Sonus Faber Aida and Raidho C4.1

marty · Aug 10, 2016

Two speakers that appear to live in the upper echelons of the audiophile world are the Sonus Faber Aidas and the Raidho C4.1s. However there is precious little written on this forum about either. Does anyone out there own either of us, and can you tell us a little bit about your experience? (i.e., strengths and weaknesses of either? What are you driving them with?, etc.)Most curious to learn about these.

Steve Williams · Aug 11, 2016

I heard Aida and Raidho yesterday at Dafos house here in Manila. He uses a Dagostino stereo amp and an ARC Anniversary preamp.

Steve Williams · Aug 11, 2016

There are many Raidho owners in the Philippines. Hopefully Jerry will chime in. I did confirm with Jerry that there were (are) issues with the tweeter

Jerry has the T3

caesar · Aug 11, 2016

marty said:
Two speakers that appear to live in the upper echelons of the audiophile world are the Sonus Faber Aidas and the Raidho C4.1s. However there is precious little written on this forum about either. Does anyone out there own either of us, and can you tell us a little bit about your experience? (i.e., strengths and weaknesses of either? What are you driving them with?, etc.)Most curious to learn about these.

Seems to me that one of the problems for Sonus Faber Aida is that they are owned by the same company as Audio Research. These 2 are paired together at every show, unfortunately to poor results, with the system sounding slow, mushy, and muddy - underpowered and poorly powered.

I have never heard audio research preamp / amp combo sound good unless it is in the Brilliant Carl Marchisotto's Nola system or the arc 75 driving the wonderful Scaena system.

The Aida comes to full life with some solid state juice!

As for Raidhos, seems like every other audioshark member used to own them. But now, only a handful do - not that I go there very often... I wonder if there is something wrong with Raidhos or those audioshark guys are gear swappers on the Merry-go-round.

caesar · Aug 11, 2016

Steve Williams said:
I heard Aida and Raidho yesterday at Dafos house here in Manila. He uses a Dagostino stereo amp and an ARC Anniversary preamp.

That combo makes a lot of sense driving the Aidas

microstrip · Aug 11, 2016

I owned the Aida's for about two years. IMHO the best box speaker I have owned or hosted by a wide margin for my music preferences.

Unfortunately I had the wrong system for them. My whole system was tube, cables were TA Opus tuned for specific tubes. The MB750s were not good enough for them - the Audio Research RF150 could play much better on most recordings, but lacked power for the symphonic music. The REF250's were just borderline. As I also owned the Soundlab A1's one day the Aida's left, with great regret of two of my friends who really appreciated it.

Probably today I would have kept them.

BTW, we had several threads on the Aida's in 2012 - I remember posting in a few of them. Steve loved the Aida's tweeter!

microstrip · Aug 11, 2016

caesar said:
Seems to me that one of the problems for Sonus Faber Aida is that they are owned by the same company as Audio Research. These 2 are paired together at every show, unfortunately to poor results, with the system sounding slow, mushy, and muddy - underpowered and poorly powered.

I have never heard audio research preamp / amp combo sound good unless it is in the Brilliant Carl Marchisotto's Nola system or the arc 75 driving the wonderful Scaena system.

The Aida comes to full life with some solid state juice!

As for Raidhos, seems like every other audioshark member used to own them. But now, only a handful do - not that I go there very often... I wonder if there is something wrong with Raidhos or those audioshark guys are gear swappers on the Merry-go-round.

Caesar,

Aidas's sound great with high power ARC, but they need Nordost Vahalla or Odin.

BTW, did you never listen to Wilson with ARC? It can sound great!

Frank750 · Aug 11, 2016

caesar said:
Seems to me that one of the problems for Sonus Faber Aida is that they are owned by the same company as Audio Research. These 2 are paired together at every show, unfortunately to poor results, with the system sounding slow, mushy, and muddy - underpowered and poorly powered.

I have never heard audio research preamp / amp combo sound good unless it is in the Brilliant Carl Marchisotto's Nola system or the arc 75 driving the wonderful Scaena system.

The Aida comes to full life with some solid state juice!

I have Aida's predecessor from which it drew some of its' technology. Fenice was a limited run speaker and Aida followed shortly after.

They both like power but to say they sound poor and mushy with Audio Research amplification tells me you either haven't heard them with the right Audio Research amp or the system wasn't properly set up. I ran my speakers for a couple of years with Ref610s and the Anniversary preamp with superb results.

caesar · Aug 11, 2016

microstrip said:
Caesar,

Aidas's sound great with high power ARC, but they need Nordost Vahalla or Odin.

BTW, did you never listen to Wilson with ARC? It can sound great!

I have heard and enjoyed tremendously the Wilson Alexia / ARc Ref 6? 10? 40? preamp (too many damn ref preamps!) with D'Agostino monos. But I don't think the arc amps have enough oomph for Wilson or the Aidas in my experience.

caesar · Aug 11, 2016

Frank750 said:
I have Aida's predecessor from which it drew some of its' technology. Fenice was a limited run speaker and Aida followed shortly after.

