October 2025

World Premiere Review!
Greater Emotional Connection: Audience FrontRow Reserve PowerChords Review
Going deeper into the inner details of the music you love.
Review By Rick Becker

   The invitation for Enjoy the Music.com to review a new Audience Front Row Reserve powerChord from John McDonald, President of Audience AV, came as a complete surprise offer out of the blue. At $7500 each (1.5-meter), they would be two levels above the $2500 Synergistic Research power cords that grace most of my components. It would be an adventure into uncharted territory for me, were it not for the Furutech Project V1 Power Cable at $10,000, which came bundled with their excellent Furutech NCF Power Vault power conditioner I had recently reviewed.

I accepted John's offer reluctantly because I wasn't convinced that power cords of that price would make a commensurate improvement. I also wasn't sure a single power cord would enable me to reach a valid conclusion. In the past, Synergistic Research had supplied enough power cords to feed my system from source to power amp. In the lower to moderate price ranges, the improvements were easily recognized and justified the increased costs. But we all have heard the tales of diminishing returns in high-end audio.

It was again a surprise when John later emailed to ask if it would be OK if he sent two of the new powerChords. Was he reading my mind? Having a pair would enable me to run them to a source and my preamp, or run them to my monoblocks. This flexibility would give me more to work with and help flesh out the review. I was very grateful for the offer.

I've had these power cords in my system far longer than necessary for this review. They arrived in the midst of writing my Montreal 2025 report, which overlapped with the writing of my massive AXPONA 2025 report. The publication of reviews in other journals for the interconnects and speaker cables of this new flagship series only raised my level of guilt. It wasn't until I finally finished the Chicago report for Enjoy the Music.com fans and faced the 'moment of truth' by removing the Audience powerChords from the system, that the compulsion to write the review hit me.

Keep in mind, there is a lot of coin between $2500 and $7500. Aside from the diminishing qualitative returns, there is also a break of reality for most people. If you have to think twice about spending this much, it may not be in your best interest in these times of political and economic uncertainty to audition this cable. But if your finances are sound and the idea of leaving all your money to someone else in the future doesn't excite you, I highly recommend you explore Audience's Front Row Reserve cables.

Veblen Goods
I don't mean to disrespect those who feel spending this kind of money on a power cable is outrageous or foolish for some reason. There was a recent thread on Audiogon Forums started by a guy praising his $50k DAC purchase that triggered the usual responses about the escalating prices of high-end audio gear. One commenter, Bill SW, a contributor with 7 posts, wrote:

"Really funny!  Spending this much on audio gear to chase the illusion of perfect sound is something we should all, at the least, view with skepticism…spending $50K+ for a DAC is buying a Veblen good, IMHO."

I know where Bill is coming from. When I was 50 years old and just getting into this hobby, my cables were homemade with Mogami and Canare wire, which were both a noticeable step up from mid-fi cables with molded connectors. Over time (I'm talking decades here), I learned to trust my ears and moved up the ladder to better quality. So what's this "Veblen good" Bill SW speaks of? From Wikipedia:

"A Veblen good is a type of luxury good, named after American economist Thorstein Veblen, for which the demand increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand, resulting in an upward-sloping demand curve.

The higher prices of Veblen goods may make them desirable as a status symbol in the practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. A product may be a Veblen good because it is a positional good, something few others can own."

Some have argued that college tuitions have fallen into this same pattern, with tuitions raised to increase the perceived desirability of a degree from such an institution. And this, no doubt, happens in many different industries, including this one. Audio reviewers are supposed to sniff out the substance from the snake oil, which is the task at hand. Additionally, over the decades, I've found the high end is very competitive. It's not exactly like drag racing, where an elapsed time determines a winner, but most manufacturers have a keen sense of when they have improved upon their own product and how it compares with their competition. They get feedback from dealers, as well as sales figures, to guide them.

That said, different manufacturers deliver slightly different sound quality based on numerous variables and their own preferences. Some guys make solid-state amps; some guys make tube amps. And some make hybrids. And most make a variety of good, better, and best models. Prices can range from "affordable" to what many would assign to the Veblen sphere. With little effort, you can find a recent review of a competitor's power cord at over $50,000.

The Audience line includes six models starting with the forte f3 powerChord that lists for $249 (1.75-meter) and was given The Absolute Sound Product of the Year award in the power cord category when first released. Clearly, John McDonald wishes to leave no audiophile behind, and in the grand scheme of power cords, the FrontRow Reserve is not outrageous for a flagship product.

