Recording - July 2016 - 28

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
Ever since Finnish speaker manufacturer Amphion entered the pro studio market
two years ago, it's been one revelation
after another. Paul Vnuk Jr. reviewed the
One18 in March 2015 and the dualwoofer Two18 in March 2016, both in
combination with Amphion's own stereo
power amps, the Amp100 and Amp500.
Paul was enchanted with the sound of the
Amphions, whose design elements are
radically different in many ways from current trends in studio monitor design.
This month we're trying out the smallest member of the Amphion pro passive
monitor family, the One12, along with
the Amp100 mono amplifiers. And by
"we" I mean me. Why should Paul have
all the fun?
Innovation writ small
Readers may remember that Amphion
speakers are designed to provide their
sound through cabinet and element design
rather than any sort of onboard electronics. Amphion speakers are passive
designs with no tone controls or room correction circuitry of any kind, just a passive
crossover (in the One12's case, it's set to
1600 Hz). The 1" titanium dome tweeter
is recessed in a Corian waveguide, far
enough back so it's time-aligned with the
aluminum woofer (4.5" in the One12's
case) for perfect phase matching.
As is the case with other Amphion
speakers, there's a matching aluminum
passive radiator on the rear of the cabinet, directly opposite the woofer. The
passive radiator and sealed cabinet,
according to Amphion, provide a more
reliable and consistent control of the low
end than one gets with a ported design,
making the speakers quite a bit more
forgiving of placement in a room.
The One12 is a very small speaker in
comparison to its siblings, measuring
only 10.2" tall, 5.2" wide, and 8.7"
deep. Because there's no onboard power
amp, it's also quite light, a bit over 13
pounds. If portability is at all a concern
(for example, if you're called upon to do
engineering work in rooms that don't
28

RECORDING JULY 2016

have monitors you know or trust), the
One12 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 from
20 to 100 W; for our listening sessions,
we paired our One12s up with two of
Amphion's Amp100 mono amplifiers
(see the sidebar).
The One12's frequency response is
quoted as 78 Hz to 20 kHz ±3 dB. A
quick glance at that number might lead
one to conclude that these speakers are
unusably thin in the low end; after all, 78
Hz is nearly two octaves above the lower
limit of human hearing. Fortunately, we
all know that we don't listen to spec
sheets, we listen to speakers, right? Right.
So-on to the listening sessions!
Power in, ears on
The One12s were connected to the
Amp100 monos via the provided cabling
and set up in an equilateral triangle
roughly 36" on a side, tweeters level
with the ears of someone in the sweet
spot. They were placed on a pair of
IsoAcoustics Aperta speaker isolators. I
wasn't the first person to use these speakers, so there was no need for a break-in
period; I was able to start listening immediately to a wide variety of music from
my reference library. After about a week
of listening and learning the One12, I
started mixing on them and comparing
my work with my usual small reference
monitors, followed by checking the translation of mixes done on the One12 with
larger (8" woofer) monitors.
I suppose I should have been prepared for what I got, having edited
Paul's reviews of the One18 and
Two18. I wasn't. My first listening session of several hours passed with me
scratching my head and saying to
myself, "I don't get it. There's no wow
factor here, no solid powerful bass that
pushes me back in my seat, no attentiongetting high sparkly treble, no earworm
sonic signature... so why can't I turn
these speakers off?"

It took me a while to realize that what
I was hearing wasn't the speaker... it
was the music. I was being presented
with the audio of albums I knew and
loved, with detail and precision and
nuance. I never stopped to think about
woofers or tweeters or crossovers; I was
too busy thinking about Paul McCartney
and Johnny Cash and Pink Floyd and
Neko Case and Yes and Aga Zaryan
and Tangerine Dream and Peter Gabriel
and Shirley Bassey and Renaissance
and... you get the idea.
It was fun to compare my listening session notes with Paul's findings and note
several areas where we were in complete
agreement, although my wording was
often pithier than his. Some excerpts:
"Where's the sweet spot? Insane! It's
ALL sweet spot": I learned, as Paul did,
that the combination of the passive radiator and the wide waveguide for the tweeter produced a genuinely usable sweet
spot that was marvelously wide and deep.
To say that these speakers were forgiving
of the room acoustics would be an understatement... presentation of highs and
mids and lows remained balanced even
when I went as far to the left or right as
one of the speakers. I had to get out nearly that far before I heard any issues with
stereo imaging, which was rock-solid.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - July 2016