QUAD See --> Acoustical Manufacturing Co.

Quadraflex See --> G & S: Speakers

Quantegy Inc.
The company was formed in 1995 when investors that took over the Ampex Recording Media Corporation division of Ampex. They make mostly specialised blank tapes and disks for the pro-audio and for the scientific/engineering community but also a range of consumer tapes. By 2004 the company was down to 250 employees. Quantegy shut down its operations on December 31, 2004 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 4 the year after.

Quasar See --> Panasonic (TV's etc - North America only)

Rabco Co.
Company formed in 1968 by Jacob Rabinow to manufacture a linear tracking arm that he invented, there were problems with the arm and it's manufacturea from the start and Mr. Rabinow more or less gave up on the idea and sold his company to Harman Kardon in 1972, they continued selling the arm and even turntables using this brand for a few years afterward but discontinued its use in 1980 when HK was taken over by Shin Shirasuna.

Radiofabrik Ingelen Figer & Co KG See --> Ingelen

Radiola See --> Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd. (AWA) (Australia) or RCA (USA)

Radionette See --> Tandberg

Radiotechnic Laboratories See --> Pierce Wire Recorder Corp.

Radiowerk Dzierzoniow See --> Diora Świdnica

Radiowerk Horny A.G.
Founded in 1936 in Wien when the Austrian arm of Philips took over the bankrupt Vindobona company. This turned out to be a smart move on Philips part as they were the main creditor and supplier of the original company and would thus have lost out if the company had not survived, further more the Hornyphon brand had become well known in Germany and Britain in addition to being by far the biggest supplier of radios etc. in Austria, and despite the financial problems Vindobona had suffered the RH company became profitable soon after production was restarted. From its founding and until 1947 the company was mostly occupied with the manufacture of its own products but after that period Philips increasingly began to integrate the sales and branding of the various companies they owned world-wide and Philips products began to appear in Austria branded Hornyphon and products from RH were increasingly sold outside of its home country branded as Philips, by the 1960's the Hornyphon name had all but disappeared except as a local brand. The factories continued however and were for a time the main source of certain tape recorders lines from Philips, their excellent but seldom seen professional tape recorders were for instance designed and manufactured at the RH factory and later some video recorder lines were produced there as well. The usage of the Hornyphon trademark appears to have been dropped in the 1980's and I have not been able to find out for certain if the factory is still going but I believe it was one of the factories that disappeared in the "Rationalisation Programme" of Philips in the early 1990's, when the company sold and shut down a large number of product lines, technologies and factories in an effort to simplify its management and financial structure (remember "downsizing" was the business buzzword of the late 80's, early 90's).

Despite what you might think the Horny and Hornyphon names did not have any negative or "entertaining" connotations in English at the time when the company's products were at their most popular as an export product (1930's), the company's main export markets were actually the English speaking world, in particular portable gramophones and radios from the company were popular with the English expatriates that were working in various corners of the British empire since they used more standardised parts, were more easily repairable and had a wider tuning range than the equivalent British product not the least due to the use of better passive parts that withstood extremeties in humidity better. It appears that slang usage of the word "horny" was limited to the former colonies in America until the 1970's.

Radlett Audio
A small UK based specialist hi-fi store originally founded in 1973, they are listed here since for a time in the 1980's they sold modified phonographic pickups, primarily EMT-Franz units. The shop is still around and is probably the last example of the "Flat Earth" stores that is still open, these sprung up in the 70's and 80's and where a sort of a jingoistic reaction to the increasing number of imports in normal hi-fi stores, Radlett to this day carries only one brand that is not nominally British.
Homepage: http://www.radlettaudio.co.uk.

Radmor
Founded in 1947 in Danzig, Poland as a radio workshop, operated throughout the communist years as a radio and communications equipment manufacturer under the name of Zaklady Radiowe Radmor and had a line of hi-fi separates that were sold locally under the Unitra brand and after the privatisation in the early 90's under their own name. Exited the audio business in the 90's to concentrate on manufacturing communications equipment, changed their name to Radmor S. A., and is one of the success stories of the new Polish economy.
Homepage: http://www.radmor.com.pl.

