Audison Voce Car Speakers – Editor’s Choice

I really like Audison products. Having been fortunate enough to speak with some members of the design team and having toured its facility in Italy on several occasions as well as listening to finished products in many different settings, I have enough working experience of the brand to be able to say that Voce speakers are my favourites.

I first heard a pair in a car in 2013 when writing issue III of Driving Sounds Magazine. The magazine was very much finding its feet at this time. Our car features were still focused on the owner’s personality to demonstrate that car audio isn’t just for weirdos and freaks but also for ordinary people who care about good sound. However, what was missing was any kind of qualitative judgment on what the audio upgrade sounded like.

This all changed when I sat in an Audi TT belonging to a chap called Dave Jones (Immaculate Audio: https://www.drivingsounds.co.uk/articles/archive/issue-3/immaculate-audio ). It was the first time we made time to listen specifically rather than “hear” a featured vehicle. Having been around good quality sound all of my life, I was used to taking it for granted. In this car, I afforded myself the luxury of listening hard to a few tracks I knew well.

It seems corny to say I heard things in familiar recordings that I had not previously heard, but such was the detail presented to me that I was picking up real human artefacts of the recording process that made me want to listen deeper and deeper.

An example of one such artefact appeared to me in the song “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”, featured on the Beatles “Abbey Road” album. The source was CD, as Hi-Res was not yet commercially available. I have always liked the contrast in guitar sound from John Lennon’s rhythm and lead guitar playing. I knew he used the same guitar for both, so the contrast was likely achieved by switching from bridge to neck pickup. On the Voce speakers, I could actually hear him moving the switch. It was remarkable.

I also clearly remember the sound stage presenting tangible depth beyond the front screen and width that appeared outside the vehicle. I attributed the speakers’ ability to not only present sound accurately but also make listening to music more enjoyable.

As a life-long music fan, this was revelatory for me. I think having had lots of exposure to live music in my life has made me a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to sound stage. I prefer to face the stage and expect the instruments to be positioned as I would imagine they were on stage.

Apart from precision in the soundstage, another key feature of the Voce sound for me is its naturality, or how the speakers reproduce the timbre of an instrument. A wooden instrument sounds like it is made from wood, a brass instrument from brass etc. One of my favourite test tracks is Ravel’s Bolero. An abridged version of which was famously used in an ice skating routine by Torville and Dean back in the day. This track tests timbre as instruments take the lead line one at a time, offering the chance for listeners to hear the difference between each woodwind instrument, for instance.

However, Voce’s brilliance is not limited to Orchestral or acoustic music. They also perform well with high-energy music. Rock, for instance, is beautifully unpicked, with the often overcrowded mid-frequencies nicely separated, allowing space for drums and guitars to coexist without swamping. I like to turn off any connected subwoofers when testing a car to find out how much work the woofers are doing. I would be quite happy to listen to most music played through a pair of Voce speakers without a subwoofer. Bass is lustrous and perfectly articulated, although there would not be much content below 60 Hertz.

With genres like electronic music, soundstage comes from the creator’s imagination. There is no right way to mix this music, so producers can go wild with the pan controls. Electronic instruments tend to have a lot more fundamental frequency content with few natural harmonics, so timbre is another area that can be less important. However, the transient response of the speaker is overwhelmingly critical, and again, Voce does this incredibly well.

I am probably sounding like some kind of obsessed fanboy, and perhaps I am. I have even incorporated Voce into my home Hi-fi and would stand them up against other home Hi-fi speakers costing a lot more money. (https://www.drivingsounds.co.uk/articles/archive/issue-10/at-home-in-your-car-2)

Sound is subjective, and there are many different speakers available. Each has its own character, but if I were making new friends, I would be drawn most strongly to the character demonstrated by Audison Voce speakers.