They both like power but to say they sound poor and mushy with Audio Research amplification tells me you either haven't heard them with the right Audio Research amp or the system wasn't properly set up. I ran my speakers for a couple of years with Ref610s and the Anniversary preamp with superb results.

Frank,
Congrats on an awesome system!!!!

I have no doubt that monster tubes can drive the Aida and the Fenice... But you also switched to SS....

Frank750 · Aug 11, 2016

caesar said:
Frank,
Congrats on an awesome system!!!!

I have no doubt that monster tubes can drive the Aida and the Fenice... But you also switched to SS....

Thanks Caesar.

I did but only because I got tired of the more than occasional blown tube which would take out a resistor which would then necessitate boxing up the amp and sending it back to the factory.

I am very happy with the Xs300s though.

joey_v · Aug 16, 2016

Frank750 said:
Thanks Caesar.

I did but only because I got tired of the more than occasional blown tube which would take out a resistor which would then necessitate boxing up the amp and sending it back to the factory.

I am very happy with the Xs300s though.

Frank

Your system is impressive. PD source, ref 10 pre, xs300, to fenice? wow.

Cincy2 · Aug 16, 2016

caesar said:
As for Raidhos, seems like every other audioshark member used to own them. But now, only a handful do - not that I go there very often... I wonder if there is something wrong with Raidhos or those audioshark guys are gear swappers on the Merry-go-round.

I'm one of those Audioshark speaker swappers. I owned a pair of Raidho D3's for several months. I sold them because I could never get the room right. Raidho uses speaker ports on the rear of the enclosure. For a smallish room like mine, this can create all kinds of room interactions that degrade the perceived sound. I could never smooth out the bass resonances regardless of what I tried: granite bases, power conditioning, tube traps everywhere. I made a move to Magico products which have sealed enclosures and the problems went away. This is not an indictment of the Raidho speaker family. Just a notice that room interactions will require significant effort to neutralize. The speakers have incredible build quality and they are supported as well as any in the industry by the Raidho team.

Cincy

joey_v · Aug 16, 2016

Steve Williams said:
I heard Aida and Raidho yesterday at Dafos house here in Manila. He uses a Dagostino stereo amp and an ARC Anniversary preamp.

It's been a while since I've been back to my home country.... how you enjoying the philippines, Steve?

Odyssey · Aug 16, 2016

marty said:
Two speakers that appear to live in the upper echelons of the audiophile world are the Sonus Faber Aidas and the Raidho C4.1s. However there is precious little written on this forum about either. Does anyone out there own either of us, and can you tell us a little bit about your experience? (i.e., strengths and weaknesses of either? What are you driving them with?, etc.)Most curious to learn about these.

I have two different residences and I have the Raidho D5's and the Raidho D3's in my summer and winter residences respectively.

First to the OP's questions, the Raidho D5 is the next step up from the C4.1 speaker. Both are a front ported design.

Let me say this owning the Raidho's is like being married to an effervescent, beautiful woman with a slight mood disorder. When she is good she is very good....

In fact in all of numerous audio shows and private homes I have been to I have not found any speaker that has turned my head. I have not second guessed myself in the three summers I have owned them. For me personally they are the most beautiful speaker that I have ever heard.

Weak point: both the C4.1's and the D5's have a mid bass hump (60-80 Hz) that can really excite some rooms. This has been an easy trade off for me inasmuch as it hasn't really produced that objectionable bass hump in my 16' x 27' room.

I drive the D5's with a soulution 711 stereo amp along with solution's 725 preamp. The 711 has a damping factor of over 10,000 which helps.

Back to the mid bass hump, what little there is in my room I have been able tame using a pro audio piece of gear recommended indirectly to me by a competing speaker manufacturer. It is made by Bag End and called an E-Trap. It is an active bass trap that has shaved 4-5 db off of the mid bass hump and mitigated the slight mood disorder in this beautiful speaker. The E-Trap is inexpensive and used in numerous recording studios and has quite a following with some audiophiles in Germany. It takes some skill to dial it in correctly but for me it has worked marvelously in getting that last few percent is performance.

As others on this forum can attest to, system matching is of utmost importance. I had the opportunity to hear the D5's on three other major brands of electronics and for me the soulution was the best match using the speaker manufacturer's brand of cables called Ansuz.

There is no such thing as the perfect speaker and there are many other beautiful speakers out there to try. It is nice to live in the 21st century.

microstrip · Aug 16, 2016

Odyssey said:
(...) Back to the mid bass hump, what little there is in my room I have been able tame using a pro audio piece of gear recommended indirectly to me by a competing speaker manufacturer. It is made by Bag End and called an E-Trap. It is an active bass trap that has shaved 4-5 db off of the mid bass hump and mitigated the slight mood disorder in this beautiful speaker. The E-Trap is inexpensive and used in numerous recording studios and has quite a following with some audiophiles in Germany. It takes some skill to dial it in correctly but for me it has worked marvelously in getting that last few percent is performance. (...)