Construction
The Front Row Reserve powerChord has a very high-quality appearance and feel. Carbon fiber sleeves at each end, capped with brass-plated retainers emblazoned with "Audience," provide a firm grip for inserting the rhodium-plated copper wall plug and 15 amp (or 20 amp) IEC connector. Beneath the carbon fiber housing is a stainless steel sleeve, which John says is sonically better than brass or aluminum. The wall plug held firmly in the Synergistic PowerCell 14, and the IEC connector held as firmly as any and better than most I have used. (As an aside, the Audience Hidden Treasure AC inlet I have used on my class-leading Audience Hidden Treasure In-Wall 30A AC dedicated line has an exceptionally firm spring-loaded grip.

Internally, there are six 13.5-gauge conductors, each comprised of 38 strands of 99.9999% pure OHNO Continuous Cast Copper, two each for the hot, neutral, and ground runs. The pairs of 13.5-gauge wires are equivalent to approximately 10.5-gauge runs, which yield a current-carrying capacity rated conservatively of 33 Amps.

Unlike the standard Front Row series, a tiny number of OCC silver strands has been added to each model of the Front Row Reserve series. John McDonald wrote: "Each RCA and speaker cable uses just one 28 AWG OCC silver strand, and the XLR cables use two strands, and the 10 AWG Reserve powerChord has four strands, while the vast majority remains OCC copper." John also shared that Audience uses a proprietary extreme high-voltage treatment to smooth the sonic character of the silver—something that Synergistic Research also does to treat their cables.

Each of the six conductors in the power cord is housed in Pure Virgin Cross-linked polyethylene, and a special geometry and spacing are used to minimize magnetic inductance and interaction between the conductors. An oxygen-free copper shielding shunts RFI and EMI noise to ground. Additionally, a proprietary formulation of natural crystals is used in the cable to reduce the effects of RFI/EMI. The cables are given a deep-Cryo treatment and a 3 or 4-day burn-in before shipping. The beneficial effects of natural crystals have been known for at least a decade in audio circles, and I've reviewed a couple of accessory products that use them, with more in the works.

Conspicuously absent on the powerChords are any connections for active grounding systems, tuning bullets, or even a compartment for proprietary technology, as seen on some very high-end power cables. In use, the outer sheathing had a soft, luxurious feel, the weight was about what you would expect, and the flexibility of the cable was pleasantly sufficient for navigating the tight spaces in my rack between my components and the adjacent wall. The absence of any protrusions or other connections on the cable was very welcome when it came time to swap cables.

Proceedings
Unaware that Audience provides a 3 or 4 day burn-in to the cables, I fed the output of my FM-tuner to a Doud passive attenuator and on to my AGD The Audion monoblocks, which were powered by the Audience powerChords. This configuration provided nearly a week of burn-in at various levels without running up my electric bill or wasting the tube life of the Lampizator Amber 4 DAC, Backert Labs Rhumba Extreme 1.4 preamp, or the Manley Mahi monoblocks I've been using lately to power the Acora QRC-2 speakers. As you see, while these are all respectable components, none are likely to be found in systems with power cords as expensive as this one. The story should be telling, I thought.

While there was a noticeable difference between the initial hour of burn-in and the sound quality the next day, the music settled down very quickly to a very high level. I should have suspected they had been previously burned in. With that task accomplished, I returned the rig to its previous configuration with the Mahis replacing the AGD GaNFET monoblocks. Occasionally, I would take breaks from writing the AXPONA report for some casual listening and also to experiment with the Nirvana Audio Chronos I acquired at the show. Months passed to the point where the FrontRow Reserve PowerChords had become my de facto reference. John had mentioned that they begin to settle down in the first 50 hours, but reach a mature sonic bloom between 300 and 400 hours. That path is a subtle one, as you might suspect, and I'm beyond that stage by now.

The Listening
Most audiophiles recognize that it is often the removal of a new component and replacing it with your older one that reveals the greatest differences, and hence, the strengths of the new one. So it was with the FrontRow Reserve powerChord. A $7,500 cable for any purpose is not normally on my wish list, but within a few moments, the recognition of what was missing when I removed the FrontRow Reserve powerChords from the monoblocks caused my eyes to well up. I deeply missed these power cords.

With the $2500 Synergistic power cord, the music was more granular and a bit more forward. In Springsteen's "With Every Wish," the line "…there comes a curse," the word "curse" became unintelligible. In his "57 Channels," the refrain coming from the far left corner of the soundstage was not as complete, and the vocal overdubs at the end of the song were not clearly separated. Microdynamics were not as evident, and the Chinese drum cut did not vibrate as much in my chest. In James Taylor's "Steamroller Blues" from his Live album, the cymbals at the introduction were not as refined and became harsh. Later in that song, the electric guitar jam also came across as harsh.

The three-part harmony of Wilson Phillips on "Daniel" from the Two Rooms CD was more smeared, coming across more like a recording than a live performance. I missed the naturalness of orchestral music and the sense of a string quartet being "live" and "in the room."

