So far most people who have heard the new T series power
conditioners from Audience have been mightily impressed. Harry Pearson
mentions in his column for The Absolute Sound that upon inserting the
new aR-12 T for the original aR12 that "the transformation of that
system was transfixing. Maybe even "staggering" and "astonishing",
according to the first impressions I jotted down."
In the only review I have seen of one of the new Audience power
conditioners, Greg Weaver of Positive Feedback said, "Where the
original raised the bar and set a very serious standard, the Audience
aR-12 T creates an entirely new benchmark. Further, in my experience,
this degree of overall system improvement simply cannot be achieved
with ANY other individual investment, regardless of the amount—$8,000
or $80,000.”
Maybe my first impressions would have been like that if I had gone
straight from my aR1ps to the aR6-T. Truth is I had thought that the
aR1ps were as good as you could get in the power conditioning game.
That is until December of 2008, when the "Invasion of the Power
Conditioners" began at my place. I should admit that I have tried a
dozen or more conditioners over the years, but none nearly as good as
the aR series from Audience, that is until this latest group of power
conditioners invaded my system.
It all started when I discovered Synergistic's Tesla PowerCell 10SE,
then the MIT came in, and then the Audio Revives. The PowerCell had
already changed my mind about what power conditioners could do for my
system, so the real question as I plugged the aR6-T into my system was
could it possibly be in the same league with the PowerCell. Well the
answer is a resounding yes. The fact that two products could both
produce such outstanding results when they approach the problem from
totally different engineering techniques might be something of
surprise, but it's the truth.
Description
A pair of Audience's aR1ps have been in my reference system providing
power conditioning for a while. Many of you have read about, heard, or
used either the aR-12, aR-6, or aR1p. These have been well received for
several years. These original units used only the finest components,
including a magnetic circuit breaker instead of a power switch in the
aR-12 and 6, of course the aR1p didn't need a power switch. By the way,
there is no aR1p-T, but there will be a two-plug version soon.
The "T" versions of the Audience power conditioners look just the same
as the originals on the outside. The only difference you can see or
feel is the T in the serial number and the weight. They still come with
a 6-foot 10AWG Audience powerChord. The conditioners use a low
resistance, heavy duty magnetic circuit breaker power switch. Audience
does not use any high resistance type of series inductors, but instead
uses ultra-high efficiency filter components on every outlet. There is
also double filtering between outlets for maximum component to
component isolation. They are all hand wired with no printed circuit
boards. The entire electrical circuity is cryogenically treated.
The only difference between "T" versions and the original ones is that the new ones use
Audience's new "Aura-T High Resolution Teflon Capacitors". That's it,
nothing else has changed, except the sound and oh how it has changed!
Setup
I simply put the Audience aR6-T on the bottom shelve and plugged
everything in. It was pretty simple because I only have three things go
plug in. I chose to use the Shindo's Deluxe power cords for the Wavac
EC 300B, the Shindo Masseto, and the Clearaudio Reference Wood CMB
Anniversary turntable. The aR6-T of course was hooked up to the wall
outlet with their fine powerChord. By the way, I used the Audience
powerChords for my reference until I begin to use Shindo equipment
which doesn't really like three prone power cords, and along the way
discovered the wonderful and fairly inexpensive Shindo Deluxe power
cords.
Initial Observations
The very first thing I noticed when I put the aR6-T into my system was
that the deep bass was deeper and tighter; the midrange was not quite
as smooth; in fact the midrange was a little more immediate, and the
soundstage was a little different, very wide, about the same in depth,
and had this incredible way in the vertical realm. These were first
impressions after it had been on for just one day. John McDonald of
Audience had assured me the unit was broken in, and it probably was,
but it still took about three days before I no longer noticed changes
in my system's sound. So, if you get a brand new one I would give it a
couple of weeks to break in. While some of the initial observations
would stay the same, others would change over the first three days. So
let's talk about how the Audience aR-T affected the sound of my system.
How did the Audience aR6-T affects the sound of my system?
Simply, more than I would have ever thought possible, even after
hearing some of the fine units that have invaded my home in the last
four months, among which, without a doubt, was the Tesla PowrCell as
the cream of that group. After living with the original and superb
Audience Adept Response power conditioner, I just wasn't prepared for
how much better the "T" version would be. Let's break it down.
Bass
Like I said above it allows the deep bass to come to life. Not only did
my system's bass sound deep, tight, and powerful; it also had fast
attack and wonderful decay. The bass has more weight and depth to it,
it actually seems to occupy a real space. This last trait really adds
to the believability of my system, and drums especially sound so real
it's hard to believe.
