LOL... well, not until we see some frequency response charts from independent testers. ATM they just give the frequency response as 70–20,000 Hz, but we all know those numbers are useless without an actual freq. response chart, let alone a simple basic ±3/6/10 dB rating just to give use some idea of how flat the monitors are and to what extent the the very lows and very highs are underrepresented. If a 70 Hz signal is attenuated by -10 dB, then it's not very good. I'm guessing they'll be more like 80–18kHz ±3 dB at best, but I'd love for Reftone to prove me completely wrong, and I'd buy a pair tomorrow. For now, I'm just going to stick with headphones (which are also single-driver), EQ and a couple of Dayton puck bass shakers that are on their way as I type. That should be close enough.

wow.. i just found out about all this.

basically berhinger/music tribe group just said... heck.. we will not only clone a product but actually grab the name of the company .. (cuz maybe the name auratone wasnt formally registered in europe?)

auratone sued and now.. bam!

Auratone Successfully Defends Trademark in U.S. District Court Against Behringer Parent Company, Music Tribe

https://www.prosoundnetwork.com/the-...ny-music-tribe

man.. theres some serious bad juju w B

Well Thomann now only sells MADE IN USA Auratones, so I guess it's the original company. No trace of a Behringer copy.

Music Store Germany, has Behritone out of stock and American Auratone fully in stock. No mix in the name.

All that is good news.

Music tribes original "excuse" was that they believed Auratone gave up its trademark.

Original Auratone company doesn't exist for a long time.
What you call "MADE IN USA Auratones" are as much as a copy as "Behringer Auratones", both are not made like the originals, different wood, slightly different measurements and different speakers used. And none of them are made by the original company.

Only difference is that one of them is made by the Grandson of the original owner of the deceased Auratone company,
even so it's different companies and different products.

Auratone is gone and the original speakers are not made for a long time, all the rest are copies

That your view. Auratone is alive, and there has been different driver used ( 60s 70s 80s) and now there is the 2014 version. I've never heard anyone point out THE "orginal", version, as there has been so many.

The Auratone company has made a lot of 5C over the years. The last version is made by Alex, running an evolution of the company, they moved to Nashville. Still a family owned, carrying the legacy of Auratone.
To me they'd carry experience, relations, and know-how to do a good 5C.
Tom Elmhirst tried the latest 5C, switched immediately and works with them.
I chose them as well in lieu of pseudo "orginals" because they are way too expensive, and inconsistent. The new 2014 do sound great.

No it's not my view,
everything I said it's true and based solely on Facts!

I now suspect iLCacciLLo, that you have a specific commercial agenda against Auratone. You appear when an Auratone discussion appears and spin your "this ain't Auratone" narrative, solely to discredit this company. It is odd that you completely ignore the conclusion of the Auratone FEDERAL lawsuit that established once and for all it IS the legit Auratone company, a continuation of operations (however small) from founder Jack, through the family to now. The judge issued a statement that says exactly that. THIS is the facts.

Are you and Music Tribe one in the same?

Brad

The only person here that has a commercial agenda with present day "Auratone" it's you. Because you sell those products and want to make more business

You only appear when someone says any facts about Auratone that you think for some reason might reduce your sales.

I never said anything bad about present day Auratone,
I've only said facts.

Original Auratone company doesn't exist for a long time. FACT

New Auratone company is not the same as the original. FACT

Both "Behringer Auratones" and "New Grandson Auratones" use different wood, different dimensions and different speakers than original Auratones. FACT

Original Auratones used different speakers over time. FACT

Even though original Auratones used different speakers, all models sounded similar between them. FACT

Original Auratones and new production Grandson Auratones sound very different. FACT

My only goal is to inform people of the truth, as there's a lot of misinformation and lies surrounding this subject and most of them seem to come from you.

As far as I'm concerned I wish all the best to the present new Auratone reincarnation, and I'm happy that the family of the original owner was able to retain the name rights to "Auratone" and not Uli.

It's just a shame the new speakers are so different, and for that reason worse, than the original Auratone speakers (I have quite a few original versions by the way)

I cannot figure you out. You say a lot of stuff I know NOT to be true and call it facts (in capital letters no less). TO what end? What is the agenda? How could you possibly know more than Jacks family that lived with him and helped him operate the company until he died (and then after)? How can you have a more correct view of truth than the Federal court that poured over thousands of records and evidence and took depositions from a lot of folks? Can't you stop and leave this family in peace? They've been through enough.

