A few years ago, I heard the RAAL SR1a for the first time, and was blown away by the combination of electrostatic-like resolution and natural timbre that rivaled dynamic drivers. The one-two punch of technical capabilities and natural presentation demonstrated just how good ribbon drivers could be for headphones, but it wasn’t perfect. While it was certainly competitive in many ways with electrostatic headphones, it couldn’t deliver fully accurate bass and low end extension, and at launch it needed to run off of a speaker amp with a specialized adapter. With the release of the RAAL-1995 Immanis, did RAAL deliver a more complete headphone experience that captures what made the SR1a great, while improving on its shortcomings?
Build and Design
Immanis comes in an impressive looking metal case, which features molding inside for the headphones and the updated Ribbon Current Driver Interface. Like other headphones with ribbon drivers, Immanis won’t plug straight into a standard headphone jack; you’ll need to connect it through the Ribbon Current Drive Interface. used with most higher tier headphone amps. Making the experience here much more seamless is a big win for RAAL, as their original designs required a bit of expertise to properly connect and set up without risking damage to your equipment.
The headphones themselves are beautifully built, with materials and craftsmanship that are significantly better than competition like the HIFIMAN Susvara Unveiled, and seems a step above other premium brands like Stax. Immanis is quite comfortable as well, though it may be on the heavier side, as a tradeoff for the premium materials and sturdy build. The clamp is very light, meaning that these have a softer, looser fit on your head – so try not to headbang too much while you’re wearing these!
Sound
The problem with my advice to “try not to headbang too much” is that the moment you start listening to music with Immanis, you’re going to get lost in the immersive world that it builds around you, and whether it’s toe-tapping, head-bobbing, or just sitting in enraptured stillness, you will have a physical response to the incredible sound.
The RAAL SR1a had a unique design where it achieved a stunningly wide soundstage with the use of “earspeakers” which the user could tilt to adjust the soundstage presentation. Immanis achieves a similar width and sense of space with a more traditional over-ear design that shares similar design elements to more traditional headphones. The less open design also results in better low-end performance, with Immanis delivering perfectly extended bass with a planar-like slam.
Immanis’s bass is one of the first elements that really stood out to me, as I was ready for the soundstage and imaging, but I wasn’t quite ready for this level of low-end performance. Out of the box, you get a full, natural, accurate reproduction of everything from Tame Impala’s deep thick layers of electronic subbass to John Paul Jones’s energetic, but articulate bass playing. Every detail and bit of texture is in there, alongside the physicality and power. Hook up a DAC with EQ options, and Immanis can handle generous helpings of added bass without distorting.
The midrange is clear and accurate with a vocal presentation that puts you in the room with your favorite singers, and layering capabilities that let you disassemble and reassemble a 120 piece orchestra in your head.
Immanis delivers immaculately clear and extended highs, with a crisp resolution that’s akin to electrostatic headphones. The airy treble lends to the overall excellent spaciousness of the headphones soundstage, and delivers all the tiny intricacies of your music.
Immanis doesn’t just have a wide soundstage, it has some of the best overall imaging presentations I’ve ever heard. From the holographic feeling of voices and instruments, to the sense of particularly wide recordings wrapping around your head and making you check over your shoulder to make sure there isn’t actually something behind you, Immanis delivers a truly stunning sense that you are in the middle of the studio or a concert hall with the music.
I was looking for something that would give me a taste of Immanis’s complete range, and I listened to The Creator film score for the first time. With Immanis, it’s the sort of recording that you can just get lost in. The layering is incredible, as is the natural timbre of the instruments, but what was most impressive was the sense of scale and scope. Hans Zimmer excels in capturing unique textures from the film’s setting in his compositions, and Immanis is the perfect engine to power the vehicle of Zimmer’s music to transport you to the lush, open spaces depicted in the film.
For something more on the pop end of the spectrum, Frank Ocean’s “Pink + White” demonstrates Immanis’s ability to deliver realism and intimacy in a simpler recording. Here you’re not so much transported to an imagined space so much as you’re in the studio, at the mixboard, with each element of the recording laid bare. You also get a taste of the bass slam and subbass extension that Immanis can deliver, and while my personal preference was to add a few extra dB to the low bass for pop and hip hop type music, Immanis holds its own quite well here without any need for enhancement or modification.
On the other end of the spectrum, it seems that as metalheads have aged, many of us have found ourselves attracted to the audiophile way of life, and few metal bands have delivered high fidelity recordings on the level of Opeth. Listening to “The Baying of the Hounds” from Ghost Reveries you’ll move from a wall of powerful guitars, drums, and growled vocals in a death metal attack on your senses to more contemplative sections of softer vocals and acoustic guitar. Immanis takes you through the full dynamic shift, with every bit of grit and dirt in the guitars and the impact from every hit of the drums, to the rich clean vocals and natural timbre in the softly interwoven layers of guitars later in the song. Immanis lets you fully appreciate the complexity of the composition and the masterful engineering that went into Opeth’s progressive death metal epic.
We tested Immanis with a number of amps, and you’re really going to want something from among the most powerful on the market to get the best out of it. Auris Headphonia 300B would probably be my top choice, while the Burson Soloist Voyager is my number two pick. Both delivered plenty of power without getting into the higher range of the device’s volume. The Cayin Soul 170HA was another solid pick, but even on high impedance mode, I was creeping the volume wheel up past two thirds pretty frequently.
Comparison: HIFIMAN Susvara Unveiled, HIFIMAN Susvara, Audeze LCD-5
While I couldn’t come up with that many truly fair comparisons for Immanis, I did make it run the gauntlet against some of my favorite top of the line headphones: the HIFIMAN Susvara, Susvara Unveiled, and Audeze LCD-5 – and considering that Unveiled costs $8000, it’s not too far off from Immanis in terms of price.
In terms of power requirements, Immanis needs just a little bit more juice than Susvara to really shine, while Unveiled and LCD-5 are content with a much lower level of power. Using it with lower wattage amps is a similar experience to the original Susvara where you may be getting enough volume to listen, but there’s something missing from the dynamics and slam where you really need that extra power.
In terms of the sound, Immanis has a sound signature that’s most similar to the original Susvara, but with the improvements to soundstage and resolution that Susvara Unveiled brought. So you get that extra weight and thickness of Susvara, but then you get even more width in the soundstage and top-end extension and resolution than Unveiled. In some ways that makes it feel similar to LCD-5, but just basically a version of the LCD-5 that gives you more of everything that LCD-5 does.
Final Thoughts
Every few years, a new headphone comes out, and reviewers have to ask “Is this the perfect headphone?” and usually there are a few caveats that make it come up short. I’m not sure that Immanis has any sonic caveats to speak of from my time listening to it. Yes, it’s wildly expensive, and the fact that you’ll probably need to spend at least $5000 on an amp that will drive it stacks on top of that, but in terms of “money is not an object” pure headphone sound and performance, Immanis is as close to a perfect headphone as I’ve ever heard.
