Nordost Frey vs Audience Au24e interconnect

I just popped in the Au24s. Breaking in over the next few days...

Ok, first impressions:

The AU24 zeros in on instruments and voices, dropping the backround "noise" and pushing some things to the front. In some cases this works brilliantly, in others, it seems ovewrly analystical.

The Frey is warmer. Hard to belive, but it's just the case in my setup. Feels more organic, less synthetic.

My girlfriend says the Frey is more "ambient." She likes it better in our room (acoutstics suck).

My feelings are split. Like the both. The frey has more space, front to back and side to side, but the AU24 does some really cool stuff with echos, reverb, etc.

I can see either being useful in certain conditions. The interesting thing is that they are both very similar in many ways. I don't notice any difference in bass amount or quality with either. The Frey may have a little more midbass pronunciation. The AU24 offers a little clearer image seperation (shockingly).

Mjmch2003, thanks a lot for your input. Pity that it is so hard to choose one or the other. Have you chosen yet? I'll try to put my hands on the AU24 IC's somehow and see for myself. Cheers.

You bet. I'll pop the Frey back in, tomorrow, and circle back. I'll try to use 2 songs as a reference point.

Ok, my final verdict (played some Ulrich Schnauss, Judas Priest, Sword, Orb, Bela Fleck, Ocean Blue)....

If i listened at lower volumes, I slightly prefered the Audience, but at higher volumes, I overwhenlmingly preferred the Norsodt. Anything north of "25" on my Ayre preamp sounded so forward on my system.

About the same level of deep bass from both, the Nordost has more mid bass, the Audience has a snappy and clean mid range, the Nordosts highs are more evenly balanced among instruments and didn't tend to highlight some things like the Audience. The audiece was more fun with some recordings that have a lot of "bleepy" sounds that are panning the soundstage (orb).