Audiophilepure

https://www.stereophile.com/content/raidho-td38-loudspeaker

The TD3.8s are time-stealers. Often, while listening to them, an hour disappeared in seconds. Perhaps more than any other speakers I’ve auditioned at home, the TD3.8s made me want to turn off all the lights in the room, to be alone in the dark, transported by the music. Into the music. These speakers are lavish in both sonics and appearance—so, on second thought, leave those lights on. “Mindbendingly good” was one of the first notes I scribbled after I began playing music through them.

Copper wire was born when two Dutchmen fought over a penny, so, true to my birthplace, the Raidhos’ price gives me pause. In this ultraluxury range, I can think of other deeply impressive loudspeakers I’d put on my shortlist. The $76,000/pair Focal Maestro Utopia EVO springs to mind; the $94,000/pair Magico M3; the $91,000/pair MBL 101 E MKII Radialstrahler; even the tremendous Klipschorn Jubilee (for $87,500/pair you could go crazy, buy five, and put together the most bitchin’ Dolby rig ever, footnote 5) All these products are soul-stirring—and so are the TD3.8s.

There’s no power cord provided with AC-2K; Connected Fidelity is primarily a cable company so upsell opportunities are available. The test unit was supplied with a new cable just added to the range, the Chronos 2 (£840). It’s based on a braided weave of cryogenically treated multistrand UP/OCC copper and silver-plated copper wires, totalling 12 square millimetre for each of the two power lines, terminated with Furutech IEC and MS HD Power UK plugs.

Inside the box, protection circuitry on the balanced output side is specified as two residual current circuit breakers with overcurrent protection (RCBO). On the input side is a soft-start relay switch to reduce switch-on surge. The toroidal transformer is mounted on a compliant anti-vibration support plate, with transit screws to secure the mass when packed for shipping. And in a bid to extract the best performance from this transformer, it undergoes deep cryogenic treatment prior to installation in AC-2K, cycled by a commercial specialist down to –195 °C in a process that is said to benefit the ferrous core of the transformer by increasing the proportion of martensite and decreasing austensite in the steel’s crystalline structure. And since the toroid is treated complete with its copper wiring, there may be positive effects of cold annealing on the primary and secondary windings.