So you have purchased a set of the "new" Auratones, and compared them to your "original" versions? Size and sound?

Would the "original" speakers even sound the same 60 years later?
Unless they were hermetically sealed, they will sound different.

To me, the new ones sound pretty much like the old ones. I say pretty much, because a pair of the new ones sound like each other, while most older pairs I've used don't. I see no reason not to get the new ones if you want auratones.

I would guess that after 60 years of use any speaker would age and not sound the same.
But in case of original Auratones they don't have 60 years, production of the original speakers ceased in the early 00s. After that the original company closed down.

A new company owned by Jack Wilson grandson opened some years ago as is doing some new speakers that are different than the original ones and have the Auratone name.

For me they don't work well enough and I would prefer to buy a used pair of original Auratone speakers if I didn't have them already.

If those new and different speakers work out for you that's fine.

THIS IS NOT TRUE. Please beware of this poster who pitching this false narrative.

Here's a simple version of the story.

https://musictech.com/news/industry/...m-music-tribe/

Brad

So what is not true?
please enlighten us

I already told I have no agenda, besides informing people of the truth.
But you have an agenda of spreading Lies to sell more products as you have a direct interest in making people believe these new speakers are the same as the original ones, which they aren't.

You have also an agenda in harassing everyone that writes anything truthful about the new Auratones.
You follow me in this forum and try to harass me as you also harassed Mike Senior from Sound on Sound because he reviewed the new Auratones and found then to be quite different than the Original model and with a frequency response that is not as useful as the original ones.
I found exactly the same when I tried them.

There's also a lot of people that found the same and voice their opinion about it, and then you aggressively attack them.

here is the article:

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews...per-sound-cube

"Mixed Blessing
My biggest concern is that the new Auratone’s extended frequency response didn’t give anything like the mid-range focus that was coming from either the 1980 Sound Cube or the Avantone in my side-by-side comparisons. Partly, this was a simple function of the new speaker’s remarkable spectral extension (particularly at the low end), but I think there’s more to it than that, because there also appeared to be something of a suckout around 500Hz — great for avoiding a boxy tone in general, but with the side-effect that the upper-bass frequencies frequently seemed to dominate over the lower-mid range somehow. Whatever the technicalities, though, the practical outcome is that there were frequently fairly drastic divergences in subjective balance portrayal when switching from the new speaker to either of the others under comparison. In some cases, it was enough that the vocal almost seemed to trade places in the pecking order with the snare, bass, or percussion, and some of my most well-worn reference tracks ended up sounding disconcertingly unfamiliar as a result — tracks I’ve heard on thousands of different listening systems and used extensively for critical mixing comparisons over many years.

As such, despite the legendary reputation of previous Auratone speakers as a benchmark for mass-market translation, I can’t honestly say I’d want to rely on this new incarnation in that role. I think it’s simply too hi-fi sounding and scooped in the low mids. In this respect, both the 1980 Auratone and the MixCube outperformed it during my listening tests. I think it’s also telling that although my two comparison speakers had quite different tonal characters (the mid-range bias of the 1980 Auratone was higher than that of the MixCube, while the latter seemed more understated overall), there were seldom significant disagreements between them about the balance of a given mix’s musical essentials.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t want to carry out critical lead-singer automation tasks on this new Auratone, as the relation between its recessed low mids and pushed 1-2 kHz region seems to have a serious impact on the perceived level of different vocal deliveries and pitch registers. In other words, it’d be easy to over-egg the level of a vocal syllable with a strong 500Hz component, while underplaying a higher note that happened to have plenty of energy at 1.5kHz. It doesn’t help, either, that vocal breathiness comes through very strongly, so it’s possible to be misled that a singer is well upfront even when they have negligible traction in the mid-range. For me, this is very much a dealbreaker, as vocal balancing is the most important task of single-driver monitoring in my own mixing workflow.

The speaker’s mid-range spectral lumpiness also undermines my confidence in it as a tool for mix referencing, because a snare with significant low harmonics, for instance, might not appear as forward in the balance as something lightweight and snappier in the upper-mid range. Clearly there’s no such thing as a truly ‘neutral’ speaker, so such ambiguities arise to an extent with any listening system you use, but it’s a question of degree, and in the case of the new Auratone I personally found mix referencing undesirably hit and miss."

