Floor Loudspeaker Reviews

One of the things I value most in life is clarity. In my work, in my intellectual pursuits, and in my relationships, I try to cut through the noise and find the place where I can clearly see facts, goals, feelings, the big picture. If I can find clarity, it's much easier to form opinions, make plans, and take action. Success becomes more likely.

In audio reproduction, my values are similar. I can't enjoy music if the system is producing a clouded, muddy, overly warm, or otherwise unclear sound. I want the electromechanical representation of music to be richly detailed, sharply focused, and full range in dynamics and frequency. In that kind of all-encompassing and attention-demanding aesthetic, I can truly hear what the music is about. Under those conditions, the nature of the recording—good or bad, craft or crud—is plainly heard (footnote 1).

Clarity is a tall order for audio components, especially loudspeakers. Speakers don't just translate electrical energy into mechanical energy (sound waves); they must also fight gravity (metaphorically) and obey the laws of physics at every step. A design or build can go wrong in so many ways. What looks good on paper may not sound good moving the impure air of real-world listening spaces.

Every loudspeaker inherently has a voice, a sound unique to its drivers, cabinet, and crossover network (or in the case of digital speakers, the digital signal processing that performs about the same function), and how they all combine. That "voice" sounds different to each of our systems in each of our listening rooms. Full-range speakers in particular interact with rooms in important ways, which makes a full-range speaker's voice especially room-dependent. Absolute clarity is elusive—likely unattainable—so it's not a cross to die on.

Which doesn't mean we should give up. In any good listening space and system, any number of speakers may sound superb. In a large-enough room, it is possible to achieve, at least to my satisfaction, a full-scale, richly detailed, lifelike sound. There are loudspeakers out there that can deliver it. The trick is to find them.

A contender from Finland
Amphion speakers are designed and made in Kuopio, a city of about 125,000 in the lower middle of Finland. It's a nice place, says Wikipedia (footnote 2): "According to the Kuntarating 2017 survey, Kuopio has the most satisfied residents among [Finland's] 20 largest cities, and according to the 2018 survey, Kuopio is the best city for property investors." Amphion was founded in 1998 by Anssi Hyvonen, the company's CEO. Though perhaps best known in the pro-audio market, the company makes home hi-fi speakers as well.

I have used Amphion Two18 and One18 studio monitors since 2015 (footnote 3). Used nearfield, those speakers are phenomenal, revealing everything I need to hear to make mixing, mastering, and prodution decisions. In the studio, I currently use the Two18s paired with a Benchmark AHB2, a power amplifier, which provides more than enough superclean, neutral, and fast-dynamic power to let the Amphions sound their best.

The first word I would choose to describe my studio listening environment is: clarity. I have set up my system and room to remove as much extraneous sound as possible. I want nothing to come between me and the source. Seated close to those Amphion Two18s, I can hear into whatever I'm working on, and when things are right, I know it, because the music grabs and engages me and sounds correct. The Two18s are honest—brutally so if the recording is lousy or if I'm not practicing my craft well. They are, therefore, essential tools in my work, and they are a pleasure to hear with good recordings of great music.

Studio monitors are one thing. Can Hyvonen's home speakers provide the same sure-footed clarity? I arranged to review Amphion's newest home-market flagship, the full-range Krypton3X floorstander. I wondered: Can these tall (55"), large (just over 154lb each) three-ways match the precision of the Two18s and scale it up to fill my living room with well-sorted, honest sound, for me to enjoy from a farfield listening seat?

Meet the Kryptons
The Krypton3X's three-way design features dual 8" "papyrus" (paper) cone mid/bass drivers with a 1" titanium-dome tweeter in between and a 10" side-firing aluminum woofer down below. Each mid/bass driver has its own chamber in the MDF cabinet, venting out a triangular pattern of small holes on each side in what Amphion describes as a "cardioid enclosure," effectively a waveguide for the mids. The crossover points are 160Hz and 1.6kHz, which means that the mid/bass drivers are handling the crucial midrange heart of music and the tweeter is handling location-cues, imaging, and "air and space" on top. The woofer's job is to deliver the punch and power of the lowest three octaves.

