Rosson Audio Design RAD-0 - Alex's Beautiful New Baby

[jsabini1]

help! my RAD-0 driver died--i emailed the support team over a week ago and still nothing! this is awful-- i guess i'm outta luck on getting a repair-now i wish i never bought it

Reach out to @kachoo, Rosson is no more... We're all SOL at this point.

 

[baseball8793]

who is kachoo? is he the new owner or something?

 

[jsabini1]

who is kachoo? is he the new owner or something?

No, just read back in this thread a bit.

He purchased some remaining Rosson inventory and parts, and is a source for replacements (if he still has any still) since Alex disappeared off the face of the earth.

 

[baseball8793]

wow this is insane

 

[OM hawk]

During the past year, I had neglected my very costly Rad-0 Hugo 2 rig, in favor of a much much cheaper, dead neutral headphone, the Neumann NDH30, which I use with an iFi Neo idsd 2. The soundstage is far superior in width, depth, and just in general compared to the Rad-0, and it's like... infinity less grams on my neck.

But just the other day I A B tested some songs with these two rigs, and it became clear very quickly that the Rad-0 sounds more realistic to me than the "certified technically correct" sounding NDH30. The Rads and Hugo 2 of course give more detail, but that's not even what I mean. I mean the Rad-0 has a more lifelike sound. The NDH30 nails the audiophile ideal of true neutrality, it has quite a devoted following, with some people claiming only the Utopia 2022 is a better headphone, due to the NDH30's perfectly neutral tuning.

But when I listened to Hail to the King by Avenged Sevenfold, in the first few seconds, the cymbal hits sound thin and lifeless on the NDH30, compared to the Rad-0, these cymbal hits sound gross and paper thin, I described it to my friend as "toilet paper". The Rad-0 injects some warmth into these cymbals, but far from sounding like the Rads injected it, it sounds like they're restoring what the neutral NDH30 removed from the true sound of the actual music. Obviously these types of impressions are not science, very subjective, but my ears state emphatically that the NDH30, (and I'm quite sure any other neutral-enough headphone) sounds gross and fake, where the Rad-0 sounds real. I don't perceive it as an asthetic thing, I don't hear the Rads as more pleasant, nor more euphonic, in fact at times they are more incisive and honest than I might prefer. The Rad-0 with the neutral Hugo 2 is not a euphonic rig to me, it's a "real life" rig.

The other big example is anything with a single human voice without other sounds: with any neutral sounding headphone rig, I would always skip songs like When I Was In My Prime by Pentangle, they just sounded bad, no matter how much I normally enjoy the vocalist who is singing. The Rad-0 corrects this issue, and technically it does it by "adding warmth" but it doesn't sound warm or like something is added on top of the recording. It's toilet paper vs real life.

 

[adydula]

Regardless of where Alex has gone. Rad 0's are still a GREAT headphone.
Explosive at times....deep bass...like felt in a concert at times....

Many folks are afraid to buy these because of Alex R's disappearance act.
But this doesn't make these any less better.

Not selling mine anymore...