The Audience frontRow speaker cables bring us a new and superlative top-of-the-line winner!
Apparently, and for good reason, the audiophile speaker cable war is relentless, and ongoing within our hobby! Maybe that should be rephrased; as for many audiophiles, speaker cables can be an ongoing and persistent pursuit for the latest flavor of cable sound that may bring the enthusiast and their hi-fi system to its ultimate fruition. (One may see this as “audiophile neurosis” particularly when it comes to cables)!
I have been using and am quite enthralled with Audience cables now for many years as they have been incorporated as part of or in combination with my reference systems circle of components till this day. The Audience Studio One speaker cables and interconnects are currently still holding their own on my current system, while the speaker cables have been either secondary or primary references for me personally for approximately four years now.
The latest top-of-the-line Audience Cables are aptly named the frontRow, and they offer up a huge plethora of performance attributes that we will delve into in this formative review. I would like to thank Joe Flatt of Audience for the loan of these cables for the Sound Advocate review.
CABLE CONSTRUCTION
Audience, like many other high-end cable manufacturers, strives to ensure that the analog signals your electronics receive from your source components—whether vinyl records to cartridges or digital data to DACs—are accurately maintained and delivered to your loudspeakers, without any distortion, noise, deterioration, or shift in frequency balance.
Audience tests each cable to determine the directional nature of the transmission. Millions of tiny crystals create grains in the solidifying metal as the molten metal cools, and these have an impact on signal directionality, or the best path for electrons to travel while transferring audio signals through the metal. Metal is drawn through dies or draw plates that produce all wire.
The wire acts as a directional signal conductor once it is stretched in a single direction since it elongates the grains in that direction. After verifying for directionality, Audience stamps an arrow in gold on the sheath or sleeve of each cable. (I can personally verify that there will be a huge deterioration in sound quality if the directionality of these cables is not inserted in their correct direction. The sound becomes strange, diffused, and not at all up to the excellence and purity that they are blessed with).
Otherwise, The cables employ an array of techniques to achieve the upstanding goal of outstanding sound quality, some of which include the selection of the metals and dielectric materials; testing with different cable geometries or lays to maximize sound quality; treating the product in a cryogenic manner; testing for resistance, capacitance, and inductance; while mitigating any resonant frequencies. They apply extraordinarily high voltages; figure out signal directionality; and last but not least, thoroughly test the final production units.
Six different premium metal kinds are used by Audience in their wiring. The purest form of conductive copper, six-nine [99.9999% pure], oxygen-free Ohno Continuous Cast copper, is used to make all analog front-row cables . However, tellurium copper is used in places where the maximum current flow requires stiffness, such as XLR male contacts and RCA center pins on their interconnects.
Beryllium copper is used in connectors that require flexing to make room for maximum current flow, such as RCA ground contacts, XLR female contacts, banana speaker-cable connectors and speaker cable spade connectors which can also have this plating option. They offer possible substitutes for spade connectors which are surrounded by gold-plated copper.
Since the first Au24 cables were constructed using virgin, cross-linked polyethylene, or XLPE, the company used XLPE as a dielectric from the very start. Unfortunately, not all XLPE are produced equal. Over time, XLPE has grown in quality, and they continue to keep up with this development.
Teflon and XLPE are considered the best insulators, aside from pure air because they possess low microphonics and can transmit electrical force without conductance, which can damage the signal
THE SOUND INTEGRATION
Having known and enjoyed the first-rate pedigree and quality of my Audience Studio One speaker Cables quite well, I took out the very astute and quite new all-silver ArgentPur 12 from my system (which are quite excellent ) and familiarized myself now with the new Audience frontRow speaker cables in my system. I had felt off the start of my auditioning that something new and special would await me, and sure enough, I was right indeed!
I did some beautiful streaming with the frontRow cables connected to my Q Acoustics Concept 500 loudspeakers, which introduced an indelible starting process. Qobuz was my streaming source and it was used with a direct cable connection to the Innuous Statement which is my current reference streamer.