If the sound the aR6-T produces in my system is the truth then it seems
that some of the mid-bass warmth my system had prior to its arrival
must have come from AC noise or phase distortion. There is no doubt
that the mid-bass is tighter, more detailed, has better attack, more
decay, and air. Yet, some of the warmth in the mid-bass is also gone
when the AC is coming through the aR6-T. To me, this seems more
accurate, but you will have to decide if this is truth for you. If your
system is already a little on the thin side I bet with all the
positives the Audience T version conditioner does for your system, you
will hunt for where your system is lacking warmth, before you get rid
of this gem.
Midrange
Transparency is the first word that springs to mind when it comes to
describing what the Audience aR6-T does for my system's midrange. With
it, my system sounds like someone has truly flung a window wide open on
the performance. It's a kind of transparency I have never experienced
from recorded music before. This transparency allows your system to let
voices just come to life right there in your room. They have a
rightness to them that is just uncanny whether it be male or female,
sung or spoken.
The next words I would use to describe the midrange would be natural
detail. I hear more inner detail more easily than I ever have before.
This detail comes through by allowing instruments to sound more like
the real things without any trace of increased edginess or brightness.
Treble
This is an area that I always expect a power conditioner to improve and
I was not disappointed. The combination of good vinyl, the Shindo
Masseto, the Wavac EC300B and the aR6-T play the most beautiful, most
lifelike, and most extended treble from cymbals, strings, pianos, and
other instruments I have ever heard except from live performances.
Truth is I have never heard my Teresonics producing this kind of
beautiful treble.
Micro-dynamics and the Pace Rhythm And Timing
Both the micro-dynamics and the PaceRhythmAndTiming are dramatically
better. The micro-dynamics are so effortless and fast that at first I
did not pay attention to how my system was significantly faster than
before. This increase in micro-dynamics really aided my system's
ability to sound alive. This, combined with the way music now flows
naturally, and the increased ability my system had in portraying pace,
rhythm and timing, results in a midrange that is truly lifelike in its
ability to reproduce a musical performance.
Soundstage and Scale
In my initial observations I said this about the soundstage, "the
soundstage was a little different, very wide, about the same in depth,
and had this incredible way in the vertical realm." Well, after
breaking-in the soundstage improved in every way that is important to
me. That is, it produced the very best and coherent soundstage I have
ever had in my system. By coherent soundstage, I mean one that is
whole, a soundstage that is more like you are at the event than the
event is in your room.
What really made this soundstage so unbelievably real-sounding was the
way it handled the vertical dimension of a soundstage. Thinking back on
my other reviews where I have talked about vertical soundstage, I think
I have always been referring to the system’s ability to portray a more
lifelike height than one that only seems as highs as the drivers in the
speaker system. While my system does that better than ever before with
the aR6-T in the system, that's not what I'm really talking about this
time when I say how much it improves the vertical dimension of the
soundstage.
No, with the aR6-T my system does something I have never heard before.
Oh, I've heard it a little bit, but not with this degree of startling
reality. With almost all mono recordings, and with stereo recordings
that are not heavy into the use of multiple microphones, I can easily
tell the amount of vertical space that an instrument takes up and where
it is located in that vertical space. You should hear this with
cymbals, or an upright bass. This ability of my system via the Audience
really caught me off guard, and it really adds to the musical realism
of a recorded program.
Compared to no power conditioning
I reconnected my three components directly to the wall outlets to see
how things would sound. It was quite a shock: the sound collapsed into
a flat sounding stage that in no way sounded nearly as real as it had
with the aR6-T in the system. Much of the beautiful space,
reverberation, and micro-dynamics were gone. Simply put, I could never
go back to raw, unconditioned AC.
Compared to the Audience aR1P
Then, I reinserted my aR1Ps into my system. They sounded very much like
the aR6-T, but not nearly as transparent, nor did the music flow into
the room like it did with the aR6-T. There was just a whole lot less of
everything. The feeling that real instruments and voices were in my
room just wasn’t the same; nor was there the same fullness, and
harmonic correctness.
Compared to the Synergistic Research Tesla PowerCell 10SE
If you have now read both reviews, I know you want me to tell you which
one is best, but I can't do that. I especially can’t tell you which one
you will like best, because I haven't heard them both in your system.
The best I can do is to tell where they sound different from one
another in my system. Let me start by saying they sound similar in more
ways than they sound different despite their very different
technologies.
They both brought about an incredible improvement to my system's
transparency, though with the Audience my system was more immediate and
with the Tesla PowerCell it was a little warmer and fuller sounding.
