September 2016


Best Of 2016 Blue Note Equipment Awards

Audience Au24-SX Cables
Price: 1.5m Au24 SX single-ended (RCA) - $2085
1.5m Au24 SX balanced (XLR) - $2800
2.5m Au24 SX loudspeaker - $3290
Click here to read the complete review.

  The SX iteration of Audience's established Au24 cable lineup is the most significant advance they have ever realized with this product line according to Enjoy the Music.com Senior Editor Greg Weaver. The SX takes all the sonic achievement of the SE, then elevates it with heightened transparency, increased focus, a more defined and accurate soundstage, a higher degree of resolution and transparency, and a richer, more full-bodied tonality. And as an added benefit, they are the leanest, slenderest high-performance cables you will ever use, making system installation a dressing a snap. They readily compete with, and best, many other highly regarded cables, some costing more than three times as much.

Hallmarks of the Au24 cables, since their inception, have been their remarkable transparency to the source, exquisite resolution and timbral purity, combined with incredibly low noise, and remarkable dynamic expressiveness. Over their maturation, those traits have continued to slowly advance, with attributes like texture, bloom, body, and spatial cues having seen the most notable improvement.

But make no mistake, what the SX brings to table is not a slight enhancement; its innovations are significant, especially in the aforementioned areas of bloom and body, the only area's where I felt that even the SEs fell slightly short of some other more accomplished, and to be fair, considerably costlier cables. Tonal quality with the SX iteration is more vibrant and truer; so much so that they easily exceed/surpass any such earlier incremental advances made during their continual progressive development.

"The SX series of cables from Audience represent a new pinnacle of achievement in a distinguished, established product line, and by no small degree" says Greg Weaver. "While not the "sexiest" looking cable you may see, their execution and finish is exemplary. These are not cheap cables, by any stretch of the imagination. But at their price, they have to be seen as more than merely the genuine bargain that they represent. Make no mistake about it, these delightfully thin and otherwise unassuming looking cables are world-class."

Click here to read the complete review.

Previous Annual Blue Note Awards

Product of the Year Awards 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, and 2001.