The AudiaZ Cadenza finally took longer to find their way to Gröbenzell than expected, but in return, I gave them a listen through more vinyl records than with any other test object in recent years. Moreover, they were my speaker of choice for a number of reviews. So I may state straight away that a living room-friendly audiophile gem is awaiting its discovery.

In the article about my visit to Chiemsee Hifi respectively AudiaZ I commented already on the company history of the speaker manufactory from the Alpine foreland, so here again briefly summarized: Since 1995 Dr. Helmuth Weber and Günter Hartl develop and manufacture loudspeakers as a team. By the year 2000, they established the civil-law partnership Hartl & Weber Audio-Design GbR, which then began with a (small) series production. Shortly after the company's founding, the awareness level in Germany of the name AudiaZ expanded thanks to positive press reports about their exclusive loudspeaker models. So it happened that after a colleague’s enthusiastic review during my work for a print magazine at that time, I presented Mr. Hartl and Mr. Weber with an award for their Aurea speaker model. Already back then, the two relied on the well-reputed drivers from specialist Accuton. Since they didn’t want to compromise on the internal wiring either, they developed their own flat ribbon cable, which excels through polished silver conductors surrounded by extruded Teflon with a porous structure. The high percentage of air in the insulating material ensures a very low dielectric constant. By the way, all AudiaZ cables are manufactured by the specialists from GORE. The assembly itself is then carried out in Rosenheim. The most successful market for AudiaZ cables, as Helmuth Weber reported, has been Hong Kong.

The Cadenza is the latest creation from the house of AudiaZ and has officially been available since the beginning of the year. It succeeds the just mentioned Aurea, which was also equipped with two 17-centimeter woofers. Helmuth Weber took over the shaping from the ETA and explains this move as follows: "The triangular shape of the baffle [for the midrange and tweeter units] with the edges beveled to the rear not only prevents unintended edge reflections, but also avoids an increase in sound pressure due to parallel cabinet walls, the so-called "baffle step". Due to the inclination of the baffle to the rear, the voice coils of the tweeter and the midrange drivers lie on the same plane, their sound fractions thus adding up perfectly in time and phase." And this is how the developer explains the rather unusual arrangement of the woofers: "The two bass drivers radiate time-coherently as well and excite the room modes in the low frequency range more evenly than two bass drivers installed on top of each other in one plane due to the 90 degree offset arrangement. Cabinet vibrations are also significantly less excited by the V arrangement of the woofers than with a usual twin positioning (the effect is comparable with a motorcycle engine with a V arrangement of the cylinders)."

Unfortunately, Helmuth Weber omitted to bring along the crossover to the photo session. At least I came to know that it features an impedance linearization, in order to make the Cadenza an easy-to-drive load also for tube amplifiers. AudiaZ sources capacitors from Mundorf, Intertechnik and Duelund, mica capacitors from BCM, metal foil resistors from Isabellenhütte and foil coils again from Mundorf. No cutbacks are made on the cabinet either: AudiaZ gets it manufactured abroad in the EU from high-density maple multiplex boards. The chamber for the Accuton Cell midrange driver is additionally lined with a heavy and elastic composite material. It should be clear by now that Helmuth Weber doesn’t leave anything to chance in the selection of the damping materials as well – three different absorber materials are used in the three chambers. As one would expect, for the binding posts AudiaZ makes use of WBTs. The silver interior cabling I already mentioned before. Since even the version in high-gloss ebony veneer is not subject to a surcharge compared to the piano lacquer versions in white and black, the list of possible options is extremely short: The customer can only choose between ceramic and diamond tweeters, while the latter requires an investment of an additional 8,000 euros. After paying a visit to my listening room, Helmuth Weber decided to bring along the variant with the diamond tweeter to Gröbenzell.

