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Audience frontRow Series Cables

Audience frontRow

One of the thrills and, on occasion, frustrations of high-end audio is that every change in your system causes you to reassess the sonic qualities and contributions of the rest of your chain. The nagging questions remain: “Am I hearing everything? Am I realizing the full potential that my gear is capable of?” Recently, in my case, I didn’t so much change one or two components in my reference system as shake things up by adding a second system in a larger room. Centered around Pass Labs electronics, a dCS Bartók front end, tri-amplified ATC SCM50 active loudspeakers, a pair of REL subwoofers, and Audience and Shunyata conditioning, it delivers a lot more extension and dynamic oomph than the compact, small-room systems I normally listen to.

But let’s back up for a moment. Audience cables have been a part of my reference systems in one iteration or another for years. When Audience’s top-flight Au24 SX cabling came along, I assessed its performance as “superb” and concluded that it “struck a fluid and natural balance of ease, articulation, and immersiveness.” Where could things possibly go from there, I wondered? Silly me. With Audience’s latest frontRow products, it turns out there was, indeed, room for improvement, even at already lofty levels of performance. The look remains quintessentially Audience. Unobtrusive, non-showy, and pliable. It has a little thicker jacketing than entry-level Ohno or SX (Issue 269). And compared with SX, it is significantly more expensive, too.

Audience frontRow employs conductors made from 6N Ohno Continuous Cast (OCC) copper. They use XLPE (a cross-linked polyethylene) dielectric material, chosen for its superior insulating properties and low microphonics. In the words of Audience’s John McDonald, “the unbalanced interconnect is a dual-concentric ribbon lay with the conductors wound in opposing directions. The loudspeaker cables possess the same geometry in a heavier gauge. The XLR geometry comprises two axial, spiral-wound ribbon conductors side by side in opposing directions, with a braided shield wrapped around the outside.” 

For the connectors, the RCA center pin is ultra-low mass and solderless tellurium. The ground pin is also ultra-low mass and solderless but made of beryllium. XLR male pins are ultra-low-mass tellurium, and the female pins are ultra-low-mass beryllium. Spades are gold-over-copper or optional rhodium-over-copper. Additionally, frontRow cables are treated with Audience’s EHVP Extreme High-Voltage Process—a technique said “to align the crystalline structure of the cable conductors to create more efficient ‘pathways’ for signals to travel through.” A double-cryo treatment is also standard. Every cable is tested and burned in for at least three days.

In sonic performance, Audience frontRow doesn’t have dramatic new superpowers per se, but it undoubtedly hones and polishes the assets that Audience has been tapping into for some time. Audience cables, and I’ve reviewed them across nearly all price ranges, have commonly boasted strict tonal neutrality, with a presentation that places midrange resolution front-row-center. Bass response has been formidable if not overpowering. All Audiences have mercifully steered clear of treble brightness and etchiness. Ultimately, I found earlier iterations just a hint forgiving dynamically, particularly in the midbass, and at moments a little shaded in the upper treble. 

Audience frontRow puts these minor shortcomings in the rearview mirror. The result is a more open and expressive cable, regardless of musical genre. What this meant during my evaluation was a lack of congestion, a sweep of dimensionality, and an ability to focus and layer a performance regardless of the scope of the ensemble or the venue. FrontRow’s more uptempo personality allowed Arturo Delmoni’s violin to sing a little more sweetly, brightly, and cleanly. The crisp brass of the Manhattan Jazz Quintet was also livelier and more driven, its transient edge-definition more piquant. In the same vein, FrontRow more cogently revealed the layers and voice placement of the chorus in Rutter’s Requiem.

Very little is missed by the probing gaze of frontRow. Still a master of imaging and ambience retrieval, it ups the keenness of its focus, picking up on acoustic cues and timbral details like a bloodhound. During pianist Evgeny Kissin’s performance of Mikhail Glinka’s “The Lark,” I heard broader and more immersive soundboard resonances and sustains from Kissin’s concert grand and greater resolution of quirky low-level minutiae, like the rustle of clothes and the creak of the piano stool. Then I cued up a favorite old track—Louis Armstrong’s “St James Infirmary Blues,” which can be goosebump-inducing even on a HomePod. However, add a top-notch, high-resolution system to the equation and equip it with frontRow, and the recording becomes one of those cuts where there is always something new to be discovered, as the system peels back layer after layer of veiling and more fully reveals Armstrong’s gritty vibrato, the ghostly backup singers, and the glittery expressiveness and shimmering decay of the ride cymbals. 

