Moderately Priced Speakers. That's my assignment for this year's CES show report—as well as moderately priced turntables and other phono equipment—Moderate being defined this time as priced from $4000/pair to $18,000/pair. Personally, I have trouble considering $18,000 speakers as being moderately priced, but this designation should not be viewed as anything but a convenient way of subdividing the task of reporting, so that Herb Reichert, reporting on "Low-Priced (defined as under $4000/pair), Jason Victor Serinus, writing about "High-Priced" speakers (above $18,000/pair), and myself have about the same amount of work to do. By the standards of ordinary people, and even most audiophiles, a speaker that costs as much as a Honda Civic cannot be considered "Moderately Priced."
Right at the top of this range is the $18,000/pair Raidho XT-2, an extremely slim floorstander that uses the same tweeter as the rest of the Raidho range and two 4" cone drivers, in a two-and-a-half way configuration. The electronics at the show were from Denmark—as are the Raidho speakers—the C-300 preamp at $36,000 and the P-300 power amp at $48,000. The system had a clean, lively sound, with bass that was hard to credit to 4" drivers.