At my first contact with the almost finished Cadenza at Chiemsee Hifi last October, it became quickly apparent to me that the decision for the tweeter I have been familiar with for almost a decade was the right one. For the latest transducer from AudiaZ succeeded in merging the Accuton drivers, which are not so easy to get a grip on, into a coherent unit. By the way, it wasn't just a one-time meeting in Rosenheim: Helmuth Weber and I got to talk shop on the subject of streaming and subsequently made one or the other device available to each other for testing. During my last visit to the AudiaZ listening room, this then allowed streaming at a very high level when listening to the Cadenza with songs I was familiar with - thanks to Qobuz. By then, much sounded so right to my ears that I could already have started writing a very positive review. But that’s not the style Hifistatement is known for. You can only assess really well-founded statements if the test object is the only unknown variable in the system – regardless of how well you might like the result in a foreign environment. So I asked Helmuth Weber to bring the Cadenzas over and set them up so that he would be satisfied with their performance. But that turned out to be a little more complicated than I expected, because he insisted on not finally aligning the speakers until they had acclimatized for 48 hours in my listening room. As reasons for this, he named the sedation after the transport and the influence of air pressure. Fortunately, the way from Rosenheim to Gröbenzell isn't that far...

This gave me two days to align the Cadenzas, which had been positioned just for the sake of it, to the positions where almost all the speakers in my room perform at their sonic best. In the process, I angled the AudiaZs much more inwards than their developer recommends in the user manual. But this way they created the illusion of a stage with great depth during the respective music pieces and didn't even allow to sense their own positioning anymore. This set-up then also found Helmuth Weber's approval. In any case, the Cadenzas do not rank among the mimosas in the world of transducers, where a few millimeters forward or backward, further to the right or left and a few degrees more or less of angling-in decide sonically about good and bad. Might this be due to the angled, triangular baffle? Of course, a few percent more euphony can be teased out of the AudiaZ through a meticulous positioning, but without it they still grant quite a lot of freedom when being integrated into the room.

However, from experience, the coupling of the speakers to the floor tiles is problematic in my room, as the ground under them is not homogeneous due to the underfloor heating. The Cadenza, in the bottom of which the opening of the bass reflex compartment is located, comes with stainless steel feet or alternatively with Antispikes from Audioplan. For now, Helmuth Weber had chosen the hard coupling. Since the feet from Harmonix, first the TU-666ZX and then later on the TU-666M had both proven themselves very well under the Kawero! Classic , we now try the TU-666M – or better by their full name: BeauTone Million – under the Cadenza: The timbres get an even more harmonious appearance, the spaces seem larger, the playback becomes even more coherent. I would have been entirely satisfied with what has been achieved so far, but Helmuth Weber still misses that little bit more of resolution and brilliance in the high frequency range. Especially with female singers, whose way of performance he particularly cares about, his Cadenza could go one better. And he quickly convinced me of it: He exchanged the Goebel Lacorde Statement for an AudiaZ silver speaker cable and voices sounded just as the Cadenza's creator wanted. However, I must confess that I later stepped back to the Lacorde cables, since a little more pressure in the lows and completely seamless dynamics are more important to me than beautiful voices.

But before I get bogged down in matters of taste: The Cadenzas react very finely to changes in the upstream system. By opting for the coupling to the floor or selecting the speaker cables, one is able to fine-tune the sound, which stays always coherent, to your liking without altering the rather good-natured, never nervous, holistic character of the Cadenzas. This makes them ideal for unstrained, relaxed long-term listening. Thanks to their high, but never overanalytical resolution capabilities, their excellent spatial imaging and their dynamic enthusiasm, the Cadenzas retain the tension high even for hours.

When it comes to perfecting his loudspeakers or the complex topic of streaming, Helmuth Weber is a driven man – in a positive sense: Currently, he is experimenting with clocks, power supplies, modifications of switches and media converters. In addition, he is developing AudiaZ digital cables intended for a wide variety of applications. After having integrated the Cadenzas into my listening room successfully, he installed a number of his current "toys" into my system – all at the same time. Then, step by step, we returned to the initial configuration. And each time we did that, the Cadenzas made the changes reliably audible.