A key part of the frontRow experience was its very low distortion, which amplifies the sense of air and bloom—how music is projected into ambient space—so that the attack of a brushed snare, the flutter and resonance of the skin of a drumhead, the rattle of a tambourine, or the pristine glissando of the clarinet at the beginning of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue are clarified. Interestingly, soundstage perspective was not literally “front row”—thankfully, says the concertgoer in me, who much prefers the perspective of mid-hall orchestra seating. Still, frontRow is ever so slightly more forward than Audience Au24 SX. But frontRow adds a new dimension of image clarity and immediacy at all distances, what is essentially a small change in its balance of immersion and definition.

I frequently wonder whether improvements in high-end audio amount to nothing more than the ability to portray finer and finer contrasts in dynamics, volume gradients, timbre, harmonics, and dimensionality. That’s what our ears are attuned to. Even some of most familiar music I listen to (the quirky “Sinkin’ Soon” from Norah Jones, the gospel blast of Tom Waits’ “Come On Up To The House,” or the prog-rock mega-hit “Owner of a Lonely Heart” by Yes) still has the power to surprise me. With Audience’s frontRow added to my system, these tracks spoke to me in a voice that was more micro-dynamically alive and immediate and at times even more explosive. FrontRow restored a sense of suspense to these familiar performances that caused me to wonder what the players would do with the next musical phrase.

Mobile Fidelity recently released in SACD a remastered version of The Eagles’ Desperado. It was the band’s second release and helmed by the inimitable talent of producer/engineer Glyn Johns (on full display in the recent streaming series Get Back on Disney+). Compared with today’s computerized recording techniques, this all-analog album of The Beatles’ last live concert was delightfully unprocessed, and that can be heard in the way every acoustic and electric instrument and vocal is faithful to and identifiable as what it was in life—naturalistic rather than electronically twisted into something nearly unrecognizable. The clean, unmanipulated quality of this kind of recording really benefited a band like The Eagles, where every member was a lead singer and could also sing harmony (listen to “Seven Bridges Road” for an example of their musicianship). 

With the ascendency of frontRow, its immediate predecessor, the terrific Au24 SX, now becomes an ex-flagship. Effortlessly musical and truthful, frontRow seems like the culmination of a journey that Audience embarked upon a long time ago. But far be it from me to say that the journey is over. High-end audio is always full of surprises. However, in the here and now, Audience’s new flagship is the best wire this company has ever produced. Which easily places it among the very best I’ve ever experienced.

AUDIENCE
120 N. Pacific St., K-9
San Marcos, CA 92069
(800) 565-4390
audience-av.com

Price: Audience front-Row interconnects, 1m RCA $3300, 1m balanced $3800; speaker cable, 2.5m $5500 

Tags: AUDIENCE AV CABLES INTERCONNECTS

Neil Gader

By Neil Gader

My love of music largely predates my enthusiasm for audio. I grew up Los Angeles in a house where music was constantly playing on the stereo (Altecs, if you’re interested). It ranged from my mom listening to hit Broadway musicals to my sister’s early Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Beatles, and Stones LPs, and dad’s constant companions, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. With the British Invasion, I immediately picked up a guitar and took piano lessons and have been playing ever since. Following graduation from UCLA I became a writing member of the Lehman Engel’s BMI Musical Theater Workshops in New York–working in advertising to pay the bills. I’ve co-written bunches of songs, some published, some recorded. In 1995 I co-produced an award-winning short fiction movie that did well on the international film-festival circuit. I was introduced to Harry Pearson in the early 70s by a mutual friend. At that time Harry was still working full-time for Long Island’s Newsday even as he was writing Issue 1 of TAS during his off hours. We struck up a decades-long friendship that ultimately turned into a writing gig that has proved both stimulating and rewarding. In terms of music reproduction, I find myself listening more than ever for the “little” things. Low-level resolving power, dynamic gradients, shadings, timbral color and contrasts. Listening to a lot of vocals and solo piano has always helped me recalibrate and nail down what I’m hearing. Tonal neutrality and presence are important to me but small deviations are not disqualifying. But I am quite sensitive to treble over-reach, and find dry, hyper-detailed systems intriguing but inauthentic compared with the concert-going experience. For me, true musicality conveys the cozy warmth of a room with a fireplace not the icy cold of an igloo. Currently I split my time between Santa Fe, New Mexico and Studio City, California with my wife Judi Dickerson, an acting, voice, and dialect coach, along with border collies Ivy and Alfie.

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