Audience Illuminator Reviews
"The 6moons Blue Moon Award is
bestowed only on components or
music releases of rare excellence.
For ''Outstanding Price/Performance Ratio" in the optical disc resolution enhancement category."
Blue Moon Award -- Aug '04
"Now for the $64,000 question: Is the new Illuminator better than the original? You better believe it. Whether classical, pop or jazz, every disc I applied the AI treatment to displayed easily audible improvements. The discs treated with the new AI displayed greater overall resolution, quieter backgrounds, smoother, less brittle highs and most significantly, an overriding sense of relaxed ease with a more natural flow to music playback. Less effort was required to relax into music or to follow individual strands, be it a rock, symphonic or small-scale chamber recording."
Paul Candy -- Aug '04 Read Full Review
"I consider the Illuminator to be an absolutely indispensable tweak that really does enhance the sound of most CDs far beyond its very modest price. The benefits on the Illuminator on LDs and DVDs is simply extraordinary, easily as good as upgrading to a better model player."
David -- Oct '99 Read Full Review
"Using the 3 "C" criteria - I found out that dynamic contrast, temporal contrast and tonal contrast are all improved. Low level sounds that are not heard before (like small bells, subtle triangle strikes, etc) are now easily audible despite being in the background of much louder signals."
Hyperion -- Nov '99 Read Full Review
"The Auric Illuminator Optical Disk Resolution Enhancement is unique in our experience for the sheer magnitude of the improvement and for the absence of negative trade-offs. The background “grunge” or noise level is greatly decreased, along with a drastic improvement in resolution and clarity without any edginess. Highly recommended."
David Magnan
"No other CD treatment I've tested comes close to the Auric Illuminator."
Lucio Cadeddu -- TNT-Audio.com -- Jun '00
Read Full Review
"When we as audiophile are willing to spend hundreds, if not thousand of dollars to improve our rigs by what many times translates into a miniscule progress toward the end goal of audio nirvana, the Auric Illuminator is a rockin bargain! No audiophiles should be without a kit."
Jeff Parks -Writers Choice Awards -- Dec '04
Print Version
"I have tried the Auric Illuminator on about a dozen other CDs so far, and the improvement is instantly obvious. You don't have to strain to hear it. I was especially surprised at the improvement in the bass, but I suppose it is due to an overall improvement in dynamics, and the bass just improves to a level equal to that of the other ranges. By the way, Auric Illuminator still works wonders on DVDs. After viewing a DVD untreated, I used the Auric Illuminator and watched again. Not only was the audio clearer and more focused, but the video was positively glorious. All the colors were saturated and stood out beautifully. Highly recommended."
Ed Morawski -- Nov '04 Read Full Review
"If you only have $39.95 to spend but want a kick in the pants that offers images and sound as significant as a DVD-player upgrade, Audience's Auric Illuminator should be one of the first things you think about. If you already have a top-flight DVD player and other goodies, the Auric Illuminator will make them even better. The bottom line: I’m applying the Auric Illuminator system to all my favorite and reference CDs and DVDs, and every new disc that comes in is going to get treated too. When you can spend this little and get this much, it’s like, "Duh?!"
Doug Blackburn -- Mar '00 Read Full Review
"The Auric Illuminator from speaker manufacturer, Audience, is a modest looking set of common objects: two plastic bottles with a non-toxic disc cleaning gel; cloths to clean the discs; and a black felt marker with kick-a-poo magic light absorption edging to be applied to your discs. Ordinary looking stuff. Extraordinary results."
Jim Merod -- Sep '00 Read Full Review
"The Auric Illuminator is a benchmark optical disc playback resolution enhancement. It is "jaw dropping" effective and is appropriately named. It improved all aspects of soundstaging with every CD I treated and "illuminated" every instrument in a smooth and focused manner. It removes most of the clouding and smear from older recorded CDs and brings added life, snap and focus to newer CD recordings. It unveils the true timing, depth, and tonal qualities that these recordings were meant to display in their original production or at least brings one damn closer to it."
Jim Dowd -- Jan '00 Read Full Review