Right off the bat, I heard the similar, but slightly improved definition, detail, and supreme balance accuracy of the frontRow Cables. Have no doubt, these cables are beautifully and slightly, reticent, with amazing ambiance and acute musical definition that is the hallmark of the Audience cables. I noticed a fundamental harmonic “wholeness” to the sound while the tracks and compositions streamed were immaculately transparent and perfectly displayed in the extreme high frequencies (which is accurate and as it should be).This was followed by some exuberant dynamics and a gorgeous sound-stage. Width, depth and a blend of the musical instruments involved were in abundance.
The frontRow cables imbued a “complete fullness” to the music it transmitted to my loudspeakers. This wholeness had a feeling of being perfectly balanced on the soundstage; not too upfront and not too laid back. However, the depth perception and sonic width beyond the speaker boundaries were a wonder to behold.
The Stereo imaging was first-rate with the Q Acoustics loudspeakers and central images were fundamentally defined and laid out before one’s eyes and ears! The imaging allowed you to place every performer in the orchestra in their designated positions accordingly. Nothing ever “jumped out” at you with the frontRow’s as their sound integration and smoothness was first rate and easy to listen to.
Some of these albums and tracks were used for streaming in my evaluation:
Brahms Hungarian Dances,,,,,(outstanding Decca tree microphones)
Mozart Symphonies Budapest Symphony Orchestra
The frontRow cables took live orchestral performances to a tremendous height of musicality. One of the many hallmarks of this speaker cable is its ability to “blend” all of a musical performance into a lush and homogenized sound field.
While many other cables display the detail and intricacy of a particular live or studio performance, the frontRow seems to take all the music, its full harmonics, and then perfectly blend the sound while incorporating an outstanding balance, excellent and perfectly restrained high-frequency response, and a lush accurate midrange. Its midrange balance is exceedingly natural and beautiful on voices, orchestral content and any type of program material it is fed.
FINAL CONCLUSIONS
If you can appreciate “accurate” sound reproduction, and depending on your particular system, you will find that the frontRow speaker cables by Audience are a wondrous find! They have brought the sound of my system quality up to a formative and supremely enjoyable level as compared to the still excellent Studio One Cables which I have used as a reference for a few years.
They are currently in my system now and I can say that they are a magnificent cable” even at their current price point, which is not inconsequential at all.
With the (possible) exception of my Argent/Pur 12, no other cable has even approached providing the level of transparency, thorough resolution, and detailed exploration as the Audience frontRow, encapsulating a combination of lucidity, silkiness, and sweetness that I had not previously believed to be achievable with cables. Coming off the Audience Studio 1, I was indeed taken into the new cable’s captive arms.
The frontRow cables are by no means cheap, but they are so different in terms of technology from their wire and cable brethren due to what they have accomplished and what they give above and beyond their peers that are similar in price or much more expensive. This is a cable that audiophiles need to audition, preferably in their home environment and system, as they are a luxurious performer without doubt, and truly an outstanding product!
Reference Components used for evaluation: Loudspeakers: ~ Q Acoustics Concept 500 loudspeaker ~ Digital: Mojo Audio ‘Mystique’ X DAC ~ Innuos Statement server/streamer ~ Audio Note (UK) CD3.1x/2 player/DAC Analog: Audio Technica LP-7/ZYX Bloom 3 mc cartridge Amplification: ~Pass Labs XP-12 preamp, Pass Labs XA30.8 power amp Argent/Pur Mono-block amplifiers~ Cables/ Conditioners:Inakustik AC-3500p power station &, AC-2404 reference Air Power Cord ~ Argent/Pur 12 loudspeaker cables~ Audience Studio 1 interconnects and speaker cables~ Clarus “Crimson” 75-ohm digital spdif / Audio Art 1 e” AC Power Cord
Specifications : https://audience-av.com/cables/frontrow/frontrow_speaker/
Audience
120 N. Pacific St., K-9
San Marcos, CA 92069
In US:
1-800-565-4390
Outside US and Canada:
+1-760-471-0202
Pricing: Audience frontRow Loudspeaker Cable (0.5M-5.0M) $3,500.00 /PAIR
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