMHO.

Many folks are working very hard and saving their money to get that ultimate musical experience in their home. When paying luxury car prices for a speaker, one expects not only the inherent value of a product but also quality and craftsmanship. It seems to me identifying whether a speaker can play loud and scale the dynamic peaks is something every reviewer should test before whole-heartedly recommending a product.

Building trust takes a long, long time. Destroying it is very fast. And re-establishing it is not like hitting the undo button on your computer or shaking the iphone and tapping undo. Very sad. I know that many of the Raidho owners are feeling the opposite of “delighted”, “excited”, and "exceeded expectations" about their purchase. I hope all the impacted Raidho owners can get their problems resolved and have the speaker they always dreamed about.

Caesar,

Although I understand that you are only presenting your own opinion on this subject, you refer you are using information taken from a thread in another forum. IMHO for completeness it should be referred that the Rhaido offer was enthusiastically received by all the members of the referred forum who posted afterwards, who considered the issue completely solved and some of them even awarded their 2014 customer service excellence to Rahido. As far as I could see, after this announcement there were only words of high praise for Lars and Raidho.
 

caesar

Well-Known Member
May 30, 2010
4,290
767
1,698
Caesar,

Although I understand that you are only presenting your own opinion on this subject, you refer you are using information taken from a thread in another forum. IMHO for completeness it should be referred that the Rhaido offer was enthusiastically received by all the members of the referred forum who posted afterwards, who considered the issue completely solved and some of them even awarded their 2014 customer service excellence to Rahido. As far as I could see, after this announcement there were only words of high praise for Lars and Raidho.

Microstrip,

You are correct. But I am only thinking of the little guy, dreaming about an awesome musical experience in his home, working his tail off, saving $$, $$$, and then being severely disappointed...
 

mep

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
9,481
17
0
"Little guys" aren't buying these speakers. People with deep pockets are buying them.
 

caesar

Well-Known Member
May 30, 2010
4,290
767
1,698
"Little guys" aren't buying these speakers. People with deep pockets are buying them.

I guess "little guy" is a relative thing. IMHO, billionaires are going for big wilsons, mbls, magico ultimates, etc.
 

mep

Member Sponsor & WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
9,481
17
0
I guess "little guy" is a relative thing. IMHO, billionaires are going for big wilsons, mbls, magico ultimates, etc.

Billionaires? Really? So is a "little guy" someone who just has millions stashed in the bank?
 

MylesBAstor

Well-Known Member
Apr 20, 2010
11,236
81
1,725
New York City
Trying to catch up on my audio reading this weekend, I found a disturbing post on the audio shark site regarding Raidho speakers. Raidhos have been very favorably reviewed by many “famous” reviewers in a variety of magazines. They have been declared the new “BEST” by a certain Analytic Sound reviewer who took Magico out of obscurity, and through non-stop publicity put them into the big leagues. Now that Raidho's have trumped his beloved Magico, he is starting to pump up the publicity machine for Raidho… but there seems to be a problem with some Raidho models...

The shame is that guys who have actually paid $40K, $60K+ for various Raidho models, have found them not able to withstand high SPLs. These owners have reported woofer pops at 90+ db, depending on the music. Some of these owners have dumped their Raidho’s and moved on to other brands, while others are living with sub-optimal results. In one of the posts on the mentioned site, a guy calling himself Lars from Raidho has chimed in, saying that Raidho will make the necessary corrections if speakers are shipped to them. However, Raidho should pay for shipping both ways, IMHO.

Many folks are working very hard and saving their money to get that ultimate musical experience in their home. When paying luxury car prices for a speaker, one expects not only the inherent value of a product but also quality and craftsmanship. It seems to me identifying whether a speaker can play loud and scale the dynamic peaks is something every reviewer should test before whole-heartedly recommending a product.

Building trust takes a long, long time. Destroying it is very fast. And re-establishing it is not like hitting the undo button on your computer or shaking the iphone and tapping undo. Very sad. I know that many of the Raidho owners are feeling the opposite of “delighted”, “excited”, and "exceeded expectations" about their purchase. I hope all the impacted Raidho owners can get their problems resolved and have the speaker they always dreamed about.

Ummm...Lars is Lars Christiansen, owner (or one of the) of Raidho. You may know him as being one of the previous owners of Nordost cables.

You know **** happens and while I won't name names, this isn't the first time a high end speaker company has had an issue with their product. It's unfortunate but what's important is that Raidho remedied the problem and made good on their warranty.
 

mbovaird

Banned
Jan 5, 2013
146
1
0
No good deed goes unpunished....

As the owner of "the audio shark" and a previous owner of the Raidho D1's and Raidho D3's, I think I can shed some light on the situation. First, I owned the Raidho D1's and just loved what they did and couldn't wait to move up to the Raidho D3's. I barely broke in the D1's before I moved on to the D3's. When my D3's arrived, break in was an absolute bear, but I knew what these speakers were capable of. After several hundred hours, they really started to improve. Over the coming weeks of listening, I found two problems cropped up with the D3's. First, was a mid-bass "bump" between 40-140hz. Second, woofer popping occurred at 95db (approx)....but there was no way to gauge when the woofers would pop. It could happen at 90db with me playing Big Head Todd's - 100 Years of Robert Johnson, or not at all at 100db with Mozart. But generally speaking, it occurred at around 95db. As a side, the mid bass bump, not the popping was the number one concern for Raidho D3 owners on my site.

The mid-bass issue wasn't as much of a concern for me. I found some work arounds (granite base, port plugs) that all seemed to help...a little. But ultimately, I became very frustrated with the popping, so, working with the cooperation of my dealer, I moved on....