As was to be expected, we were partly controversial about the changes: On one side there was the admirer of female voices, on the other side the lover of transients that come as close as possible to those at a real concert. In any case, I have kept the clock cable from AudiaZ for a more detailed study. And I could also imagine to incorporate Weber’s modification of the SOtM switch in my own device. A side effect of the many concentration-consuming comparison tests was that I came to build up more and more confidence in the Cadenzas: They make even the smallest change in the audio chain dependably audible – even though I am convinced that they were primarily designed as a means of enjoyment rather than as an analysis tool. Anyway, for my part I had a very good feeling when I used the AudiaZ speakers for testing the Audioquest Thunderbird 48 (HDMI).

On the first few days, I of course listened to all the pertinent test tracks - without being disappointed even once. Well, if my memory serves me right, my Epoque Aeon Fine, which settles in a several times higher price range, still performs with a tad more liveliness and fine detail. Also real and virtual rooms appear a touch larger through the bending wave transducer. But such minor aspects are no longer an issue when one spends more time with the Cadenza and the music, rather than trying to track down differences with the same music pieces over and over again. Fortunately, I was given about two weeks before the Cadenza had to set off for the photo studio. And during those days, I listened to music significantly more often than usual. This was partly because I wanted to burn-in Soundsmith's Strain Gauge, but also because I kept coming across forgotten vinyl treasures. And the majority of them were a lot of fun thanks to the Cadenza, because it's the overall package that fits: There is no particular frequency range calling for attention, none of the three driver sections pushes to the fore. The Accuton drivers, which are sometimes alleged of a certain coldness in the one or other internet forum, have been melted by Helmuth Weber to an incredibly pleasing, seamless unit: When my old records take me out to indulge in reminiscences, there is not the slightest thought about the technical aspect of the musical performance.

No wonder, then, that I wanted to enjoy the Cadenza even after work: For an evening aperitif, I chose a rarely heard record by Wolfgang Puschnig and Wolfgang Mitterer to go with a Frizzante "Libellenteich" (dragonfly pond) from the Austrian "Weinviertel" (Wine Quarter) region, mainly because it was recorded live in natural acoustics, in the parish church of Lienz in Tyrol. The instrumentation is unusual, but quite exciting: alto saxophone, organ and computer. In 1985, however, music was not simply recorded by computer: It was previously produced in the Elektron music studio in Stockholm, as the liner notes reveal. The fact that obsoderso was released on the Moers Music label should have been a warning to me, but unfortunately I didn't pay attention to the label. Hadn't I given the record a listen, my spouse and I would have missed the exquisite spatial depiction of the organ and saxophone. The sometimes brute intonation of organ and electronics made us cringe in our listening chairs. The title track is certainly nothing for the faint-hearted, but musically it's an exciting contemporary document and sonically - not least thanks to the AudiaZ Cadenza - a true pleasure. In any case, we survived the whole side of the record, and then satisfied the desire for something more harmonious with the Speakers Corner LSP reissue of Henry Mancini's score to The Pink Panther. Especially if you've seen a movie of the series not long before, you can't help but go into raptures in light of the timbres, dynamics, and rhythmic intensity when playing the title tune over a good system. But no matter if you opt for unwieldy sound experiments or sweetly arranged film music: The Cadenza convinces with every kind of music.

I must confess that I have worked with the AudiaZ speakers very little. Positioning the Cadenzas in the listening room, choosing the speaker cable and finding the correct coupling to the floor were tasks that Helmuth Weber and I - as already mentioned - ticked off together right on the first day. And we did that so quickly that we still had a few hours left for experimenting with digital source devices. In the following I didn't have to worry about the AudiaZ any further. Whether it was about testing other components or just enjoying the music, the Cadenza simply met all expectations, which were certainly not low. There was really no need for additional experiments or readjustments. May it be either in terms of handling or performance: The Cadenzas stay nobly in the background and give the music a grand entrance.