Budget Audience Clone?

Glad you solved the problem. I use tube gear and some nos tubes do produce slight distortion.

robert53

thanks, 
I'll check those out. Update, I sent the Clear Day back (what a great guy Paul is. Super nice) He makes great cables for reasonable prices, just not exactly what I'm looking for. I also returned the Audience to the store I borrowed from. I think I'm keeping the JW Cryo Nova as I got to the bottom of the distortion issue. It was the NOS Philips tubes I rolled into my DAC. The orig tubes are back in and the system sounds amazing. The JW might not be the end game, but they are quite good and very engaging to listen to in my system. For $60 they are dirt cheap, so either way they are staying.

Audience are excellent but expensive cables. I am using Cardas Neutral Reference cables which I purchased new from the Parts Connection cheap because they are no longer being made.  Different than Audience, but good. You can read reviews of the Neutral Reference, and one review compared them to the Audience cables, so you can read about their differences. The bottom line is you have to try them in your system to see if they work for you. They also need a lot of break in time to sound good.

2channel8

thanks for the heads up - I'm following that auction to see where it ends up.

 Update: The Clear Day Cables are very very good and transparent but maybe not quite what I'm looking for. The Audience still has more snap to the sound with transients and a little more color in the midrange, in a good way. 

The JW Cryo Nova is very interesting and I'm not sure about it yet. Luckily I have more time with them. They made me aware of distortion on some Tidal tracks I wasn't aware of, so now I'm trying to figure out if it's something in the chain or the UMG Watermarks. ugh.

Zu audio auctions off their older products on ebay. If you are patient and keep bidding what you are willing to spend, eventually you'll win one of these auctions. I had to bid on 5 pairs of 10 ft Libtecs before I got mine for $80 + S&H. I think the reduced price was around $1,200 when new. I think they sound great; but I've never heard Audience.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ZU-AUDIO-LIBTEC-10ft-3-0m-Hi-Fi-Loudspeaker-Cables-Matched-Pair-NEW/1324575...

Thanks for the Duelund and Black Cat suggestions. I am in the middle of auditioning JW Cryo Nova and Clear Day along with the Audience and my Canare. Depending on the outcome, I may try those 2 suggestions also.

btw, it turns out the Audience Conductor e is a used pair and the price the dealer is asking is $500 for the 2m pair.

Hey there, I’ve auditioned tons and tons of speaker cables and agree with you that Audience is amazing. I got some used AU24 in the end.

The cheapest that I thought came closest were Black Cat’s entry level speaker cable, of which I tried the MK1 of these; now called Silverheart MK 2 https://blackcatcable.com/products/silverheart-speaker-cable-banana-terminated

Preferred them to Clearday in my system.

P.S. I did try hard to find cheaper Audience "clones" from various UP-OCC and OFC cables (Neotech, Acoustic Zen, Mogami) but only the Black Cat cable got closest to the AU24.

Some people like the Duelund DCA16GA or DCA12GA as speaker wire. You can get it from partsconnexion for $10 per meter. It would cost you $80 for 6 feet DCA16GA. There are a lot of reviews online if you google it. For the price, it is worth a try... 

Yyz

I'm running an integrated so unfortunately I need about 6ft. Thanks though.

Paul’s cables are very good, they compete with my heimdall2 speaker cables...

clarinetmonster2 ,

Do you have mono block amps close to your speaker? If so, I have a pair of Audioquest Volcano (only 3 feet long) which seem to sound way better than my Audience Conductor..

These AQ cables were sitting in a box in my garage for the last 10 years. I took them out last month have have been using them because I sent in my Audience Conductor cables to be re-terminated to banana-on-amp and spade-on-speakers. They should be back in a week or 2.

After listening to the Audioquest for the past month I have a feeling it will be hard for me to go back to the Audience. However, I made the bonehead decisions 15 years ago to chop the 6 foot Audioquest to two 3 foot runs. Now I am stuck and the application for which I was using the Audience Conductor speaker cable, my desktop system (speakers on desk) will not work long term with the Audioquest. This is because I have to put the Peachtree Nova 150 integrated amp between the speakers on the desk due to the sort length of the wire. This give me limited desktop space to work. So I am going to have to go back to the 6 foot Audience Conductor. 

