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...
Budget Audience Clone?
I borrowed a pair of Audience Conductor e speaker cables and they sound fantastic in my system. I have been using Canare 4s11 which sound very good for the price, warm and full and reasonable detailed with a slight softening of transients. The audience has brought everything up a couple notches, including separation, detail, bass tightness and air. My question is, are there any budget speaker cables that are sonically similar to audience? I know the conductor e is not super expensive, but there are other life priorities right now. I should also mention that I liked some of the things that Nordost Blue Heaven did for my system when I borrowed them, but I love everything that the Audience does.
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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. |
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. |
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... |
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. |
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