Modest means, immodest scenes. If we remain in the lane of hard experience, our road is meant to be worn down smooth with the soft bigotry of been there, done that. We might as well be on cruise control or auto pilot. If we motor far and wide however, occasionally we'll turn a bend to see vistas quite out of proportion with our dog-eared map of low expectancy. So it was when the AS5 played widely spaced, toed in face on and fronted by a petite €400 pure class A preamp with 18V external SMPS. The resultant shock wasn't one of never having been here before. It came from the low-rent arrival; like driving a jalopy to a private chateau hotel in deep France then being politely greeted by the same liveried doorman who just parked a gleaming Bentley. This was ideally balanced linear utterly 'non-digital' mature sound such as punters of far deeper purses pursue for posh pads. Whilst lacking the first octave as specs tied to Physics mandate, the mid bass suffered no fake elevation to fool perception. It was neither bone dry as high-feedback ultra-damped class D may meter out like a textural miser; nor fat but loose as underdamped no-feedback triodes can be guilty of. The upper end lacked all tizz and splash without suggesting hoodedness or opacity. Gumption and tonal insistence had notched up with the companion active preamp. Unlike most other systems in my crib, this one sounded most impressive with an extra gain stage in the loop. It also built in more headroom. At happy-hour office disco, the N7 sat at 19/30 on its dial. Image specificity and soundstaging were trademark coaxial splendour. Even though technically my already tall stands were still a bit too short for the AS5, the virtual stage centred perfectly on the midline of my 34-inch curved computer monitor. It projected nicely above the cabs' top edges. The musty mandate of ear-level tweeter height needn't be followed to the letter. Where the aune ride felt less aspirated than twitchy racers was in 1st gear. This speaker wants more signal voltage before it stretches its legs fully. It's no hifi whisper wizard but hung surprisingly tight when this nearfield pump primed proudly. It's clearly better at serious sessions than faint background ambiance.
Whilst we might not accord a smaller driver tonal temerity, aune's tuning of class AB, linear power and active analog filtering nixes such preconceptions. It builds in ideally administered tone which already shone with my €399 Audalytic discrete R2R budget DAC. That was key. Other than splurge on the half-width companion N7 preamp, it took no audiophile futzing to arrive at the chateau. Spotify Premium in basic 44.1kHz mode already had the room keys. This was an object lesson in mastery of basic ingredients. It had me forget all about rubber grommets, green idiot lights, rear-mounted power switches, driving masked behind grills and black marks, even DSD512. If you perceive me poking fun at my audiophile conditioning groomed over three decades, well noted. Whilst we could get there with fancier means selected, mixed and matched by ourselves, aune have done all the hard work. It's for those who prefer turn-key assurances because they either don't trust their own ear-given abilities; or couldn't be bothered with trials and errors. But that still begs the question why the AS5 couldn't also be for those who comfortably get such results from passive speakers and separates? Must it always be a chase? What's wrong with an out-of-the-box guarantee and greater simplicity? To be sure, this isn't trying ultra-rez sound which demands careful playlist curation to not overshoot. This is intelligently balanced 'analog' sound without any tubular excess. It's also unconditionally noise-free, rarely a foregone conclusion with active speakers and arguably harder to achieve with linear power. Yet these modest boxes manage.
In lieu of my usual €8'100/pr ModalAkustik MusikBoxx monitors—6" sealed two-ways in a smart acrylic cab of vertically stacked slivers with Mohawk dipole AMT—the AS5 was less resolved but more extended in the bass. The MusikBoxx needs the usual 15" sealed sub. Without it, the aune was obviously less down-low guttural and extended. But adding the $1'450 subwoofer was just a switch flick away. Depending on genre so dialogue vs action-driven DVD, I could leave the Zu Method off or wanted it on because I knew the difference. To be sure, dialogue-centric fare was perfectly fine without it. More epic SciFi spectacles like the below Dune Prophecy simply benefitted from copiously grander cone surface in the LF. No surprise there. Somewhat surprising was this self sufficiency against my usual residents. Though not their equals, the aune didn't hoist the white surrender flag. I could enjoy their performance on its own merits particularly with video's sight priority where most of our brain's processing power goes to the eyes. In short and particularly for more compact TV sound where one sits quite close, the AS5 is a cost-effective problem solver. If the desktop showing was an A+, this tellie take was a B- though any such ratings get confused by wild price discrepancies. If we spend a lot more, we should get commensurately more. So take my scoring in the intended spirit of a relative metric. It's meant to rate my various listening stations whilst assigning basic value sequencing to hopefully be useful.
Another point of distinction? Unlike the two systems to follow, the above 2.1 mix used no external crossover to high-pass the mains. They ran wide open. They didn't benefit from protection against LF beyond their ken where soundtracks inciting gloom, doom and foreboding can slip in infrasonic pedals whilst their heroic brethren dish out submarine torpedo hits, planetary explosions, spacecraft take-offs and other noisy full-range bombast. In that context my B- tally was quite impressive.