So if a mono block is what you have. I likely have a better speaker cable that I could sell. Contact me if you are interested. I will go through the A'Gon motions of selling a cable.

I contacted Paul and asked him to send me a double shotgun pair to audition.

Actually, with the silver IC's and my solid silver USB cable, I found less glare than with competing copper models. 

I've got a full bodied amp. There is zero fatigue in my system.

The Gallo CDT tweeter has a very extended top-end. I don’t think an all silver conductor would suit it, as your IC's are silver.
I use a full-bodied cable (Purist) with my Gallo’s.

ghosthouse

thanks for your input. My experience with silver is limited, however I do own a pair of DIY (made by ebay seller) solid silver IC's that I love and beat out a few name brands in my system. My experience echoes yours sonically. I have a good feeling about Paul's cables so I'm sure I will give them a try at some point.

I've used Clear Day double-shotguns on Totem Forest speakers.  In my system with various amps, the Totems could be hot/harsh...esp. w/certain CDs.  It took quite a bit of experimentation to tame their highs.  Part of that taming came about when I switched to Clear Day speaker cable. Not commenting vis a vis Audio Art but the Clear Day cable was NOT bright in my system.  I think "silver is bright"is a questionable audio truth that has legs mostly because it gets repeated so much - rightly or wrongly; i.e., with or without first hand experience to base the comment on.  The Clear Days were a wonderful relief from the Morrow Audio SP-4 cable I had been running.  The Clear Day wire provided great heft to the music (like it put on 20 pounds of muscle).  Don't read that as meaning things slowed down, however.  Detail was very good but not hard edged.  Imaging was superb.  They provide a very pleasing musical experience.  Paul is great to deal with and has a good return policy.  Worth trying just to see how they are in your system.  BTW - I did recently audition Audience Ohno cables from The Cable Co.  Wasn't impressed and sent them back.  At some point, I'd love to try a pair of Audio Art cables.  Schubert has been very consistent in his praise of them.  Good luck in your search.

schubert

Good to know. I have Gallo CL-3 powered by and Audiozen Alchemy hybrid integrated. Paul already got back to me. Apparently the single run will not work well for me and, in fact, he strongly recommends the double shotgun for my speakers/amp. When you say you tried best of both, do you mean the top model of AudioArt? 

I tried  Clear Day and AudioArt, best of both , on acoustic music the CD is overly bright and the AA is much better on the overtones that make a String Qt  sing . Tried on both tube and SS systems  on Totem, Gallo, Meadowlark and Rega speakers  with Cd's and vinyl . AA better ,not that Clear Day is not good .
Other speakers , other music etcetc etc , you might find otherwise .

Just sent an email to Paul at Clear Day. Excited about the prospect of solid silver speaker cables as my main IC's are solid silver as well.

Also, will the JW Cryo Nova sound similar to anticables? Very similar construction.

CLear Day is new to me. He seems to rec the double shotgun for speaker sensitivities below 93. Anyone tried his single run with lower sensitivity speakers? 

For $500 and under, I think both Clear Day and Anticables are tough to beat.  I've had both, and they worked great in my system.

Would also do Nordost Blue Heaven Rev 2 if it has a little more body than rev 1. Or a diff model like Red Dawn. 

I am being offered a 6ft pair of Anticables 3.1 with bananas for $120. 
Might they fit the bill? I also get 50% off of DH Labs retail price. 
Also considering Schmitt, Analysis plus, Kimber. 

My system leans slightly to the warm side.

I tried audio art ic's awhile back and found them more on the lush side of the spectrum. Correct me if I'm wrong. I do remember some sparkle but not a sense of focus, speed or great separation. It has been awhile though.

By far, and I've tried all the usual subjects, the AudioArt SC-5 which are on here now at $ 152 are the least expensive good SC's  on the market .

Yes that is always an option. I don’t think I'd ever spend more than 500 on speaker cables and I can’t even do that at the moment. I ordered some jw cryo nova to try so I’m hoping that works well in my system. Just looking for any budget options that are in the same sonic neighborhood as the audience.

Since you like the cables so much, why not just wait till a used pair shows up here?

You know, a quick search the other day came up with about 1k for the 2 meter pair, but now I can't seem to find any info on price. Maybe I'm off on that and they are more affordable than I think?

What do the Audience Conductor e speaker cables sell for?