Audience ClairAudient 1 + 1 V5 Loudspeakers | REVIEW

I can still remember the first time I listened to the Audience ClairAudient 1 + 1 speakers. I can’t remember when and where exactly, but I do know it was a high-end audio show, and I remember my industry pal Lenny Mayeux running the demo. (Further research reveals that the first 1 + 1 debuted at the 2012 T.H.E. Show in Newport, which sounds about right.)

These tiny little speakers sat on stands right up against the back wall and I recall looking down at them and wondering how so much sound came out of such small enclosures. I made it a point to say wow, I really need to spend more time with these gems, and I never did. Now I finally have a pair of the Audience ClairAudients in for review, but it’s already the fifth version and it’s far more glamorous and refined than I remember.

Words and Photos by Marc Phillips

I’m currently reviewing the Audience ClairAudient 1 + 1 V5 loudspeakers as a result of the overflow of Scot Hull’s survey of Desktop Audio, just like the MonAcoustics Supermon Minis I just reviewed a few months ago. The $3,900/pr V5s are tiny, like the Minis, but they look more like the GoldenEar BRXs with their passive bass radiators and drivers placed on nearly every face of this cube. While the V5s are especially small in terms of height, they are relatively deep, and the multiple drivers and pleasing aesthetics make them seem a little bit larger than they are.

Inside the Audience ClairAudient 1 + 1 V5

The foundation of the Audience ClairAudient design is that small wideband 3″ driver, known as the A3S2-16, that measures flat from 55Hz to 22kHz. There’s one on the front baffle and one on the back, making the ClairAudient a bipole. In addition, there are two 4″ passive bass radiators on the sides of each monitor. That gives the Clairaudient, which is only 8″ high, an unusual yet very attractive look.

The Audience website goes into a little more detail:

“The 1+1 is the most unique small footprint loudspeaker in the world. It features a wideband driver eliminating the need for desperate drivers and crossovers. The 1+1 V5 measures flat from 55Hz up to 22Khz without the use of a dedicated tweeter and associated crossover. Consequently, transition at the most critical frequency range, from mid to high, is entirely smooth and supremely coherent. The 1+1 V5 is a bi-pole design, which expands the soundstage, extends low frequency, and increases power handling. There are active full range drivers, in phase, on the front and rear baffles, complemented by passive radiators on each side. The jewel-like enclosure is a joy to look at and will fit into any room where space is at a premium and high-quality sound is desired.

“The A3S2-16 drivers employed in the 1+1 V5 are a dual gap motor design with ultra long-throw excursion providing surprising SPL levels with big dynamic range. Don’t let their small size fool you. They are exceptionally resolute at low volumes and will effortlessly deliver the full emotional slam of your most dynamic music.”

The Audience ClairAudient has had more than five revisions over the years, which makes sense. When I first listened to them many years ago they were quite affordable, but they weren’t nearly as refined as they are now. Over the years, the following improvements have been made to the design:

• Upgraded passive bass radiators
• Implementation of baffle-step reduction technology
• New A3S2-16 drivers with closer tolerances than before thanks to CNC machining
• Eliminated jumpers and reduction in the number of soldered connections
• Solder-free Tellurium spring tension binding posts
• Internal wiring with Audience Au24 SX wire
• KLEI ultra-low mass pure copper binding posts

That brings us up to the current V5, which employs these improvements:

“The improvements of the V5 loudspeakers result in peak performance from the implementation of an enhanced baffle-step reduction technology. Frequency response in the high range as well as upper bass is noticeably smoother. The 1+1 V5 will now play louder than ever before with better bass and without the risk of damaging drivers.”

The fit and finish of the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 is superb, with a gloss black finish on the front, back and top, and elegant wood veneers on the side, also finished in gloss. The ClairAudient is definitely one of those audio products that become more impressive as you draw closer; what’s cute and diminutive from across a room becomes a highly polished gem of a transducer in a near-field listening position.

Set-Up

I built an amazing system with the Audience Clairaudient monitors, which kinda throws out everything I thought I knew about high-end audio. First of all, I cleared out the space for my headphone rig on the oak coffee table that sits in the living room by the TV. I knew this table-top system would closely approximate what Scot Hull is trying to accomplish in his desktop series, and I knew it sounded pretty good because I had the MonAcoustic Supermon Minis in the same spot and they performed much better than I expected.

