A Finnish brand that has been around for about a decade, Amphion is more successful than most at distinguishing its speakers from the market stereotypes, through a variety of interesting techniques. This Xenon is the second Amphion to come our way in recent months and is an altogether more substantial package than the Prio 520.

Indeed, at £2,599 or £2,899 per pair (in painted or real wood veneer finish respectively), the Xenon was the top model in the Amphion line-up until recently. (That is until a Mk2 version of the still larger Krypton was introduced at the German High End Show in April.)

Attractive speakers

Our birch finished example must be one of the prettiest speakers on the market, in part because of the classy way the veneer is laid, in a series of five narrow vertical stripes across the front and three broad stripes on the sides.

Add in the clever way the front veneerwork follows the contours of the large waveguide surrounding the tweeter and the deep triangular vents let into the sides next to the midrange driver and the net result is both elegant and contemporary.

This is a substantial three-way design, turning the scales to a hefty 30kg. It looks attractively slim from the front, yet is quite deep, allowing a good size (200mm) bass driver to be mounted in the side.

To maintain symmetry, the speakers are built as a mirror-image pair, so they can be used with the bass units directed inwards (the normal way), or outwards - an option worth exploring in situ.

Two hefty steel bars are mounted laterally onto the base for spike accommodation and the combination of good depth and extended width ensures excellent footprint stability.

Driver configuration

The 200mm bass driver has a 155mm metal cone diaphragm and is port-loaded at the rear. The 165mm midrange driver has a 115mm metal cone diaphragm and is mounted at the top of the front panel, above the large sculpted waveguide that surrounds and recesses the 25mm metal dome tweeter.

The midrange occupies its own sub-enclosure at the top, but this is neither sealed nor reflex-ported. The triangular grilles on each side back from the midrange driver provide resistive leakage of the out-of-phase sound radiation from the back of the cone.