Radon Industrial Electronics (RIE)
Small manufacturer based in Worthing, Sussex, England around 1970, despite the name the company made mostly home hi-fi products and loudspeakers are the only products with this name that I have seen on the second hand market.

Raidek Sound Industries Pty Ltd See --> Panalogic

Raidho Acoustics ApS
Danish manufacturer of loudspeakers founded by Michael Børresen in 2003 and was based in the town of Aars in Vesthimmeland municipality, in Nordjylland. Initially selling its products under the Eben brand the company later changed that to something more akin to a model number or series name and emphasised the Raidho name more as a brand.

Their first line of high end loudspeakers called the "X-Streme Series" almost immediately gained interest not the least due to the drivers the company made but Raidho bought the cabinets from furniture manufacturers but manufactured the drivers themselves, which the opposite of what most small high end manufacturers do. More than that the drivers were also unusual, all their speakers used the same tweeter in the form of the FTT75 but that is a wide dispersion planar driver that uses a ribbon as a diaphragm (but is not strictly speaking a ribbon driver) and was used for both the upper mid-range and for the high frequencies but the crossover was set at 3.5kHz and the driver said to be able to operate up to 50kHz.

But even though ribbon tweeters were nowhere as common a sight in 2003 as they are now it was still the main woofers that raised eyebrows, the company bough in motors magnets and caskets from Audio Technology but inserted their own ultra rigid propylene cones that made what the company claimed were the fastest woofers available. The X series comprised of the "X-1" 2 way bookshelf/stand-mount, the "X-2" that is a compact 2 way, 3 driver floorstander, the "X-3" is a 3 way 6 driver floorstanding model, the "X-4" is also a 3 way model but has 7 drivers in total with 2 mid-range woofers and 4 bass drivers and the top of the line models was the X-5 which sported the same driver configuration as the X-4 but had a larger baffle and drivers. And we are talking seriously high end here, the X-5 retailed for something like 100k USD in the USA in 2006 and has a quoted FR range from 15Hz to 50kHz.

One of the more interesting models from the company though was the "X-Centric", a 2 way model that had 2 woofers and a tweeter in a D'Appolito configuration that was sold both as a centre speaker for a home theatre system and as a pair to be used as a standmounter, although it did not sell in the same quantities as the smaller X-1 many felt it to be the best bang for the buck amongst the line-up when used as monitors.

At the beginning of 2005 Raidho introduced the "Emilie" series (Later renamed the S series) that was largely similar to the X but featured simple baffles and a new driver developed entirely in-house that placed emphasis on the weight of the driver to get a faster response speed, for that reason the cones of the woofer were made out of untreated paper, the voice coil out of aluminium and the basket out of magnesium, the tweeters remained the same as in the X series.

In December 2007 the company introduced a revolutionary new series of speakers in the form of the "Ayra C series" (Later just "C series"), these featured a new baffle design where the front baffle and the driver casket were the one and the same structure, the cones were made out of ceramics and featured massive magnets in the motor and while the ribbon-like tweeter was mostly unchanged it had a been beefed up with a stronger and more evenly spread motor structure. The ceramic cones were eventually shipped with all speaker models from the company.

Although the new Ayra C series generated a huge interest in the audiophile community the introduction came just before the financial system of the world started to implode and like many other high end companies Raidho was hit unusually hard by the financial problems of 2008 and was taken into bankruptcy in 2009, and had been dissolved by 2010. A saviour came from an unlikely source in the form of Danish budget audio and CE company Dantax that bought the Raidho company lock stock and barrel in 2009, unusually enough, but usually in these bankruptcy cases the potential suitors only purchase selected assets, Dantax however hired all the original staff of the company and simply moved the factory to its headquarters in Pandrup and continued operations as if nothing had happened.

