Update:
I was able to place my Raidho XT-1's in my room in the factory suggested placement (9 feet apart), which turns out to work the best based on my extensive tweaking and comparing. The room is about 18' x 13' and is in an upstairs loft that overlooks the downstairs living room. The XT's are about 3 feet from the "first" front wall (not a wall, just a 3 foot partial wall that keeps you from falling downstairs into the living room) and about 8 feet from the second full front wall (all multi-story glass wall). I won't go into much detail about the sound quality as others in this thread and internet fora, professional and otherwise have it covered. Suffice it to say they ended up beating out my Revel Gems, which I've owned and absolutely loved for 15 years or so and at one point were among the world's best monitors, regardless of price.
The Raidho ribbon tweeter is magic (you gotta love the fact that the tweeter on the XT is the exact same tweeter as the one used on Raidho's most expensive speaker at $260K) and blends wonderfully with the mids. Low frequencies are handled/supplemented by two Revel Performa3 subs (I listen to lots of bass-extreme music and subs also help with sound staging/giving a better sonic impression of the acoustic space in which the music was played and recorded). Each sub is sitting on an IsoAcoustic subwoofer stand. I did have a few head-scratching moments in the set up- at first I was confused as to why the imaging was so diffuse/poor (forgot I needed to wire one speaker out of phase for my particular system). Bam, now the imaging was what I was expecting!
I will say, even with the imaging issue sorted out as noted above, I felt like the XT's did not better the Gems in terms of sound staging (dimensions) and imaging. In fact I think the Gems bettered them by a little bit. That is not a knock against the XT's, because the Gems are phenomenal in those areas. I am a sound staging/imaging fanatic. I also felt in terms of letting you hear all the details/plankton, they were close, but the high frequencies overall favored the XT's, which I anticipated.
Ok, after getting the XT's set up properly, I realized about a week later I forgot to adjust the placement of my GIK acoustic panels for the first and second sidewall reflection points, as the Gems were in a different placement. Ahh! That definitely helped things. I settled in and listed for about a month, at which point I decided it was time to install the IsoAcoustic Gaia footers.....
Using the custom M4 screws shipped to me, I installed the footers (you need to make sure the IsoAcoustics logo is facing forward when installed as it is part of the design), hit "play" and.... incredible.
If the Raidho XT-1 is a version 1, after installing the Gaia footers, it now sounds like Raidho XT-1 version 4.
It sounds like a significantly better speaker. It still sounds like a Raidho XT-1, but with the Gaia footers installed:
1. You get a
large uptick in clarity/transparency, and I thought the XT's were already crystal clear.
2. More detail.
3. Improved imaging- the singer is exactly right there, whereas before the location was a bit more diffuse, and, the image has more "density" if that make sense.
4. The sound stage is more tightly defined and seems larger.
5. More tonal saturation, more color, more 3D.
6. Now the XT-1's bettered the Gems in terms of detail/imaging/sound stage (of course the Gems didn't have Gaia footers so it may not be fair).
7. Everything just more real- a much higher degree of "there are real musicians performing in my room".
8. Increased "speaker disappearing act" such that the music seems not to emanate from the speakers.
I heard no sonic downside.
We as audiophiles can be a bit nutty and our threshold for being shocked/impressed can be different, but to me, if you own Raidho XT-1's and you are using the standard footers, you are leaving a
TON of performance on the table. Your speakers have so much more potential than you realize. If a dealer demoed two XT-1's for me and one had the Gaia footers and the other the standard footers and I was not aware of the footer difference and the dealer just said the XT with the Gaia footers was an improved version of the XT that cost 1/3rd more, I would be annoyed but I would have shelled out the additional $4,500.
Music Direct has a money back policy, I say trying these footers is mandatory for any XT-1 owner
.
I now understand why these footers recently won the EISA 2019-2020 Best HiFi Upgrade Award.
Before the Gaia footers I was a very satisfied new XT owner (keep them but I might have a wondering eye toward some Vivid Audio speakers in a year or two). Now, I am just over the moon happy and I no longer have any wondering eye toward Vivid speakers. These XT-1's with Gaia footers are keepers and are just so damn good!
Sorry for the comically bad, super crappy iphone pics in poor light:
Speaking of which, have you compared the X1 to XT1 before?
