First I want to tell you guys about the new RA8.
I know that most of you guys following the talk on the forums have already read about them, but I wanted to get into the meat of it a little more and give the first listening impressions feedback on them.
This is a joint project between GR Research and Raw Acoustics, and this model will be sold exclusively through Raw Acoustics.
Before I get any further into these I just want to say that Al Wooley did a really nice job on the enclosures. The Cherry finish looks great, and I know he'll be offering them in any finish you can think of.
My wife even likes the look and finish on them, and she's picky.
Here is a one watt/one meter measurement on them.
Yes, they really are 95db sensitivity.
One meter is really too close to measure a speaker of this size but it was okay for working with the center section crossover. Below 400Hz is not very accurate at this close range.
So the mic was moved back. Here we are now at 60".
This gets a little more of an accurate representation of the bottom end but is still too close.
The six outer woofers actually roll into the upper woofers a lot smoother than the graph shows. My un-gated in room responses and RTA responses showed a pretty smooth roll off into the mid-bases.
Still getting a response that maintains a +/-1db level through this wide of a range is very good even amoung our smoothest designs.
So as you can see, the array is actually a long WWWMTMWWW configuration. Only the two inner woofers in a sealed box section crossover to the tweeter. The outer six woofers are filling in all the baffle step loss (so that there is no loss) and crossing over to the center woofers in the 230Hz range. The outer woofers are in a ported box.
This will be a really easy load to drive too. It maintains a very smooth impedance that never dips below 7 ohms.
Low wattage tube amp lovers are going to eat this one up!
How does it sound and what does it compare to?
Well, I have plenty to compare it to around here. I believe I'll just stand them up in front of these...
You know these new RA8's really don't seam all that big after all.
Really though, they should work well even in fairly small rooms, just like a standard MTM design, like our A/V-3.
They still have some burning in to do but first impressions are pretty dang good.
I hate to even start to compare them to the other speakers pictured. Lets just say that it is a whole lot closer in comparison than it should be given the price points of the two.
The RA8 is a serious speaker, and at $799. for the kit and $2,000. fully assembled and ready to play, I don't see anything topping this right now. This makes them really hard to compare them to anything even close to their price point. Maybe the question isn't really what can we compare them to, but what can be compared to them.
Oh yea, that price includes Sonicaps in the tweeter circuit too.
The standard female vocals often used to demo with sounded smooth, lush, full, and were exceptional clean. In fact everything I through at it was exceptionally clean. It made me want to turn it up more and more to find some kind of limit. I have yet to find it.
The highs are as clean as they get too. The ribbon tweeter really can't be topped in the top end. Plus, the wider face plate cut out on this tweeter yielded better off axis response than any of the other Aurum Cantus ribbons tested.
The clean and effortless ability to hit higher SPL's drove me to test that range. Throwing on a little Evanescense was a real joy. It wasn't until I played this CD that I realized I needed something to cover the first octave. I was getting in room responses down to close to 40Hz in my room pretty easy.
So I added the SW-12A and PR-12A sub combo, seen in the back ground with the Mappa Burl finish on it. This really completed the package.
Evanescence now rips. I mean it will rip your insides out and clean as a whistle. It was effortlessly knocking it out. Vocals were scarry real and goose bumps were popping up all over. Even the drums and electric guitar was giving me goose bumps.
The Chinese percussion from the number 3 Burmester disk pounded like real drums in my room. The sound stage was huge as well. Maybe having the speakers about 8 feet out into the room was helping this a little.
Blue Man Group pounded equally well to near live levels without a problem, and yes, I have seen them live and from the 3rd row.
Back to female vocals and I think I have broken them in a little more with all those high level outputs. Vocals are really deep into the sound stage and starring straight at one speaker, it appeared to not be on. Nothing appeared to be coming from the speaker itself, but from a sound stage that encircled the space behind it. Very transparent!
These are truly a jewel of a speaker. Even I could live with these in my listening room for a long time and not miss anything especially with the sub. It really completes it as a system.
What could be better?
Well, I guess this leads me to the announcement part.
Al's new RA104.5 ribbon is really good, we knew it would be, and it was made with a 104.5mm face plate for a reason. It's a drop in replacement for our GR-T2 soft dome tweeter.
Now all of our A/V series kits will be offered with Al's new ribbon.
Yep, A/V-1, A/V-3, A/V-3S models will all be offered with the ribbon tweeter, and sold exclusively through Raw Acoustics. These will be called the new RA/V series. I will be doing all the design work on these to incorporate all the necessary network changes. Standard A/V-3 and A/V-3S kits can be upgraded with the new tweeter and tweeter network if needed. The RA/V-1 will have to be redesigned using a parallel network, so for that model the tweeter and all of the network will be different.
This means high end complete home theater packages with the ribbon in any combination you want as kits or complete and ready to play.
We are also going to offer a long center channel to match the RA8, maybe even two different models. On one we drop off the two outer woofers leaving just six total. For a shorter version we drop off four of the outer woofers leaving just four total.
This is going to be a really high value line and I am really excited about it for Raw Acoustics and for GR Research.