Spares & service : The Dantax company offers a full line of spares and offers repairs services for older Raidho & Eben speakers.

Resources: -- A review of the Eben X-3 from The Absolute Sound magazine.

Randy L. White
A gentleman based in Lubbock, Texas, USA that started manufacturing high end amplifiers under the White name in the 1980’s and later under the White Audio Labs brand after complaints from another Texas company that had been using the White brand for years. The WAL products were distributed mostly in Texas and surrounding areas and rare outside of the southern USA. The operation was successful enough for Mr White to form a company around the business called White Audio Labs Inc. in 1993.

After White Audio Labs Inc. had gone out of business in 1996 Mr White again started making amplifiers himself, this time under the Llano Design Group brand but carried on making basically the same product line as WAL Inc. had been making. His amplifiers generated quite a lot of interest and some controversy in the 1990’s, on one hand since they were sold directly from the factory they were fairly keenly priced for high end amplifiers and the Llano branded amps where thus cheaper than the WAL branded amps had been and appear to have been considered something of an audiophile bargain amongst the Texan hi-fi fraternity, however on the other hand Mr White claimed that they operated in pure Class A across the operating range which made no technical sense and managed to alienate a number of potential customers.

Mr White added a number of products to the Llano product line-up in around 2000, including a line of hybrid valve/transistor power amplifiers and a power conditioner though the latter appears to have been a short lived product, we have seen one in the flesh but cannot find it in any catalogue from the company. Mr White stopped making products in 2003 citing business and health problems but there had been persistent reports on the net for a couple of years before that about communication difficulties with the company. Spares & service : You can try contacting Mr White to see if there is any service available for the products he used to make, he is in the phonebook, however reports are not positive.

the Rank Organisation
A highly diversified UK based company that was originally started in the 1920’s by J. Arthur Rank as a religious film production company, later incorporated in 1933 as the British National Films Company, but started buying up film distributor, cinemas and studios later in the 30’s when he had problems getting his movies distributed due to aversion by the rest of the industry to the propagandistic nature of his films.

Had by the 1960's taken over a number of audio companies including English operations such as Wharfedale Wireless Works and Leak in addition to a number of overseas operations including Heco in Fermany, they had also entered the business sector with companies such as Rank Xerox. It is traditional to speak of Rank Org. companies like Wharfedale as nominally independent subsidiaries of Rank and you will usually see company histories treat the "Rank years" as just another period in their history, in reality things were a bit more complex with a number of products appearing under multiple brands and a number of companies being folded into other operations.

The company originally took over the Wharfedale operation in 1958 and continued to grow that brand and distribution network, in 1974 most of Ranks loudspeaker production was moved to a new factory in Wharfedale's home town of Bradford and some older production facilities where closed at the same time, the company had by then become one of the largest loudspeaker manufacturer in the world, in 1977 they produced more than one million speakers and had pioneered technologies such as laser interferometry and the use of polymers in drivers alongside metal and ceramic domes in tweeters.

The company entered the professional loudspeaker market in the early 80's and were very successful in particularly in the domestic market with models such as the Wharfedale Diamond that were the best-selling loudspeakers of the 1980's, period. Rank divested of all of their audio brands during the 80's most of them ending up with Wharfedale Loudspeakers PLC which was put out and listed on the LSE in 1988 as a separate company, but Wharfedale PLC got in addition the right for its own brand and related names that had been created during the ownership of Rank some such as Airdale, the rights to a number of classic English hi-fi brands including Leak

The company is still around but is by now almost exclusively occupied in the entertainment sector, operating casinos, bingo halls and remote gaming & betting sites, which is something that would probably not bemuse puritan founder J. Arthur Rank.
Homepage: http://www.rank.com.

