0 09281 03050 8

0 7

$5.99US $5.99CAN

VOL. TWENTY NINENUMBER TENJULY 2016USA $5.99 CANADA $5.99

®

Ever since Finnish speaker manufactur-er Amphion entered the pro studio markettwo years ago, it’s been one revelationafter another. Paul Vnuk Jr. reviewed theOne18 in March 2015 and the dual-woofer Two18 in March 2016, both incombination with Amphion’s own stereopower amps, the Amp100 and Amp500.Paul was enchanted with the sound of theAmphions, whose design elements areradically different in many ways from cur-rent trends in studio monitor design.This month we’re trying out the small-

est member of the Amphion pro passivemonitor family, the One12, along withthe Amp100 mono amplifiers. And by“we” I mean me. Why should Paul haveall the fun?

Innovation writ smallReaders may remember that Amphion

speakers are designed to provide theirsound through cabinet and element designrather than any sort of onboard electron-ics. Amphion speakers are passivedesigns with no tone controls or room cor-rection circuitry of any kind, just a passivecrossover (in the One12’s case, it’s set to1600 Hz). The 1" titanium dome tweeteris recessed in a Corian waveguide, farenough back so it’s time-aligned with thealuminum woofer (4.5" in the One12’scase) for perfect phase matching.As is the case with other Amphion

speakers, there’s a matching aluminumpassive radiator on the rear of the cabi-net, directly opposite the woofer. Thepassive radiator and sealed cabinet,according to Amphion, provide a morereliable and consistent control of the lowend than one gets with a ported design,making the speakers quite a bit moreforgiving of placement in a room.The One12 is a very small speaker in

comparison to its siblings, measuringonly 10.2" tall, 5.2" wide, and 8.7"deep. Because there’s no onboard poweramp, it’s also quite light, a bit over 13pounds. If portability is at all a concern(for example, if you’re called upon to doengineering work in rooms that don’t

have monitors you know or trust), theOne12 will be a very appealing choice.The One12 has an 8Ω impedance

and a sensitivity of 84 dB at 2.83V/1m.It’s rated to work with power amps from20 to 100 W; for our listening sessions,we paired our One12s up with two ofAmphion’s Amp100 mono amplifiers(see the sidebar). The One12’s frequency response is

quoted as 78 Hz to 20 kHz ±3 dB. Aquick glance at that number might leadone to conclude that these speakers areunusably thin in the low end; after all, 78Hz is nearly two octaves above the lowerlimit of human hearing. Fortunately, weall know that we don’t listen to specsheets, we listen to speakers, right? Right.So—on to the listening sessions!

Power in, ears onThe One12s were connected to the

Amp100 monos via the provided cablingand set up in an equilateral triangleroughly 36" on a side, tweeters levelwith the ears of someone in the sweetspot. They were placed on a pair ofIsoAcoustics Aperta speaker isolators. Iwasn’t the first person to use these speak-ers, so there was no need for a break-inperiod; I was able to start listening imme-diately to a wide variety of music frommy reference library. After about a weekof listening and learning the One12, Istarted mixing on them and comparingmy work with my usual small referencemonitors, followed by checking the trans-lation of mixes done on the One12 withlarger (8" woofer) monitors.I suppose I should have been pre-

pared for what I got, having editedPaul’s reviews of the One18 andTwo18. I wasn’t. My first listening ses-sion of several hours passed with mescratching my head and saying tomyself, “I don’t get it. There’s no wowfactor here, no solid powerful bass thatpushes me back in my seat, no attention-getting high sparkly treble, no earwormsonic signature... so why can’t I turnthese speakers off?”

It took me a while to realize that whatI was hearing wasn’t the speaker... itwas the music. I was being presentedwith the audio of albums I knew andloved, with detail and precision andnuance. I never stopped to think aboutwoofers or tweeters or crossovers; I wastoo busy thinking about Paul McCartneyand Johnny Cash and Pink Floyd andNeko Case and Yes and Aga Zaryanand Tangerine Dream and Peter Gabrieland Shirley Bassey and Renaissanceand... you get the idea.It was fun to compare my listening ses-

sion notes with Paul’s findings and noteseveral areas where we were in completeagreement, although my wording wasoften pithier than his. Some excerpts:

“Where’s the sweet spot? Insane! It’sALL sweet spot”: I learned, as Paul did,that the combination of the passive radia-tor and the wide waveguide for the tweet-er produced a genuinely usable sweetspot that was marvelously wide and deep.To say that these speakers were forgivingof the room acoustics would be an under-statement... presentation of highs andmids and lows remained balanced evenwhen I went as far to the left or right asone of the speakers. I had to get out near-ly that far before I heard any issues withstereo imaging, which was rock-solid.

