Listening to the delicate harmonies in the Bee Gees’ classic, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?” it’s immediately clear that John McDonald at Audience has created an approachable masterpiece with his latest floorstanding speakers. McDonald was kind enough to let me have some private listening time after hours at THE Show in Santa Ana, California, to deliver a first impression, and you know what they say.
Yeah, they are that good. Being very familiar with his ClairAudient 1+1 v.5s that I’ve favorably reviewed, there’s a lot of similarity going on here, just bigger, better, and more of it.
With speaker prices becoming so stratospheric that million-dollar speakers are no longer anomalous, and even $100k/pair speakers are commonplace, that leaves a lot of music lovers out of the equation. It doesn’t matter how good they sound; it’s out of reach for so many.
While the almost $40k/pair asked for the Audience speakers isn’t inexpensive, it isn’t crazy. Most people don’t fall out of bed saying, “I’m going to buy a $40k pair of speakers today.” More often than not, you work up to it, have something to sell or trade as a down, and this is a major step up – maybe even the last pair of speakers you plan on buying, so it’s not as crazy as it seems.
Which makes the Audience speakers that much more enticing. If you’re out shopping for $40k-ish speakers, you probably have spent a fair amount of time owning, auditioning, and shopping.
While I can’t call the late Art Dudley a close friend, I spent enough time hanging out with him to know that he valued musical cohesion, pace, and flow more than finicky audiophile stuff. Looking back at Stereophile and The Absolute Sound, I see that Art and my old boss Harry Pearson both really enjoyed past Audience speakers, so I feel in good company here.
As a panel speaker lover – bias admitted, I’ll take a pair of Quads over a pair of Wilsons any day because I love that top-to-bottom coherence. The Bellare’s pace, thanks to its nearly full-range operation, is phenomenal, especially when listening to complex music. That’s my hot button. But as you know, you can’t rock out with a pair of Quads.
You can definitely rock out with the Bellare’s. Cranking up Steel Dragon’s “Living the Life” from the Rockstar soundtrack illustrates how well the DSP-controlled, outward-firing woofers in these speakers are up to the task, delivering bass that is controlled, tuneful, and hits hard.
Even in the 30 x 40-foot exhibit room, these speakers fill the space in a wonderful way. The reference system is comprised of an Atma-Sphere MP-3 linestage and an LKV Veros PWR+ Class D power amplifier. Of course, all the cabling and power conditioning is done by Audience…. An Origin Live table/arm combo was spinning records via a Herron phono pre, and Audience was serving up digital via a SONY SACD player used as a transport and a prototype Audience DAC. The digital front end sounded good enough to fool me into thinking it was actually analog when a record was on the turntable, so the point is that the overall sound in this room was excellent.
Considering that Audience is able to get this involving of a sound in a show room, and make no mistake, audio shows are always a hostile environment – we are really excited to get a pair later this year for a full review, to hear them in our studio and mix it up with some different amplification choices.
The speakers themselves are not terribly big or heavy, weighing in at 85 pounds each and taking up a 45” tall by 9.5” wide and 18” deep footprint. One person should be able to unpack them without difficulty. The DSP-controlled, side-firing 10-inch woofers are powered by an internal 300-watt amplifier. The full-range speakers, front and rear, look much like the driver in the ClairAudient 1+1v.5s we’ve reviewed and use as a reference here at TONE are “similar in look and design, but more refined,” according to McDonald.
The soundstage is huge, thanks in part to the pair of rear-facing full-range drivers, which McDonald says are the difference between the bipole version here and the monopole version with no rear-firing drivers. He tells me that the monopole version would be better suited to a smaller room, where you can’t place the speakers a few feet out.
The Rolling Stones’ collaboration with Christina Aguilera – “Live with me” is a pleasure. Again, the pace of these speakers comes to the forefront. Charley Watts is locked down solid as Jagger and Aguilara trade lead vocal duties while the Stones’ famous rhythm section is all present and accounted for. It’s almost like you can hear the two singers walking across the stage, as if you’re at the front of house listening more with the monitors than the mains. Incredible. Another interesting tidbit is how the audience’s applause has an incredibly realistic texture. This aspect of live music, along with hall ambiance, is never easy to capture and get right.
Further investigating the speakers’ low-frequency ability with Kruder and Dorfmeister’s The K&D sessions is tons of fun. The Bellaire produces solid bass, with plenty of decay and texture. These are not a one-note bass speaker. And again, this is within the constraints of a show situation, where the walls between us and the adjacent rooms severely compromise what is possible. You know I had to hang in there for “Bug Powder Dust.” Oh yeah.
Though this is not real music in the traditional sense, the electronic, tinkly bits in tracks like these show how well a speaker can generate a sound field and create spatial cues, helping you place things in the listening environment. When that’s not present, music doesn’t feel alive. You recognize it when you don’t get it. The Audience speakers deliver this at a high level. For someone obviously and admittedly biased towards panels and single-driver speakers, because top-to-bottom coherence is my personal hot button, the Bellare is a love speaker. If you value this as much as I do, I think you’ll love them too.
Vertical dispersion is excellent; the sound quality (and high frequencies) does not fall off when you sit up from the listening position, and getting way off-axis, sitting on the floor, even delivers an excellent result. Remember, if you want to share your speakers with everyone, the sweet spot isn’t where they always get to sit. Anyone hanging out at your house listening to music with you will have a great time, even sitting on the floor well off-axis. The Audience speakers are very user-friendly.
Which brings us perhaps the most critical aspect of these speakers. With no crossover from 140Hz on up, and a mere low-pass filter to separate the full-range drivers from the side-firing woofers, you are listening to a pretty much full-range speaker system. McDonald claims an 88 dB/1-watt sensitivity and a very gentle impedance curve. We’ll confirm that when the speakers arrive, and we can drive them with a handful of tube amplifiers and our First Watt amplifier.
Tim Curry’s vocal on “Simplicity” is rendered exquisitely. His gravelly voice is front and center, and the stellar band backing him maintains a driving force. This track is the perfect example of “listening between the notes,” again lovely.
Listening to The Three’s self-titled album, their performance of “Satin Doll” is a jazz standard and a direct-to-disc recording, full of dynamics and equally quiet passages. The Bellaire shines here, reproducing the acoustic bass, drums, and piano in a perfectly life-like manner. This is what real instruments in a room sound like – and that’s the highest praise you can give any audio component. The percussive dynamics of the piano hammers, as well as the textures of the drumheads before and after being struck, are just right. You can hear and feel those drumheads breathing as they are struck. Keep in mind, you don’t always get this level of tonality in a lot of speakers. At any price.
Another go-to reference for acoustic instrument reproduction is the Jung Trio’s release on Groove Note Records. This trio of piano and violin is deceptively simple to get right. The Audience speakers deliver a particularly realistic rendition of both instruments, and McDonald, half laughing and half sighing, says, “These speakers have been my life’s work.”
As well as the Bellaires can rock, their rendition of acoustic instruments is worthy of high praise, too. Whether you like the heaviest rock music possible or the most delicate vocals and ensembles, you will be well served with these speakers. We anxiously await round two. (And we’ll have a lot more photos, these speakers have a lovely finish. Please stay tuned.)
$39,000/pair
$36,000/pair (monopole)