Hyvonen described the Krypton's mid/bass drivers as "a resistive loading of the midrange. The midwoofers are placed in their own isolated chambers, which turns the dispersion into a cardioid, which lines up quite nicely with that of the treble controlled with the waveguide." That would be the plastic "5th-generation" waveguide, said to time-align the top end and midrange and produce that cardioid dispersion pattern (footnote 4), which Amphion says "minimizes unwanted reflections from both side and back walls (up to 20dB), and allows [the speakers] to perform exceptionally well even in small rooms or close to large windows." It is indeed possible that these speakers will work in a relatively small room, but my experience suggests they need some space to sound their best. I'd be careful using them in too small a room unless it's very carefully treated to deal with the problems that could result.

For the top frequencies, Hyvonen said, the "Krypton3X has a new, 25mm titanium-dome tweeter, with mechanically inert solid construction and a large magnet, which leads to ultralow distortion and high-frequency extension. It was actually introduced in [Amphion's] top studio monitor, [the] One25A. ... The combination of this highly revealing yet involving tweeter and the large combined surface area of the large waveguide, with two 8" midrange drivers working in a point-source manner, is something I have not come across in any high-end speaker regardless of its price tag."

The speakers are sold in matched pairs, with one 10" woofer firing out the lower right side of the cabinet and the other firing out the lower left. The woofers can thus fire toward each other or toward the sidewalls. I asked Hyvonen which woofer alignment works best. "For most rooms, I tend to place the woofers inside, as it is easier to get precise imaging that way," he answered. "In larger rooms where speakers are still clearly away from the boundaries, one can place the woofers outside if one wants a large, expansive soundstage." The walnut-veneer pair I had in for review had landed, by no intentional action by me, with the woofers facing inside, which worked best in my room. The bass is reflex loaded with two rear-firing ports between the two mid/bass chambers. I shined a flashlight into the ports and saw the back of the tweeter and some mineral wool. Hyvonen sent me a diagram of the speakers' internal construction, showing that bass energy generated by the backward firing of the woofer is channeled to the rear of the bottom mid/bass chamber and then out these ports. Opposite the woofer is an MDF plate. Both sides of the cabinets are CNC-machined the same way; the plate can be installed on either side.

Unusually, the Krypton3X's crossover uses a series network, with a slow (second-order) rolloff. "By strategically placing capacitors and inductors, loudspeaker drivers can receive damping precisely where they need it," a white paper Hyvonen sent me says. "For example, a low-frequency driver's high-frequency response is damped by a capacitor's decreasing impedance, while a high-frequency driver's resonant frequency is damped by an inductor's decreasing impedance. ... The midrange filter section, together with the proprietary papyrus cone drivers, makes for a loudspeaker system with unmatched midrange performance."

Amphion claims this crossover design "integrates the Krypton3X drivers into one coherent system in a way that no other filter network can. It also provides a balanced load for the amplifier, improving stability and damping." The impedance over the audioband is said to "remain fairly stable." We'll see what JA's measurements reveal.

The Krypton3Xs are available in "standard white," black, and walnut. They are spec'd at 89dB sensitivity, and the company recommends 100–300Wpc amplification. Hyvonen explained, "The top part is easy to load, but naturally, a 10" long-throw woofer with a large magnet like we have in a Krypton3X likes power to get the most of it. Current is the key, not the watts," because the impedance dips low in the bass frequencies as the woofer engine moves the air. I drove them with my Benchmark AHB2.

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Footnote 1: Some music I love is poorly recorded. The audiophile paradox is that a system offering maximum clarity is equally clear on bad recordings. C'est la vie. In those cases, the music triumphs over its poor-sounding carrier.

Footnote 2: See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuopio.

Footnote 3: Here's my review of the Two18s in TapeOp magazine: tinyurl.com/mryacrw5.

Footnote 4: There is a diagram of the cardioid pattern, and more technical info, at Amphion's website: amphion.fi/products/krypton3X.