Once again, another killer review and I thank you for that and for what you do for this community in general!
“I just don’t know where I would go from here …“
+1…the bar is so high that I find myself struggling to listen to other cans, the disruptive nature of the SR1a made me sell all my other headphones but the VC just because they’re closed (and I like them). Closed is still the main reason.
I’m sure an addendum regarding Raal’s own headphone amp is in the future…
Price is not exactly cheap, but at least it can drive regular speakers, too.
To quote Raal:
"It can drive two sets of SR1a, it has switchable EQ for SR1a, so it will drive our future models that may not need the EQ, as well as driving a pair of speakers with moderate power. It has RCA and XLR inputs (and it works better on XLR’s).
The price will be ~ $3500 and the first dozen will be ready for sale in about 2-3 weeks"
RAALhsa1a by drjlo2, on Flickr
RAALhsa1a.2 by drjlo2, on Flickr
Talk about disruptive but at the asking price it better be worlds even galaxies better than the Schiit JotR! $3500 vs $799 for marginal gains is going to be unacceptable in my books!
Yep, the RAAL| Requsite HSA-1a sounds like more work for Torq!
True on the value for dollar MrCypruz but they do mention it will drive speakers as well, but I’m guessing they are talking very small desktop monitors and I have no experience with that type and wouldn’t see myself investing in a pair.
“It can drive two sets of SR1a, it has switchable EQ for SR1a, so it will drive our future models that may not need the EQ, as well as driving a pair of speakers with moderate power. It has RCA and XLR inputs (and it works better on XLR’s).”
Well , I’ve had my R cooking all weekend and start listening today. I’m surprised at how cool to the touch the cabinet is after running this many hours straight.
Excellent review Ian, I agree on all points regarding how it sounds and what it’s capable of. And for the past 90+ days I’ve only had the Ragnarok 1 to listen to it on, and today is day 1 for Jotunheim R that was burning in over the weekend for a little over 50 hours while I was out most of the time.
I would suggest in particular if your preferred genres leans towards hard driving rock with say, I’m thinking Wayne and Garth and Queen in the car at 100db, Torq’s comments on bass quality/ quantity /impact, bear reading twice. For my classical the SR1a is as close to the best as I’ve experienced in reproduced sound. And if your into vocals be it opera, Jazz, Rock, Folk, C&W, etc., I can’t think of any HP I’ve heard to date that comes even close to the SR1a.
It just sounds a bit counterintuitive to me, to add the ability to drive speakers when that was one of the main drawbacks for their initial sales and when most of us is clearly trying to get away from that for convenience…most of us have our own amplifiers in our speaker rigs and we most likely “don’t need or want” one from RAAL as an added feature on the SR1a amplifier. Now, if they give the option to drop the speaker amplification section/output, drop the second headphone output, (reduce the size of the unit) and drop the price it might be able to become a good proposition. The JotR is just too good of a proposition to be bested, even if the “competition” is coming from RAAL itself. Honestly, it seems like an amp with a lot of “useless” features for most of the current SR1a owners, that’s the main reason why I suggested that it better sound galaxies ahead of the JotR, which I doubt. Sound quality seems to be the “only hope” for the HSA-1a even before its release.
It seems that RAAL Requisite has some further headphones development roadmap that we are not aware of (yet), and their upcoming high-end amp could have been conceived to scale-up / versatility purposes within their forming ecosystem.
In my case, I like the speaker out feature because in principle I could use it to drive my Abyss via XLR to speaker taps adapter (to be confirmed when the HSA-1a amp specs will be fully disclosed) and the SR1a with a single amplifier.
Marketing-wise, it seems sensitive to offer to present and future SR1a owners the option of a a solid, while relatively inexpensive, “entry level” amp as the Jot R or its RAAL rebranded / bundled equivalent, and a flagship amp with more sophisticated functions.
I agree that the HSA-1a it has to beat the Jot R by a fair margin in terms of sound quality to be really compelling, though….
It’ll depend how quickly I can get my hands on one.