The system included my Naim NAIT 50, the Music Hall Stealth turntable, the Audiences and cabling almost exclusively by ArgentPur. (I have a much bigger loom, including power cords, to test out the new ArgentPur monoblock amplifiers.) I also used this set-up to initially evaluate the Bob’s Devices SKY-20 S step-up transformer and Hagerman Audio Labs Piccolo MC head amp with the DS Audio headshell and a ZYX Bloom 3 MC cartridge. These last two products are helping me to live with the MM phono stage on the Naim and use it more often with my stable of MC cartridges..

I’m not a fan of throwing audio things on top of big flat surfaces, especially speakers, but I do have that cachet of isolation devices from Fern and Roby, Les Davis Audio, IsoAcoustics and Carbide Audio that can, on a good day, transform the sound into something that resembles a decent audio rack. (Plus, the oak coffee table is big and heavy and takes two people to carry.) The magical isolation device that extracted the best sound and isolation from the Audience Clairaudient was the Les Davis Audio Entropic Isolators–that was also the best solution for the MonAcoustic Minis. These are little sandwiched of constrained layer damping materials that supply enough extra height to avoid most dispersion issues at the bottom of the speaker enclosure.

After I felt the system had properly broken in, I did move the Audience ClairAudient 1 + 1 V5s into the main system, on top of the Acora Acoustics SRS-G speaker stands–it was very amusing to see these tiny monitors take their place next to such massive transducers as the $99K/pair YG Acoustics Sonja 3.2s and the $49K Songer Audio S2 field coil speakers. I stopped smirking, of course, once I connected them to the $80K Burmester 909 Mk. 5 power amplifier.

Finally, John McDonald of Audience caught wind of what I was doing with the tabletop system, and he sent out the dedicated desktop stands for the ClairAudients, along with a pair of the flagship Audience frontRow speaker cables. (These are the reference cables used by Garrett Hongo in his system.)  Once I swapped out the Les Davis Entropic Isolators for the stands, I immediately noticed that the soundstage for the tabletop system took a few extra steps toward that sense of a more “normal” soundstage. More space had been created under the front bottom edge of the baffles, reducing the reflections of the oak coffee table to the point where the lowest frequencies sounded more anchored and contained within the soundstage.

Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 Sound

Let’s start with the tabletop system, which sounded far better than it should have considering the very unorthodox placement. I can achieve decent sound with this system because it’s so flexible–I have plenty of space to slide the table and the furniture around until everything sounds somewhat “normal.”

I started off with the first LP, Kinema from drummer Manuel Pasquinelli’s Akku Quintet, which is an instrumental outfit focusing on original compositions that straddle several genres–rock, jazz, fusion–at the same time. Quite frankly, I was shocked at the “rightness” of the soundstage that the Audience ClairAudient delivered. Here I am, sitting on my couch with the 1 + 1s pointed at my knees, and yet the sound was levitated far enough above the table to the point where I felt I was listening to any “normal” two-channel audio system. This is different from the results I achieved from the MonAcoustic Minis, which did throw out a soundstage that was level with my knees. It sounded great, but it sounded like I was listening from a balcony.

In the main system, the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 continued to impress me with its ability to energize the large room. I did notice that the deepest bass didn’t find its mooring as well as it had on the oak table–that’s a consistent problem I’ve had with some of the smaller two-way monitors I’ve tested in the last few months. The solution, easily remedied, involves pushing the speakers back toward the rear wall. In a conventional set-up, speakers are usually at least five feet away from back wall, which features numerous picture windows. By creating this much space, room reflections are reduced to the point where I don’t notice anything askew. For that reason I was judicious when pushing the ClairAudients back–I wound up pushing them about a foot back, and I increased the toe-in slightly to offset that change.

Once I found the proper balance between room and speaker, I sat in and marveled at what these seemingly tiny monitors could accomplish in a large room. First, the quality of the soundstaging and imaging was so strong that I had to laugh. The Audience ClairAudients are one of those small monitors that simply make me scratch my head in wonder. For years we thought that bass performance was always linked to internal volume of the enclosure, with a few tricks here and there employed to eke out a few more Hz. What the ClairAudients manage to do is adjust to their surroundings and maintain a consistent presentation. In this regard, they are remarkable–I don’t remember any LS3/5as I’ve heard manage to sound this unflappable while moving between near listening and a more conventional placement.