R E V I E W S B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Amphion One12 Passive Monitors (and Amp100 mono)

The unmistakable Amphion sound goes mobile

Excerpted from the July edition of REcoRding Magazine 2016©2016 Music Maker Publications, inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 idylwild Trail, Boulder, co 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-954-653-3927 or www.recordingmag.com

These speakers won’t turn a horrible roominto Abbey Road Studio A, but they’llallow more than one person in any roomto reliably hear the same thing at thesame time.

“Mids glorious mids”: Anssi Hyvönenof Amphion has been quoted as sayingthat the 2–5 kHz region is the most criti-cal for human hearing, and first andforemost a speaker must present midswith detail and accuracy. This was theroot of my transparent and immersive lis-tening experience with the One12s...vocals, guitars, drums, winds, piano,organ, strings, they all live and interactin the mids, and if you can get the midsright in a mix, you’re practically all theway there. The high treble was clearand present without being obtrusive, butoh, those mids....“No low end boom. Absolutely no

damns were given”: With a 3-dB-downpoint of 78 Hz, I wasn’t expecting a lotof thunder from the One12s. What I gotwas surprising and gratifying: those all-important mids included upper overtonesand harmonic structure of instrumentsthat lived in the two octaves below whatI was hearing. Bass guitar and uprightbass, low piano notes, kick drum, wereall present and felt balanced, eventhough I wasn’t hearing the fundamental.I’ve had this experience with lows onlyonce before—with the tiny Genelec8010A, which presented a very differentlistening experience than the Amphions.“Translates way better than Google”:

Because of this “filling in” of missing fre-quencies, it was actually startling to hearhow little I had to tweak my mixes forthe really deep lows. Whether on full-range headphones or listening to the 8"monitors, the lows were there, onlyrequiring subtle bumps or dips (usuallyon the thump of the kick or low notes ona 5-string bass) to bring them into line.“Loud sounds good. Soft sounds good.

Mix soft, sounds good loud; mix loud,sounds good soft”: It’s quite surprisinghow the delivery of audio through theOne12 resists the usual monkeyshines ofthe Equal Loudness Contours. I think it’sbecause the speaker concentrates sohard on delivering accurate mids, andthere’s no extreme low end to gobananas when they’re turned up loud.Regardless of the reason, the factremains that these speakers can be runat 85 to 90 dB and give great results...or turned down to a lovely and unfatigu-ing 75 dB and still give great results,hour after hour.

ConclusionsOkay, I am seriously impressed. These

are not inexpensive speakers, especiallywhen you consider the cost of amplifica-tion as well—a fully tricked-out stereosetup like the one we reviewed would

cost about $2800. But statements like“they sound like a million bucks” justdon’t work here.I’ve heard speakers that sound like a

million bucks; I’ve also heard speakersthat sound like hammered tinfoil. In bothcases, I’ve heard speakers. The One12 isthe first speaker I can remember hearingthat has no obvious sound of its own... itjust presents my music so I can work onit. That’s one heck of a revelation.

Price: $750 each

More from: Amphion, www.amphion.fi

The Amp100 monoFor this review, Amphion provided a

pair of Amp100 mono block amplifiers($650 each). Effectively equivalent tothe firm’s stereo Amp100 sliced in half,the Amp100 mono comes in a neatblack aluminum case with built-in heatsink fins that weighs only one pound.There’s a single white power-on LED onthe front face, and the rear has an XLRinput, a Neutrik Speakon locking output,and a standard IEC power socket withpower switch. There are no controls atall: turn it on and feed it audio.The spec sheet is impressive: 50 W

RMS into 4Ω at 1% THD, 115 dBdynamic range, and a frequencyresponse that’s flat out to 100 kHz inde-pendent of load. I didn’t do any benchtests of the Amp100 monos, but foundthey paired well with the One12 moni-tors. I could drive them pretty hard andhit levels well above the OSHA limit of90 dB SPL at one meter with none of thesigns of an amp working too hard.It’s true that the One12 will work with

any good power amp that’s properlyrated for its impedance and power han-dling capability, but if your existing mon-itors are all active and you don’t havean amp to spare, consider pairing yourOne12s with the stereo Amp100($1300) or with a pair of theseAmp100 mono blocks. There’s some-thing to be said for simplicity and for anamplifier that’s designed and optimizedfor a particular speaker design.—MM

Excerpted from the July edition of REcoRding Magazine 2016©2016 Music Maker Publications, inc. Reprinted with permission.5408 idylwild Trail, Boulder, co 80301 Tel: (303) 516-9118 Fax: (303) 516-9119 For Subscription Information, call: 1-954-653-3927 or www.recordingmag.com