They both also improved my system's bottom-end albeit in different
ways. Through the PowerCell, my system has more mid-bass, and more
natural mid-bass warmth. Through the Audience aR6-T, the bass in my
system was deeper, tighter, and has somehow still had more air around
it. In the midrange the PowerCell was smoother and more liquid sounding
in the very best way. The midrange of my system through the Audience
was so clear it's almost disconcerting at times. With the Audience, the
ability to hear both attack and decay is simply amazing.
When it came to the effect on my system's soundstaging, there was a
clear difference. The Tesla PowerCell did something that allowed my
system to produce a more cavernous, holographic and palpable
soundstage. The Audience, on the other hand, produced a soundstage with
the most lifelike scale I have ever heard. It also let my system
unravel the acoustical space on a recording in a way I've never heard
before. It was in the area of soundstaging that there was a fundamental
difference in how the two power conditioners affected my system.
The PowerCell’s effects on the soundstage of my system are pretty much
there with every recording. Of course, the soundstage varies somewhat
from recording to recording, but my system basically produced a more
holographic soundstage than it did before, and I would think that for
the majority of audiophiles that's a good thing. Your system’s
soundstaging, of course, is dependent on your room, equipment, and
speaker placement. Still, I have now heard the PowerCell in four
different rooms each with different systems, yet every time it brought
out a consistently more holographic soundstage.
By contrast the, Audience aR6-T's effect on my system's soundstage was
as I described earlier: It has a very coherent, whole soundstage. It is
a soundstage that is more like you are at the event than the event is
in your room, and as I said above what really made this soundstage so
real is the way it handles the vertical dimension of the soundstage.
Another difference is that the soundstage varies tremendously from
recording to recording. That too can be a little disconcerting for some
listeners. Still, I expect that through the Audience the system is just
letting you hear the differences from recording to recording. The
Audience also has an uncanny ability to let the system reveal the
different size of different instruments in the soundstage.
Conclusion
I've tried so many power conditioners that I won’t try to list all of
them. With most of them I could hear a difference, but most of what I
heard from them were incremental refinements. Not so with the last two
remarkable power conditioners to come this way; the Synergistic
Research Tesla PowerCell and the Audience aR6-T. No, with these two
conditioners the improvement is dramatic, very dramatic, and the result
is to make music come to life in ways I have not heard before.
I want to close by saying that I don't know of anything at anywhere
near the price that has improved my system like either of these two
power conditioners. In the end, I am a firm believer in the KISS (Keep
It Simple Stupid) principle when it comes to audio design. Just look at
my system, it only has three power cords, and one pair of interconnects
plus the tonearm cable. That combined with the value I place on
transparency makes the Audience a clear choice in my book; but if I
valued more warmth, and a huge, cavernous soundstage then I would go
with the PowerCell. Either way it is obvious that with the Audience
aR6-T or aR12-T we really have a great breakthrough in Power
Conditioning.
Hold the Presses!!!
Just a couple of weeks after I turned in this review, John called and
said they had a new powerChord. According to John the Au24 powerChord
“is more than an improvement, it is a whole new product.” Well, that is
obvious just by looking at the two powerChord models. At first glance
they might look a lot alike, but the new power cable is larger and has
a dark red tint under the outer covering, but the fact they don’t look
alike is not the issue, is it? The question of course is how much
better does it sound. The answer is, John’s right, it’s a whole new
power cable. The new Au24 powerChord costs a little more than three
times as much as their original powerChord.
According to Audience, the new Au24 powerChord is comprised of high
purity OHNO copper (mono crystal copper) strands like the ones they use
to make the Au24 cables. They claim that allows your system to produce
large amounts of micro information and ultra high resolution. If this
was their design goals, they have succeeded beyond what I would have
thought possible from a power cord.
What I can tell you is that the addition of the Au24 powerChord
completes the aR6-T. The aR6-T brings to your room the most lifelike
transparency I have ever heard, bass that seems to occupy real space,
and all the other things I said above. The addition of the new power
cord gives you more. I know that’s not a very audiophile thing to say,
but it’s exactly what you get. In my reviews of the different Shindo
preamps I talked about this same effect. As you move up the Shindo
line, each preamp gives you more information and with greater
resolution. This is exactly the same effect I heard in my system when I
added the Au24 powerChord to the aR6-T.
The one other thing I clearly hear with the addition of this single
cable into my system is an increase in soundstage and spatial
information. It’s too early to give a full review of the new Au24
powerChord, all I have heard so far is the one power cord from the wall
to the aR6-T. I can’t wait to hear what adding these new power cords to
the rest of my system will sound like, but I’ll have to wait, because
Audience is sold out of the first run of these cables, but I’ve been
promised them for my system in about a month. So, stay tuned.
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