I will certainly ping Danny today and see what’s possible there. If one is available in the 2-3 week(ish) timeframe that Alex was talking about, then it’ll likely happen. If it takes a couple of months, maybe not - just due to my coming travel plans.
It makes sense for the professional market, where driving two pairs of cans, and having the ability to also drive near-field monitors is very useful - while also reducing cabling requirements.
@Torq damn good review! 
insert 
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It looks like it’ll be able to do about 2 watts into the Abyss, based on the speaker power output labelling.
Got it. I forgot about that side of the market which the SR1a is also targeting.
I did not spot the amp rating labelling, thanks for the heads up! Those 2W should be just fine based on the previous amps I tried with my AB-1266.
Impressively clear review …
It creates some frustrations concerning the Heddphone which doesn’t seem to come close due to a too much inside the head soundstage (which I already have with a closed Headphones for travel purposes ) and a too high level in highest frequencies which need probably some EQ adjustments.
The trigger should probably fall to SR1A and now I have to wait for the next announcement of a SR1A combo with a re-branded Jotunheim R instead of the Amp/Ribbon Interface (as I could read in some other website, it should be less than 4000$). I am not really sure about this last rumour.
The HEDDphone is a different animal. And a very creditable one, especially at the asking price. They do render a wide, well delineated stage, but it is very up-front. I don’t really consider them “too” bright. They settle down quite a bit with a couple of days of run-time on them.
But …
No headphone with conventional cups and with the drivers firing directly (straight) at the ears is going to project a very deep stage, or do depth-wise imaging. It is a combination of physics … the way the pinna and HRTF affect the sound reaching the ear-drum, and psychoacoustics - how the brain processes that.
Putting the drivers in front of the ears, and angling them back helps a LOT there, which is why the HD800 series, and the Abyss (if you cant the drivers so they’re firing at the front of the ear) do better with stage and imaging than most headphones.
As for the SR1a/Jotunheim R combination - my understanding is that RAAL-requisite plan to re-package the Jotunheim R, either in a different color-scheme and branding, or in a different case entirely (still with their own branding and livery). And that they will offer a different case insert that has a cut-out for their version of the Jotunheim R, as well as the option to exclude their interface box from the package you buy.
The only numbers I’ve seen suggest that not taking the interface box will net you a $300 discount (which is about right, since you’re not paying the full retail price on it as part of the bundle anyway) on the normal SR1a package. I don’t know what the cost will be bundled with the amplifier, but I would guess it comes in at $4,000.
I don’t see it being less than $4,000 (well, maybe $3,995). But that’s up to Danny, Alex and Co.!
@Torq. Thanks for the super review. I didn’t notice any comment on burn in, what was your experience?
I didn’t call it out specifically, but I did mention the one area in which there is an obvious change over time:
What’s lacking, somewhat, is low and sub-bass level (or quantity), though it is worth noting this does improve by 1-2 dB over the course of a few days actual listening.
The bass extension and level improves with use, and was apparent over about the first 200 hours, with most of the change occurring in the first few days. It was noticeable enough that I was progressively backing off the initial EQ I had in place.
This is IMHO one of the best, detailed and most accurate reviews I have read. Each paragraph produced in me the response, “yeah, that’s absolutely right!” I have had the SR1a paired with my Bartok and SPL s800 for several months. I concur, it is the best headphone I have ever heard, even better than my electrostatic and dynamic TOTL units. Well done, Ian.
It seems in an other forum they got such type of pricing from them
Bundle Raal SR1a and pricing:
$3,499 SR1a w/ interface box, cables, case
$3,999 SR1a w/ FOS amp (no dac), cables, case
$4,199 SR1a w/ FOS amp (w/ dac), cables, case
$4,299 SR1a w/ FOS amp (no dac), interface box, cables, case
$4,499 SR1a w/ FOS amp (w/ dac), interface box, cables, case
$3,199 SR1a w/ cables, case
I am not sure the DAC is worth getting, due to some annoying noticeable clicks when frequency change between tracks with Schiit’s DAC.