I've been told that my SoundStage! review of Amphion's Argon2 loudspeakers about eight years ago is what put them on the map. I don't believe that's true because one review might get a company noticed, but it won't make them a landmark. What puts a company on the map is having good products to start out with, which is what Amphion had, and then continuing to improve on them year after year. The responsibility for the company's success and the credit for getting them on the map therefore lies with their leader. In Amphion's case, that's Anssi Hyvönen, whose vision has made them what they are today. Believe me when I tell you that Anssi and Amphion have come a long way.
I first met Anssi almost a decade ago, when High End was held in Frankfurt. Back then, Anssi was quiet and reserved, almost shy, but he was eager to show the products his company had been developing. At that time, their display consisted of not much more than a pair of bookshelf speakers on a stand. They were an unknown company from Finland with no real track record and no money for heavy promotion -- and Anssi knew it, but I'm not sure he wanted everyone else to know it. But from the get-go, I could tell from a quick listen to the speakers there that they had a good product. It was enough for them to start.
When I requested a speaker for review, Anssi obliged, but I couldn't tell if he was excited about the prospect. He agreed to send the Argon2, but said little else. Looking back, I suspect he was nervous -- no surprise given that he was sending his pride and joy to a person he didn't really know. And when the first review sample arrived slightly damaged from being mishandled by UPS, I could tell that he was genuinely worried. In fact, Anssi told me some years later that he thought that the review would end right there, or if I wrote something it would be bad, and that would be that.
But that didn't happen. Accidents happen and that speaker was simply fixed and then reviewed as well as measured, receiving high praise and awards from us: a Reviewers' Choice nod as well as our end-of-the-year Best Product Debut award. We had no choice -- the Argon2 was that good, and I stand by that review to this day. Amphion speakers then started turning up in reviews in other publications, and the company had a presence at all the major trade shows. Many people assumed that we reviewed many Amphion speakers since that initial one, but we didn't. We requested more speakers, but in all these years we've reviewed only the Argon2 Anniversary and the Xenon, which were written about by S. Andrea Sundaram and Wes Phillips, respectively. That will change next month, though, when Philip Beaudette's review of the Argon3 appears on SoundStage! along with NRC measurements. After that, we're hoping they'll send the floorstanding version of it, the Argon3L.
Enough of the history. Today, Amphion is a force at High End with a high-quality product line that's distinctive in appearance as well as performance, and they have a product display that is on the cutting edge. There's also a new-and-improved Anssi Hyvönen, who is no longer the shy Finn eager to simply show his product line, but is a proud company president with a message for the world: "music is everyman's right." It appears at the beginning of their new brochure. The quality of Amphion's product line was clear to me at the start, but the vision of the company wasn't clear to me until today when I picked up the brochure and asked Anssi about it.
I learned that Anssi's not just a loudspeaker maker -- he's a visionary who believes that music, like the forests of Finland, is something that everyone should be free to enjoy. He also feels that music not only belongs to all of us, but listening to it can be beneficial to our well-being. Amphion's way to bring music to the masses is to ensure they build speakers that everyone can afford, and they make this clear in their brochure: "Amphion creates loudspeaker solutions which enrich people's lives by providing a means to experience the beauty of pure natural sound in their homes -- at any time -- without unreasonable financial sacrifices."
But being affordable isn't enough. Anssi believes that although music is everyone's right, it shouldn't be a one-man-alone-in-his-listening-chair type of thing. Rather, music is something that should be enjoyed by family and friends. Therefore, Amphion works to make their speakers attractive by designing them to be unobtrusive, and by making them in a variety of finishes and colors. They showed mostly white cabinets at High End, but the company offers many more options, along with funky grille colors to really dress things up.
Amphion also conveys this message by showing their products in cutting-edge displays that are night-and-day better than what they showed with in Frankfurt almost a decade ago, which is precisely why I'm singling them out this year as a Standout Demo. Their large display room at HE 2010 was not only spacious but also unique in the way they decked it out with items from Finnish designer Eero Aarnio to complement the speakers and their palette of available colors. If you've read any of my show reports before, you'll know I'm a big proponent of bold, original, attractive displays. Amphion, like Canada's Totem Acoustic, a company I've praised for the way they're showcasing their company and products, is taking positive steps to make their products more palatable for the public -- without selling out.
Flip the Amphion brochure another page and you'll read about how the company works to create speakers that better integrate in the home environment, and will do "everything except compromise on sound quality." This was readily apparent when listening to the two systems set up on opposing sides of the room. On the one side was their statement Krypton3 loudspeakers, which start at € 14.900 per pair.
One the other side were the more affordable Argon3L loudspeakers priced at € 2699 per pair. Both systems featured Vitus Audio electronics, which come from Denmark and also come in variety of colors (silver, white, black, red, gold, dark grey, etc.), and both systems sounded remarkably similar -- a testament to the fact that for any speaker company to have a successful product line, their speakers should have a "family sound." In other words, they all sound similar regardless of price. I characterize Amphion's family sound with these words: quick, clean, neutral, transparent, and precise.
It surprises me to think that almost ten years have passed since we first found Amphion. Time flies. But time has also been good to Amphion and the SoundStage! Network. We've both grown and we've both developed a stronger voice and are willing to deliver a message that better explains what we're about. This once-fledgling Finn company has grown to become a force that's combining sound with style, and they're leading their charge with their belief that "music is everyman's right." With that kind of attitude, I suspect they'll find even more followers in the years to come.
I described the MBL room as "a great success"; this one is truly a "success story." [www.amphion.fi]
. . . Doug Schneider
das@soundstagenetwork.com