The E-Trap concept is interesting - as far as I can see it generates an out-of-phase signal to cancel some excess of bass. However it looks complicated - what is the real advantage of sampling the output with a microphone versus using the signal from the speaker or preamplifier to generate the correction signal?

Afveep · Aug 16, 2016

microstrip said:
what is the real advantage of sampling the output with a microphone versus using the signal from the speaker or preamplifier to generate the correction signal?

What you're trying to accomplish with this product is to correct the "hump" of the speaker-room interaction, not correct the response of the electronics only (won't be any) or the electronics+speaker without the room. Despite the built-in mid-bass voicing of the Raidho speakers, the actual response will differ by room. In order to do this, you need to measure the response with the microphone.

caesar · Aug 16, 2016

Cincy2 said:
I'm one of those Audioshark speaker swappers. I owned a pair of Raidho D3's for several months. I sold them because I could never get the room right. Raidho uses speaker ports on the rear of the enclosure. For a smallish room like mine, this can create all kinds of room interactions that degrade the perceived sound. I could never smooth out the bass resonances regardless of what I tried: granite bases, power conditioning, tube traps everywhere. I made a move to Magico products which have sealed enclosures and the problems went away. This is not an indictment of the Raidho speaker family. Just a notice that room interactions will require significant effort to neutralize. The speakers have incredible build quality and they are supported as well as any in the industry by the Raidho team.

Cincy

Cincy,
Congrats on an AWESOME system!

Nothing wrong with being a gear swapper - not all who wander are lost. If you are enjoying the journey and understand that:
1. there is no perfect system, like there is no perfect beer or horse or interior design for a room or... just different experiences, and
2. no matter how good a system may be, it will never sound like live music.

As long as you have realistic expectations of what the high end hobby can and cannot do, and are swapping gear to better understand the tradeoffs of the many brilliant designers and how you emotionally react to the different flavors, it is all great fun.

Coming back to your system, how does D'Agostino work with Magico? I see that you are upgrading your speakers, which is already a hefty expense. Any thoughts to upgrade or change your amps?

And for your digital, are you upsampling everything to DSD, or are you listening to PCM at all? Does dcs do a great job with PCM?

caesar · Aug 16, 2016

Odyssey said:
I have two different residences and I have the Raidho D5's and the Raidho D3's in my summer and winter residences respectively.

First to the OP's questions, the Raidho D5 is the next step up from the C4.1 speaker. Both are a front ported design.

Let me say this owning the Raidho's is like being married to an effervescent, beautiful woman with a slight mood disorder. When she is good she is very good....

In fact in all of numerous audio shows and private homes I have been to I have not found any speaker that has turned my head. I have not second guessed myself in the three summers I have owned them. For me personally they are the most beautiful speaker that I have ever heard.

Weak point: both the C4.1's and the D5's have a mid bass hump (60-80 Hz) that can really excite some rooms. This has been an easy trade off for me inasmuch as it hasn't really produced that objectionable bass hump in my 16' x 27' room.

I drive the D5's with a soulution 711 stereo amp along with solution's 725 preamp. The 711 has a damping factor of over 10,000 which helps.

Back to the mid bass hump, what little there is in my room I have been able tame using a pro audio piece of gear recommended indirectly to me by a competing speaker manufacturer. It is made by Bag End and called an E-Trap. It is an active bass trap that has shaved 4-5 db off of the mid bass hump and mitigated the slight mood disorder in this beautiful speaker. The E-Trap is inexpensive and used in numerous recording studios and has quite a following with some audiophiles in Germany. It takes some skill to dial it in correctly but for me it has worked marvelously in getting that last few percent is performance.

As others on this forum can attest to, system matching is of utmost importance. I had the opportunity to hear the D5's on three other major brands of electronics and for me the soulution was the best match using the speaker manufacturer's brand of cables called Ansuz.

There is no such thing as the perfect speaker and there are many other beautiful speakers out there to try. It is nice to live in the 21st century.

Odyssey,
Congrats to you as well! Killer stuff x 2!!!!!!!

I have heard Raidhos only at shows, and they do sound magnificent - even under bad conditions. I understand why you would want to own 2 pairs. Unfortunately, they only play female vocals at shows. Can they rock?

Another very peculiar thing about the Raidhos is how sensitive they are to slight positional adjustments. Move them by 6 inches, and it is a completely different sound. Does anyone understand why this is? How did you dial them in?

As far as the bass hump, is it engineered on purpose or is it a flaw? ("is it a feature or a bug?")

Also, what amps have you tried them with?

microstrip · Aug 16, 2016

Afveep said:
What you're trying to accomplish with this product is to correct the "hump" of the speaker-room interaction, not correct the response of the electronics only (won't be any) or the electronics+speaker without the room. Despite the built-in mid-bass voicing of the Raidho speakers, the actual response will differ by room. In order to do this, you need to measure the response with the microphone.

Thanks. Using a subwoofer with the inverse acoustic phase will do just this action - correct the "hump" due to speaker-room interaction. It will work as a bass trap, absorbing bass energy. When setting a subwoofer we just measure using a microphone to cancel the "hump".

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