I haven't said anything against what is written in that link.
I also said that I was happy that the family of Jack Wilson got the rights to the name "Auratone" and not Uli Behringer.

What I said is that Jack Wilson company closed down after his dead, and original Auratone speakers 5C are not produced since then.
Jack Wilson grandson opened a new company and he is selling small speakers called also "Auratone 5C" that are quite different than the originals, although have the same name

IIRC it was actually Avantone who licensed the Auratone name but ended up not using it. Behringer created a clone but the nae was close enough that a law suite happened. Avantone couldn't be sued because they were using the name for years before they got into speakers. They've always done great alliances too. Benefits everyone.

The design I'm seeing was Auratone's a couple decades before Behringer made their copy. Behringer only copied these because Avantone is growing so fast in the monitor space. (First with the MixCube and now with the CLA-10s)

Based on this we should expect the BMG-10s sometime next November. We'll see...

Strangely Behringer's "Auratone" website is still up and running:

https://auratone.eu/

i thought the behringer c5a and c50a aren't available anymore and i don't know how i glitched the matrix but last week i ordered from thomann 1x pair c5a, 1x c50a, 1x auratone 5c (active) and the order arrived today ...unfortunately they shipped me just a single c5a instead of the pair but now i have 1x c5a, 1x c50a, 1x auratone 5c here and will record a test and can post it

any suggestions?

I will never buy from a company that is so morally bankrupt and tried to sue GS members. Vote with your wallet….

They know very well what they’re doing and music is karma….keep it good.

Its crazy they can be under court order and still go forward and violate it. The US court was very clear he cannot use the Auratone name.

Brad

auratone.eu is dead, and no single driver design on the behringer site. seems cleared, or am I missing something.

In reading this previous post again, is it possible Thomann bought ALL the remaining fake Auratone inventory?

Thomann only has one "Behringer C50A Studio B-Stock " that has an Auratone logo on it. other than this relic, all Auratone on Thomann is USA made by the original company.

i asked the thomann support, i bought the last ones they had ...but i sent them back, in my opinion they are trash and the real auratones make much more sense

the c5a and c50a had the auratone logo on the pictures but behritone logo on them when i got them

Okay, so maybe false alarm. If the Auratone EU sites are down and these were the last, it was msodt likely Thomann (not Music Tribe) presenting these to market.

Amazing how can they keep spreading bullshit,
the original Auratone company doesn't exist for 25 years...

But Thomann is a big retailer of course they don't care, if Behringer calls one of their Products Auratone they will market it as the original "Auratone Brand", if a guy makes simple speakers in his garage adn calls it Auratone they will gladly market it as the "Original Auratone Company".
Sales is the only thing that matters not the truth

At least for us in this community that are more informed people and share knowledge with one another, we are more informed and less prone yo buy into bullshit

Not sure what you're saying. The market is VERY clear.

I bought the official re-issue, from the Auratone company, family own for more than 50 years.

I believe Thomann sells those, and have no Behringer ones.
I think Brad told us Tom Elmhirst got them to replace his vintage ones.

from the Auratone site:

"In 2005 Jack Wilson passed away while still building speakers by hand in California. While other companies launched their own knockoff versions of the 5C, none were able to accurately match the Auratone sound. Inspired and still seeing the need for the 5C’s in the industry, Jack Wilson’s grandson, Alex Jacobsen, took over the helm at Auratone and launched the new 5C in 2014. Realizing the materials found in vintage models were crucial for the frequency response, Alex seeked out the paper cone material from original sources in the US to authentically recreate the Auratone sound."

"After lengthy testing and re-manufacturing our driver, we were finally able to achieve the purest sound equaling the characteristics of the original 5C Super Sound Cube. Our drivers are custom built in the United States, and the enclosures are handcrafted in our Nashville shop along with assembly and testing."


For me, this is case closed. I couldn't trace any Behringer copy, so Alex and the Nashville company are safe selling the official re-issue.


​

i bought the last behritones from thomann couple weeks ago but sent them back because they are trash

iLCacciLLo
I'd wish you quit spreading bullshit with your "the original Auratone doesnt exist for 25 years".

This entire issue you are arguing (does Auratone exist) and does the family (Jack the founder's family) own the brand Auratone has been discussed and decided in US Federal court. It is settled and part of the public record. Yes, the family proved there was continuous operation from the founder Jack once he fell ill and yes the family owns the brand exclusively. It does not belong to anyone else.

Brad