Recording - March 2016 - 36

B Y PA U L V N U K J R .

RMS with a 50 watt peak; any decent
50 to 150 watt power amp will work,
and said amp need not be expensive.
For this review I used an Alesis RA150
power amp and it worked like a champ.
Not so horrific after all
Look through any gear forum or talk to
an older engineer about the 5C, and
pretty quickly the word "Horrortone" will
enter into the conversation. For decades
the popular myth has been that the 5C
was purposely built and chosen because
it sounded bad. That's probably why my
biggest surprise in this entire review

Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube
A classic reference speaker's triumphant return
In the history of recording studios,
there are two monitor speakers that may
arguably be more famous than the rest.
One is the ubiquitous Yamaha NS-10M,
and the other is the equally commonplace Auratone 5C. While the NS-10M
has long since been discontinued, the
Auratone name is back on a speaker
once more.
It's true that a few companies, most
notably Avant Electronics and Behringer,
have offered up their own take on the
famous 5C Super Sound Cube over the
past decade, filling the gap left by the
Auratone's absence. Most of these are
active monitors with slightly different
sonic signatures than original Auratones.
In this review, however, what we are
looking at is the rebirth of the real deal,
the authentic passive Super Sound Cube.
Auratone is owned and operated by
Alex Jacobsen, the grandson of the late
Jack Wilson, the original owner and
founder of Auratone. It all started in
Jack's garage in Chula Vista, CA, back
in 1958, and by 1960 the famed 5C
Super Sound Cube was born. Still a
family business, Auratone is now located
in Nashville, TN, and after a few years
of research and development the 5C has
been brought back to glorious life.
As Alex points out in the interview at
right, the original 5C was not introduced
as the stalwart studio check box it would
evolve into, but as a basic good-sounding
home auxiliary speaker. A simple singledriver box, it was invented at a time when
36

RECORDING March 2016

mono was the norm. It would have been
used to add extra listening points around
the house or office-rather like how we
use wireless Bluetooth speakers today to
extend our audio reach from our home
entertainment systems.
Of course, that real-world application
is presumably exactly why it would
become such an important reference tool
in recording studios. It simulated listening experiences such as television sets,
radios, car stereos, early boom boxes,
and more.
What's in the box?
Like the original, the reborn 5C is a
6" x 6.5" x 6.5" sealed cabinet design
with a single paper-coned 4.6" speaker.
The cabinet is made of black laminate
covered MDF that is 5/8" thick. It has a
thick rubber pad on the bottom (not on
the original as far as I know) and a pair
of screw-style speaker posts on the back.
It's that simple and sparse!
Note that the originals occasionally
came with woodgrain laminate sides
and even speaker grilles. I asked Alex
about that, and he explained that
Auratone chose to skip the grilles since
90% of studios took them off anyway.
As for the faux wood look, Auratone has
in fact released a few limited runs with it
and may do so again in the future.
The 5C is a passive design with a frequency response of 75 Hz to 15 kHz, an
8Ω impedance, and SPL/Sensitivity of
90 dB @ 1w/1m. It can handle 25 watts

process was that the 5C does not sound
all that bad! No, it won't compete with a
2-way or 3-way pro studio monitor, or
even a decent home hi-fi setup. That said,
despite its single-driver sealed design, the
5C sounds downright pleasant.
I am not alone in my surprise, apparently. It was also a bit of a shock to my
friend, mastering engineer Justin Perkins
(also a former mix engineer at the
famed Smart Studios), who stopped by
my studio to evaluate another set of
monitors reviewed in this issue-the PSI
Audio A14-M, found on page 42.
After years of using and listening to
many of the copies and approximations
on the market, I now find those to be
noticeably brighter, some even bordering on harshness. In contrast, the
Auratone 5C Super Sound Cube has an
even, laid-back quality to it. Mix elements gel together and sit back in the
mix, rather than popping out like on
many of the competing modern variants.
For years the prevailing thought and
challenge has stood: if you get a mix to
sound good on an Auratone, then it
should translate anywhere. That statement
is true, but it's more about getting your
mix properly EQed and balanced rather
than fighting the speaker to sound good.
A place for the Cube
Before going into this review, I was
questioning the necessity of the 5C in
today's studio. My reasoning was as follows. In 2016, even standard car stereos
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - March 2016