Now, we can look at this situation and see it as a failure, egg on the face, what have you.....or we can look at this and see it as a small company determined to do the right thing. Just because Ferrari has a recall on the 458 does not mean that Ferrari makes bad cars or that Ferrari is a bad company (http://www.topgear.com/uk/car-news/ferrari-458-italia-recall).

For current D3 owners, I am delighted that Raidho has stepped up to the plate, created a fix which is much more involved than one might think (details to follow) and the company is covering 95% of the cost. Yes, they have asked owners to pay for one way shipping costs. Given the costs the company will face for the fix and return the D3's to their customers, I think this is more than fair.

It's easy to sit there and say "yeah, they should pay for everything!" - but in reality, Raidho is a small company and the fact that they have admitted the problems, created a solution for both problems, speaks volumes (no pun intended). :) Raidho could have easily said, "Tada! We now have the Raidho D3.1" and screw all those people who were early adopters of their diamond woofer technology. But no, they didn't. They engineered a not-inexpensive fix and offered it to all Raidho D3 owners for free (except for one way shipping costs).

I will obviously withhold final judgement until I actually hear a pair of upgraded/modified/fixed D3's. But as someone who was one of the most vocal about the disappointments of my D3's - before and after selling them, I applaud Raidho for taking it on the chin, getting back up, stepping up to the plate and creating a real fix for existing D3 customers (and not a band-aid fix). There are many ways they could have handled this situation and in my opinion, they did the honorable thing.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
Did they ever explain why they did not find this problem in their own testing prior to release of the speaker?
 

LenWhite

Well-Known Member
Feb 11, 2011
424
72
375
Florida
systems.audiogon.com
Did they ever explain why they did not find this problem in their own testing prior to release of the speaker?

IMO the response from Lars posted on the Audioshark forum explaining speaker design trade-offs sounds reasonable. And accordingly the upgrade offer sounds very generous.

Regarding Raidho D-3…

Most owners of Raidho D-3 are very happy about their speakers both when it comes to sound and musicality.
In the past Michael and I have been following the threads “Raidho D-3 review” with highly interest and unfortunately it has showing up that a few costumers could have wished a greater power handling.
When you design and develop speakers, it is always a tradeoff, when it comes to power handling, reliability, sound, and music performance.
After developing our new Raidho D-5, we have got a lot of new ideas, if you are not 100% happy about your D-3, we are offering you the following.
We are upgrading your speakers for free, we also offer to help with all shipping documents, we only
ask that you pay the shipping cost to Denmark. We will pay for the shipping cost back to you.
What the upgrade offers you is: far better power handling (increase the AVG. SPL with more than 4 to 5 dB), better control in the low frequency area and better dynamic range…
To make the upgrade possible please contact Michael or me:
E-mail address: lk@raidho.dk or mb@raidho.dk.
Kind regards
Lars
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
IMO the response from Lars posted on the Audioshark forum explaining speaker design trade-offs sounds reasonable. And accordingly the upgrade offer sounds very generous.

Regarding Raidho D-3…

Most owners of Raidho D-3 are very happy about their speakers both when it comes to sound and musicality.
In the past Michael and I have been following the threads “Raidho D-3 review” with highly interest and unfortunately it has showing up that a few costumers could have wished a greater power handling.
When you design and develop speakers, it is always a tradeoff, when it comes to power handling, reliability, sound, and music performance.
After developing our new Raidho D-5, we have got a lot of new ideas, if you are not 100% happy about your D-3, we are offering you the following.
We are upgrading your speakers for free, we also offer to help with all shipping documents, we only
ask that you pay the shipping cost to Denmark. We will pay for the shipping cost back to you.
What the upgrade offers you is: far better power handling (increase the AVG. SPL with more than 4 to 5 dB), better control in the low frequency area and better dynamic range…
To make the upgrade possible please contact Michael or me:
E-mail address: lk@raidho.dk or mb@raidho.dk.
Kind regards
Lars
He wants people to pay for shipping heavy speakers to Denmark??? I would imagine that costs a fortune if sent by air from US. And by land/sea will take forever and heaven knows in what condition it will arrive there.
 

Jazzhead

VIP/Donor
Aug 26, 2012
1,466
108
985
He wants people to pay for shipping heavy speakers to Denmark??? I would imagine that costs a fortune if sent by air from US. And by land/sea will take forever and heaven knows in what condition it will arrive there.

The natives on 'Shark' seem to have been quelled , it's all applause and service awards , so I reckon this thought is a minority . Do agree though , if they have owed up to an oversight in its initial design and sought to rectify , then going the whole hog and making it a true free upgrade or modification would have been the way to go .
 

JackD201

WBF Founding Member
Apr 20, 2010
12,308
1,425
1,820
Manila, Philippines
I heard that pop in Tokyo last November. The 3s were being driven by Chord amps. I should say they were overdriven. To be fair, they sounded great when they weren't being pushed. I mean really great.
 

asiufy

Industry Expert/VIP Donor
Jul 8, 2011
3,711
723
1,200
San Diego, CA
almaaudio.com
He wants people to pay for shipping heavy speakers to Denmark??? I would imagine that costs a fortune if sent by air from US. And by land/sea will take forever and heaven knows in what condition it will arrive there.

I agree. If the speakers were bought in the US, and are shown to be defective, aren't they entitled to have them fixed in their own country, at the brand's expense? Sort of like a recall...

I do think it's pretty cool the company owned up and admitted a "flaw", and offered to fix it, instead of just releasing an "mk2". But seems to me they should've thought it through, and offered the upgrade/repair through their dealers...

Who distributes Raidho in the US? That's where people should be looking at right now...



alexandre
 

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