Overall, there was a loss of smoothness and an ease of cognitive recognition of both lyrics and timbre that could not be ignored. The loss of excellence of transparency and dynamics emerged only a moment later. I'm being hyper-critical here, but like the song says, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone." The FrontRow Reserve powerChord had raised the bar for my rig, and without them, I felt like someone had robbed my musical bank.

Not being an electrical engineer, it was simplistic to imagine the sound quality with this cable was all due to the lowering of the noise floor, but my emotional response to the music when the powerChords were removed reinforced my confidence in trusting my ears. The improvement they delivered to these mid-range amplifiers, while not completely transformative, was significantly beneficial. It may sound ludicrous to suggest spending more than twice the price of the Manley Monoblocks on power cords for them, but you would likely have to pay more than that to upgrade to finer-sounding tube monoblocks with lesser power cords.

At the Front End
However, there was more work to be done. I installed the Audience cables in my LampizatOr DAC and Backert Labs preamp after listening to my compilation CD with my $2500 Synergistic power cords to establish my reference. It didn't take long to recognize the improvements with the new powerChords. Ivor Tiefenbrun, founder of Linn, famously argued that the front end of a system is the most important. I won't debate that point, but I can say that changes to the front end are easier to evaluate than elsewhere, with the obvious exception of loudspeakers.

With the Audience powerChords in the DAC and preamp, the music became more holographic and smoother. There was a natural separation of voices and instruments. Cymbals were very highly resolved, and a trumpet solo had appropriate bite. Surprisingly, the bass from the electric bass and Chinese drums did not vibrate in my chest, nor did it have as much slam. Presumably, this was because it was more highly resolved and had less energy from distortion. Tonally, they sounded more accurate. Vocal overdubs were easily separated, as was the 3-part female vocal harmony by Wilson Phillips singing Elton John's "Daniel." It was the best I had ever heard it with noticeably better resolution—especially in the "wall of sound" that backed them. With orchestral work, the improvement in spatiality and tonality almost converted me into a classical music fan.

Lest you become disinterested from my comments above about bass slam, let me say I have a new speaker/subwoofer combination in-house for a special project. With higher resolution and greater extension in both the bass and treble, plus more power from other amplifiers, this configuration has delivered the highest sound quality with plenty of bass slam ever experienced in my home. The Audience FrontRow Reserve powerChords at the front end are undoubtedly contributing to that feat. With the smaller woofers and lower-powered tube amps of my reference system, significant bass slam in my large listening room is a definite challenge.

Summary
The Audience Front Row Reserve powerChords took me to a very privileged level in the reproduction of recorded music, whether it was the trickle-down quality it enabled at the front end or the freedom from noise and the refinement it delivered to the power amplifiers. I can imagine the experience would have been even more enthralling had I had enough powerChords for the entire chain. While that would amount to a significant expenditure, if you're using components in the $30k range or higher, that could be a more productive path than spending an even larger amount to upgrade a component or two.

For those who might be downsizing their systems to fewer components, or an all-in-one component, the savings achieved from reducing the number of components might wisely be reinvested in an extraordinary power cable such as the Front Row Reserve. It took the vintage Yamaha receiver in my humble video system to an unimaginable level. While this wasn't necessary to enjoy the Buffalo Bills on route to another victory on Sunday, it sure was fun. In the context of my audiophile rig, it took me deeper into the inner detail of the music with greater resolution and timbral accuracy, and evoked a greater emotional connection with the performances than ever before.

My audiophile journey has taught me that improving the delivery and quality of AC current is extremely important to achieving optimal results. I'm talking about dedicated lines, audiophile quality duplex outlets, power conditioners, grounding systems, AC power cords, and audiophile fuses. I've even achieved a significant boost from an upgraded DC power cable from a separate power supply. Don't overlook your AC power system or sell it short. I've continuously amazed myself with the improvements in sound quality I've achieved with even my mid-level components. If music means as much to you as these cables cost, and you have the means to acquire them, I highly recommend you audition the Audience FrontRow Reserve powerChords.

Specifications
Type: High-end audio power cable
Conductors: 6 each / 38 strand 99.9999% OHNO Continuous Cast Copper
Dielectric: Virgin Cross-linked Polyethylene XLPE
Geometry: frontRow
Wire Current Capacity: 34.7 amps
Shielding: Oxygen Free Copper - Hot Shunt to Ground
Connectors: Audience Rhodium Plated Wall Plug and 15amp or 20amp IEC
Post Production: MORRE Deep Cryo II - EHVP
Burn In: 3 to 4 Days
Available with 15A and 20A IEC connectors.
Price: $7500 for 1.5-meter length

Company Information
Audience
120 N. Pacific Street
K-9
San Marcos, CA 92069

Voice: (760) 471-0202
E-mail: info@audience-av.com 
Website: Audience-AV.com