Rax (Accessories) See --> Clarity Vision

Ray Shab
An ex-theatre manager & salesman based in New York, USA that started marketing rigid stands for the Quad ESL63 around 1986 that he sold under the Arcici brand, Mr Shab claims to have started selling Arcici branded racks in 1979, which is possible but it must have been low key since we have not been able to find any advertising or mention of this in the NY hi-fi press from that timeframe. These Quad stands did quite well in his native country due to good reviews in the press and being quite decently priced for a high end hi-fi accessory, this is despite a rather unspectacular build quality and some scepticism voiced by the community of Quad Electroacoustics fans due to the fact that by lifting it from the floor it reduced the bass generated by the speakers, however while the 63 had better bass response than the Quad ESL57 it was frankly a bit boomy so many decided to use it with a subwoofer, in that case the Arcici stand was a distinct improvement since there was less competition in the upper bass range and essentially allowed the use of the ESL63 and a sub without a crossover.

The ESL63 stand sold well enough to prompt Mr Shab to introduce a stand specifically for the ESL57, the original ESL63 stand was retroactively named as Q-1 alongside a small price hike to USD 300 RRP and the new ESL57 stand got the name Q-2 and had the same list price. The company later introduced stands for electrostatic speakers from other companies such as Martin Logan and for other high end speakers such as the B&W 801 and B&W 801.

At around 1990 the company started looking for new products and throughout the 90’s introduced a series of "component display systems", that's American for hi-fi racks and equipment platforms. These were offered in both isolating and rigid versions; the isolatin models all featuring some sort of an air cushion as a de-coupler. Mr Shab released what was to become his best known product in the latter half of the 1990’s in the form of a high end component stand called Suspense that had a novel way of decoupling the acrylic shelves from the aluminium frame. It uses “pneumatic springs” (air filled tubes basically) that go between the top of rack and a separate frame made out of steel rods that the shelves are fastened onto, the shelf frame is suspended from the top rather than sitting on some sort of isolator which is the usual practice with such designs. Individual shelves are then decoupled from each other by using Polynorbornene Rubber pads.

The Suspense rack got rave reviews in the USA audiophile press and sold well even though expensive and led the company to introduce a new “affordable” version of the Suspense racks that used MDF in instead of acrylic for shelf material and a cheaper frame, this was released in 2001 under the Grandstand name that and sold at half the price that the Suspense models was offered for. Sadly he started advertising them before they were ready, first few shipments turned out to have build quality problems and the line was eventually scrapped. Mr Shab also handled the distribution of SPJ turntable products in the USA for a while and for Asia as well for a few years.

All contact with the company was lost in 2010, while it is not absolutely for certain that Mr. Shab is no longer supplying Arcici products, he has at the least been extremely difficult to get hold of, the contact details he has given out in the recent past are no longer applicable and punters trying to contact him to purchase spares for the Arcici suspension racks have had no luck in getting hold of him. There are a number of racks available in the channel that might be leftovers but there might also be that there is still a supply of Arcici products being made available on a smaller scale via distributors, what might have happened is simply speculation but it should be taken into consideration that when this was written in 2012 Mr. Shab was 80+, and he may simply have chosen or been forced to retire or decided to scale down the operation for obvious reasons.

And a final note, Mr. Shab usually presented himself as Arcici Inc., or RCC Inc. (geddit? RCC in a nasal NY accent is arr sí sí or Arcici) but he never incorporated under either name but appears to have done business as a sole trader.

Spares & service :No one seems to supply spares for the Arcici racks but that should not represent a problem, the metal frames can be worked on by any competent workshop (note though that some frames are aluminium, not steel), acrylic/plexiglass workshops can make replacement shelves, any Polynorbornene Rubber can be cut into a replacement for the isolation pads and the tubes used as air cusions are basically wheelbarrow/wheelchair tubes that have been glued together using silicone glue, people have had no problem in getting such tubes from local hardware stores and some have even used bicyle tubes glued together as a replacement.

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