Earlier this week I was one of a few lucky individuals to be presented with a full demo(indeed an audience world-premiere) of the upcoming Raidho Ayra C-4 at their home facility in Denmark. The experience was monumental, and by and large elevated me to a musical happening seemingly detached from the speakers, or the notion of reproduction as such. What struck me was the emotional reaction to the music, in that I appeared to be fully entangled with the event taking place as if there was no "running away" in analytical judgment or cool restraint; this is not to say there was no choice whether to dissect the impressions of the sound itself, as would be the job of a reviewer in some way, but that it didn't render the option particularly appealing. You could say the experience of listening to the C-4's had a way of naturally insisting on a musical event, not what I felt to be in a manipulative(coloring) manner, but through approximating the parameters by which the signal is granted a progressively (linear) free path, so to speak. The music seemed to appear freely, non-constricted, and unfolded before me in a full, natural bloom - the background stoically calm. Instruments and voices simply locked into place and typicality with their environments. Dynamic contrast seemed unlimited, both micro and macro. Ditto with regard to bandwidth, only slightly hindered in the very bottom octave, and with mild excess in the central bass region(an area still in the addressing of the manufactorer, I was told).
Honesty or truthfulness of presentation may seem self-effacing to some, as in "lack of character," but herein lies the very essence and true mark of high fidelity, and the insight with which the C-4's call attention to the music itself in its full palette, and the overwhelming sensation of the real "life" of music, tells me that they do indeed master this feat in an unrivaled manner.