Listening Sessions

When I first hooked the Audience ClairAudient to the tabletop system, my first choice for music was New Dreams from Barry Coates, Jimmy Haslip and Jerry Kalaf. This has been a constant in the demo rotation for the last couple of years, but I’d realized I hadn’t listened to it yet in my new digs. Kalaf’s work with his cymbals always sounds extended and easy, with lots of shimmer that brings out the mechanical movements in the rest of his kit. I had a bit of a WOW moment when the album’s opener, “Towner,” kicked in and I heard so much more than the shimmer. I heard the tiny wooden clicks from the sticks, and I thought at least once I heard a sound that might have been Kalaf’s shirt sleeve flapping against his arm.

A few more moments into “Towner,” Jimmy Haslip’s bass comes in strong and low, and it always makes a good first impression even better. This is where you realize the dynamics in this recording are wildly satisfying, even though the mood is sedate and full of introspection. But that first fat bass note can easily be overdone on big, full-range speakers I’ve heard. With the Audience ClairAudient, that note was deep enough to hit me square in the torso while never sounding gimmicky or aggressive or out of place. That’s one of my usual concerns with small full-range drivers, that the frequency extremes are lacking the same natural feel as the midrange. That’s one of the compromises for such a design–you’re usually craving a few human voices floating in front of your listening chair. But it’s funny how the 1+1s, even in the tabletop system, with only an inch or two separating the edge of the front baffle from the oak underneath, still made Haslip’s bass sound punchy and real, and at the same time capture all of that wonderful energy in the high frequencies produced by those fantastic cymbal strikes.

If the highs and the lows are this good, then the midrange must be spectacular…right? The Trondheim Concertos from 2L Recordings is, for me, pure musical enjoyment. Late Baroque compositions, recorded under the most ideal conditions with state-of-the-art recording gear, remind me of how I became both an audiophile and a classical music fan at the same time, during the first couple of years in college. That’s when I started to pay more attention to tonality and imaging and frequency response, and less attention on how hard this song rocks.

With the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5s in the tabletop system, I found it easy to simply drift away with the music and follow individual threads. Despite the unorthodox near-field set up, and all those drivers pointing every which way, I kept thinking that complex orchestral music like this would lose its focus during the tough spots, but this sound was coherent and natural–even though the speakers’ ability to project so far above the baffles takes some getting used to.

In the main system, as I mentioned, the Audience ClairAudient retained much of the charm it displayed in the smaller set-up. As I mentioned, the ClairAudients did lose that visceral edge in the much bigger space, away from most of the walls. Again, the remedy involved moving the speakers closer to the rear wall, which is covered in glass and is usually at least five feet away. This involved ritualistic practices in speaker placement, and as expected there was a fine compromise between increasing bass quantity and minimizing reflections from the wall. Once that was accomplished, the Audience ClairAudients created a soundstage that lacked the idiosyncracies I’ve found in many dipoles or speakers with multi-directional driver placement.

Why is this a big deal? Because it’s easy to look at a speaker like the Audience ClairAudient and think man, this is going to sound different. With the tabletop system, the ClairAudient does sound different from other small monitors, but only in the sense that it brings the sound closer to a more conventional two-channel audio set-up. But in a conventional two-channel audio set-up, the ClairAudient sounds like a very well-made two-way monitor. Let me rephrase that–it sounds at least as good, if not better, than other $4,000/pr monitors. Plus you get a bonus, a nearfield speaker that works well in tight places, a nearfield speaker that does things other nearfield speakers can’t always do.

Audience ClairAudient Conclusions

The Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 speakers are easily one of those high-end products that sound completely different than they look. It almost doesn’t make sense to rely on words to convey how they perform. When I first heard this design so many years ago, I was astonished. Now, I’m surprised at how steady improvements have turned this unorthodox design into one of the finest bookshelf monitors I’ve heard for the price. (I was going to say two-way monitors, but they’re one-way monitors!) The ClairAudients are one of those loudspeakers you have to hear to believe–especially if you’re into near-field listening.

