Audience
Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 Personal Reference Monitors
Audience ClairAudient 1+1 V5 Personal Reference Monitors
The 1+1 V5 is a small speaker that plays like a large one. It puts two identical full-range drivers in an 8-inch cabinet, one facing forward and one facing back, in a crossover-free design. Tracking Angle's Ken Redmond, who has spent more than forty years in high-end audio, wrote "This is crazy!" in his first listening notes.
A small cabinet, with one seamless voice.
The Design
The 1+1 V5 is built around Audience's A3S2-16 driver: a 3-inch full-range unit with a patented dual-gap motor, a one-inch voice coil, and a curvilinear titanium cone that, together with the coil, weighs just 2.5 grams. It moves 11 mm in total, a piston excursion more typical of a woofer, and handles 40 watts per driver. Two of them sit at opposite ends of the cabinet, wired in phase, which creates a bi-pole radiation pattern for an expansive, three-dimensional sound field and cancels much of the vibration the drivers would otherwise pass into the box.
The details support that idea. The front and rear baffles are non-parallel to break up standing waves, a 40 Hz high-pass filter protects the drivers, and a voicing circuit with an Auricap XO film capacitor smooths the response. Side-mounted passive radiators extend the bass. The signal path is a low-mass KLEI five-way binding post, Audience mono-crystal internal wiring, and a voice coil and tensile wire in the same material. Because the design is crossover-free, the phase angle stays at zero through the midrange and lower treble.
How It Sounds
Redmond found the V5 natural and coherent, with a midrange that carries vocals and acoustic instruments with clarity and some of the best treble he's heard from a full-range driver. He played it louder than he expected with ease, noticed that it disappeared as a source, and found it filled his 20 by 22 foot room. Audiophile Heaven reached a similar conclusion, finding it capable even with low-power tube amplifiers and a true hi-fi speaker at traditional stereo listening distances.
Where It Fits
Use the 1+1 V5 on a desktop, in a bedroom or office, or as the front end of a small system, where its footprint matters. It's also a capable main speaker in a medium room: Redmond recommends 28-inch stands and a few feet of space behind the speakers so the bi-pole pattern can develop. Audience recommends 15 to 60 watts. For bass-heavy music at high volume or in a very large room, add a subwoofer. Audience also offers upgrade paths for owners of earlier 1+1 models.
Press Recognition
- hi-fi+ Editor's Choice 2026 Award for the ClairAudient 1+1 V5. Read Audience's announcement
- Tracking Angle, Ken Redmond (September 2024). Redmond called the V5 a master class in sound reproduction, with coherence, transparency, and a natural voice rare at its size and price. Read the review at Tracking Angle
- Audiophile Heaven (October 2024), reviewing the 1+1 V5 as a personal reference monitor. Read the review at Audiophile Heaven
Wondering whether the 1+1 V5 suits your room and amplifier, or whether you'd want a subwoofer with it? Give us a call.
Specifications
- Type: Bi-pole monitor with dual full-range drivers and side-mounted passive radiators
- Drivers: Two Audience A3S2-16 3-inch full-range drivers, wired in phase
- Frequency response: 55 Hz to 20 kHz, +/-3 dB
- Impedance: 8 ohms
- Sensitivity: 87 dB (in-room, 1 W at 1 m)
- Suggested amplifier power: 15 to 60 watts
- Dimensions: 8 H x 6 W x 9.75 D inches
- Stand height: 28 inches recommended
- Input terminals: Five-way binding posts
- Country of origin: USA (handmade in San Marcos, California)
