Audience adeptResponse aR6-TSS Power Conditioner and Au24 powerChords Review

The Audience Au24 powerChords have to be the great bargain of all the uber-expensive power cables on the market. Let’s be honest, anything over $1,000 is to most an insane price to pay for a power cable. For that matter, I think the Audience powerChord cables are the best bargain there is in the world of power cables.

The Au24 powerChords are of a slightly unusual color. It’s kind of a mixture of red and black. The Au24 powerChord is named that way because it’s made using 684 strands of high purity OHNO mono crystal copper strands, the same copper used in their Au24 interconnect and loudspeaker cables. Audience says that the mono crystal copper allows for greater passage of low-level information and ultra high resolution. They are also a high-current, low impedance design for fast response, and widest possible bandwidth for instantaneous response to the program signal.

The Au24 powerChords expand my system’s overall dynamics, and micro-dynamics. These two things of course make recorded music sound more like real music. My system also has a lower level of background noise with theses power cords. Still, other power cords can give me much of this, but the most amazing thing about these power cords is how much more listenable my system is with them.

For example, the HB PowerDragon does all of the above things, but in my system it’s just not as natural sounding. The wonderful power cords from Sablon power cords also have this wonderful, natural sound that makes my system so listenable, but not the speed and transients detail I get with the Audience. The only power cord I have heard that can compare cost 5 times as much and I wasn’t sure if it was better. So, for these reasons I only used Au24 powerChords in my system or at least from the wall to the conditioners.

Let’s start by asking how much better is the aR-6TSS compared to my aR-6T. In my review of the aR6-T I asked how much better was the 6T to the 6 and my finding was, “Simply, more than I would have ever thought possible, after living with the original and superb Audience Adept Response power conditioner, I just wasn’t prepared for how much better the “T” version would be.” So I think I would like to congratulate John McDonald and his team at Audience for doing it again. The 6TSS is just that much better, too. Which really surprised me, because I hadn’t thought there was that much room for improvement.

Let’s start by taking about the bass. the adeptResponse aR6-TSS simply sounds deeper and more powerful and still allows the deep bass to come to life it does with the 6T. The attack is fast and with even more wonderful decay. Like the 6T, the bass of the aR6-TSS actually seems to occupy a real space. This last trait really adds to the believability of my system, and drums especially sound so real it’s hard to ignore.

There is also a difference in transparency. The adeptResponse aR6-TSS is equally transparent as the 6T but also seems to let the colors and tones of music to come into my room while being open. I also hear even more inner detail than I did with the 6T but it does so in a very natural and musical way.

Both the micro-dynamics and the Pace-Rhythm-And-Timing were better, and this simply shocked me. This combination increased the ability of my system to sound truly lifelike in reproducing a musical performance. Another area where the 6TSS improves over the 6T is the purity of the silence. When you add these improvements to an increase in soundstage scale and imaging, the 6TSS simply allowed my system to sound more alive.

I have had three different brands of power distribution products in for review that have overlapped enough that they have all been in the house at the same time. The units from HB Cables and WyWires use no active power conditioning but are incredibly good. The one area where the 6TSS betters both of these products is in constancy. There is no doubt that my system’s sound varies less with the 6-TSS than with the HB Cables or WyWire units.

Conclusion

I’ve tried way too many power conditioners. The Synergistic Research Tesla PowerCell and the Audience aR6-T brought us a new level of performance. The adeptResponse aR6-TSS takes us even further. Is it as good or better than the HB Cables’ Marble unit? Well, yes and no; it’s better if you experience wide variations in your sound at different times of day. It’s nearly as good as the Marble in other areas. If you need power conditioning, then this is the best I’ve heard. If you only need to get the best power delivery for your equipment, then I think the HB cable units and the WyWire Power Broker are really good.

Before ending the review, I want to remind you what I said earlier about the Au24 powerChords. I have not heard a better power cord. I have heard an $8,000 one that I think was as good, but the Au24s are simply as good as it gets in my opinion.

I want to close by saying that one thing is for sure, if you aren’t dealing with the power coming into your system and room acoustics, you need to before you spend much more money on other things.