 2003
Product of the Year: Amphion Xenon Loudspeakers
We live in an age where it is increasingly hard to
buy a bad-sounding loudspeaker. There's a broad area of consensus on what
constitutes a "good" loudspeaker, so if you go by the book, you'll end up with a
speaker that measures well and offends nobody.
But that doesn't mean you'll end up with a great
loudspeaker. Greatness is an elusive quality.
To achieve greatness you have to venture off the map.
Or, perhaps, go to Finland, because the Amphion Xenon comes as close to greatness as any loudspeaker
I've heard all year -- maybe a lot longer than that.
The Xenon is an elegant floorstander that is configured
differently from just about any other three-way you're likely to have ever encountered.
Its 8" aluminum woofer is side-mounted and its 6.5" aluminum midrange driver is
positioned above its 1" tweeter, which is recessed in a contoured waveguide.
That waveguide -- and a pair of backwave-leaking perforated triangular panels mounted to
the speaker's side walls behind the midrange driver -- are the keys to the speaker's
hypercardioid radiation pattern.
Couple all of that technical gobbledygook with a minimal
crossover that incorporates some radical notions about human hearing, and you get a
speaker design that ventures into some extremely new territory. But it's instantly
recognizable: It sounds a lot like music.
Plus, the Xenon is an extremely handsome loudspeaker. And,
at only $4699-USD/pair ($4055 in black or silver laminate), it's almost too good to be
true.
It sounds good and it measures like a dream, but I don't
just like the Xenon because it does no wrong -- I love it because it gets so much right.
Great speakers aren't the ones that do no wrong; they're the ones that glorify the music.
By glorify, I don't mean making bad recordings sound
good. That's just wrong. But most of us don't love music for intellectual reasons (at
least not solely); we love it with our hearts. The Amphion Xenon doesn't just reproduce
music we can respect, it reproduces music we can love, which is far rarer.
And for that reason, it's the 2003 Product of the Year --
not so much because I love it (which I do), but because I love the beautiful music
it makes.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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