I’m including comments from Greg Weaver, who reviewed the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 for The Audio Analyst. As for me, I’m stunned. Highly recommended!

Greg’s Weaver’s Thoughts

Originally introduced in 2013, now in its fifth iteration, the Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 maintains its original uniquely truncated, beveled trapezoidal shape, weighs just eight pounds, stands eight inches tall, nine-and-three-quarter inches deep, and a scant six inches wide, and measures flat from 55Hz up to 22kHz!

Featuring a pair of their remarkable A3S2 three 3-inch A3S2 Titanium alloy drivers in a true bipolar design, with one each centrally located on both the front and back baffles, they also include a pair of four-inch passive radiators, with one centered on both of its side baffles.

With a total moving mass of only 2.5 grams and vastly oversized motors, they have response times comparable to electrostatic panels. And because they use a single, full-range driver, avoiding the need for a dividing network, or crossover, they not only produce better, more dynamic and pitch-defined bass on their own, but transitions at the most critical frequency range, from the mids to the treble, are uncharacteristically smooth and supremely coherent.

They serve up everything in a delicately layered, remarkably liquid, eerily resolute, clearly defined, and musically compelling manner. Their uncanny coherence allows them to speak with an exceptionally convincing, single continuous voice, with an overwhelmingly natural and full-bodied sense of texture, replete with the complex harmonic structures of individual instrumental accents.

And when it comes to truthfulness of timbre, musical resolution, and transparency, be prepared to be utterly spoiled. Their ability to expose the subtlest of nuanced instrumental characteristics of strings, horns, pianos, even percussion instruments, revealing not only their bloom and body, but fleshing out rich vibrant tone color, borders on revelatory. At $3,900 per a pair, this is a unique monitor that, once you experience, you may not be able to forget or give up. Highly recommended.

Scot Hull’s Thoughts

I love these things. They’re compact. They’re attractive. They’re eerily transparent. In fact, these may be the most transparent desktop speakers I’ve ever used — and yes, that’s how I used them. On a desk. A tiny, cramped and cluttered desk. And I was gobsmacked.

In the last year, I’ve had a few desktop wonders come through. My current references, a pair of “gold box” LS3/5a speakers from Falcon Acoustics, are warm and intimate (related review here). The W5 from Boenicke were clearly superior in almost every way — including the price (review here). If they could be faulted (and that’s an “if”), perhaps they lacked a little something-something in full mid-range intimacy that the Falcons had in spades, while more than making up for it in transparency and “jump factor”. But with all that said, and all the superlatives laid out, the little ClairAudient 1+1 V5 were the most engaging of the bunch. Fulsome. Speedy. And did I mention transparent? Oh my. The precision of the sound field was extraordinarily riveting. And terrifically distracting. I got nothing done at my desk while these things were here.

If you have the space, and the inclination, the lowest registers will benefit from some subwoofer support (I’m thinking of a small down firing REL, for example), but I didn’t have any complaints or issues with the speakers as I deployed them. To be very clearly, these were the best of my small bunch — so far, at least! Disclosure: I used a couple of ramps to tilt the loudspeakers up off the desk, and that helped focus the sound field, but that was a matter of taste and not a requirement. I found that “straight at my ears” was the best, but “over the shoulders” worked almost just as well.

I pushed these speakers around with a couple of amps — my reference is the LTA Z10e (review forthcoming at some point), the Enleum AMP 23-R (review here), and a monster amp from Ampsandsound, the mighty desktop devouring Nautilus (review forthcoming also at some point). The pairing between the three amps was fascinating — the speakers were unfazed by any amplification — but what I enjoyed was how different the amps were — the speakers just let them through. For my taste, I really enjoyed the tube match ups the most. The warmth, the intimacy, and the presence of the big Nautilus (with its “whopping” 8wpc) was well-nigh perfect, translated through these little 1-way loudspeakers. I could and did a whole lot of nothing while bouncing my head back and forth, listening.

I have no hesitations recommending the ClairAudient 1+1 V5. Especially for near field listening. You’re gonna be impressed. Deeply impressed. The Ferris Bueller in me would want you to know that: “It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking them up.”