Amphion Xenon - Rare & Excellent Speakers

This ad is for a pair of Amphion Xenon speakers in gorgeous Birch finish. The speakers are from a non-smoking and no pet home, with a dedicated music room. The speakers are in excellent condition as you can see in my photos.

Amphion speakers are made in Finland, and have received rave reviews at Audio shows around the globe. The speaker was Wes Phillips product of the year when it came out. This Birch set was the last model in their nicest finish. A Xenon 2 came afterwards, but the original Xenon in the last model is known as the best sounding of them all. (the model with 1 set of terminals - not bi-wired as before that)

I will add text below to explain all the technologies implemented in these speakers, but let me just say right here that Amphion speakers are some of the finest sounding speakers that you will hear. I have owned many sets of much higher priced speakers, and the Xenons have held their own along with the best of them. They can put large scale music right into your room, with peerless imaging, deep fast bass, beautiful mid range and vocals, and crystalline highs. *These speakers have the rare quality of being "Musical" - and this is really the best quality a speaker can have, and it is very hard to find. You will go through many sets of speakers in your system before you find it. (as I have)

The Xenon loudspeaker is an elegant floorstander that stands 42"H x 7.5"W x 14.25"D. It is configured differently from just about any other three-way you're likely to have ever seen, though. Its 8" aluminum woofer is mounted on the side wall of the cabinet (mirror imaged, so they can fire toward one another or toward the room's side walls). The 6.5" aluminum midrange driver is positioned high up on the cabinet's slender baffle -- above the 1" tweeter, which is positioned in a smoothly contoured "dimple" that serves as the tweeter's waveguide. This waveguide -- and a pair of perforated triangular panels mounted to the Xenon's side walls on either side of the midrange driver, which "leak" a controlled amount of that driver's out-of-phase backwave -- are the keys to the speaker's hypercardioid radiation pattern, which Amphion calls U/D/D technology (Uniformly Directive Diffusion).

The Xenon employs a cleverly designed minimal crossover. Amphion's philosophy is to keep things as simple as possible in the electrical domain by solving most problems through its speakers' acoustical design. The Xenon's crossover points are 150Hz (using a first-order filter) and 1200Hz (using a second-order filter). No, that's not a misprint. The tweeter handles everything from 1200Hz up.

Amphion explains this by noting that human hearing is not linear. The area where the ear is most sensitive is between 2000Hz and 5000Hz, where even the smallest fluctuations are easily perceived. Guess what? Conventional crossover points are typically in the 3000-4000Hz region, or, for a three-way design, around 5000Hz.
Amphion's designer Antti Louhivaara addresses this by pushing the tweeter's crossover point as low as possible -- in the case of the Xenon, it's 1200Hz, and even Amphion's smallest two-way crosses over at 1800Hz. As a result, Amphion says, all the frequencies that the ear is most attuned to are reproduced by the tweeter.

This wouldn't be possible without that waveguide (don't you dare call it a horn!). The waveguide/tweeter interface is designed to produce a straightforward tweeter dispersion pattern, but Amphion points out that it does more than that. It also helps to smoothly couple the tweeter's response to that of the lower frequencies produced by the midrange driver and woofer by amplifying the tweeter's output. The waveguide's flare gives the tweeter about 9dB of gain at the crossover point, which also explains how the driver can tolerate the power demands placed upon it by the Xenon's low crossover point. Electrical correction is then applied to the tweeter above 20kHz, which is outside the range where the ear is sensitive to such things. Pretty neat, in theory -- and it's hard to argue with the sonic results.

The Xenon employs a rear-firing flared port and comes with a foam port plug that can be inserted. It also features a discreet switch located beneath the port, labeled BAS (Bass Adjustment System), which attenuates bass response by 1.5dB. The Xenons have a single pair of high-quality five-way binding posts. They also have a pair of outrigger stabilizing spiked "feet" since the cabinets are so narrow. These really do give 'em a solid footing on terra firma. They weigh 66 pounds and they come in birch or cherry. Mine were birch and yummy!

It's not a bad idea to automatically suspect any audio product that sports too many acronyms. A reliance upon jargon can be indicative of a component that would be considered ordinary -- without all that alphabet soup. However, U/D/D and BAS really are rooted in good engineering practices and are attempts to deal with the fact that loudspeakers generally have to work in rooms -- you know, places where people live and do other stuff besides listen to music.
Yes, it's an ugly fact, but most of us must acknowledge it.

U/D/D is an attempt to prevent the side walls of the room from affecting the sound unduly. Most loudspeakers radiate sound in an omnidirectional dispersion pattern, which means that furniture and the room's side walls cause reflections to bounce toward the listener at the same speed as the original soundwave. When you're inside a small space, like, say, a typical living room, the reflected sound is so close to the original event that it's indistinguishable as a separate entity -- but it affects your perception of the sound, just the same. It both creates a smear and changes your sense of where the original sound was located (this is called the Haas Effect).

All speakers become more directional in the higher frequencies, compounding the problem. Midrange and low frequencies radiate spherically (which is why the Xenons can have the woofers on the side walls of their cabinets and still sound coherent), while the highs beam straight ahead. Amphion came up with U/D/D to deal with this mixed radiation pattern and smearing. The tweeter's waveguide gives that driver a slightly less beamlike dispersion pattern, while those midrange vents tend to focus that driver's pattern into a cardioid (heart-like, lobed) dispersion pattern. Off the forward axis, all frequencies attenuate fairly evenly, which prevents room reflections from masking the speaker's response. Amphion claims that the speakers' free-field response (what you get in an anechoic chamber) and their energy response (what you get in a genuine listening room) are "surprisingly similar, sometimes even almost identical." That's not so modest a claim as all those modifiers might make it seem.
BAS also is an attempt to deal with room-placement issues. You have three ways of adjusting speaker/room interactions. The first method involves the orientation of the side-firing woofer. In most rooms, you'll want to locate the woofers on the speakers' inside cabinet walls, facing one another. In really large rooms, where side-wall coupling is less of an issue, you can place the woofers on the outside cabinet walls -- in fact, you may have to.

If you're forced to put the speakers near the front wall, the foam port plugs can buy you a few inches -- and attenuate the overall bass response by about 1.5dB. Switching the BAS toggle can also attenuate bass response by 1.5dB at 100Hz. All three options, used singularly or together, make the Xenons extremely easy to place -- in real rooms.
The Xenons are an 8 Ohm load with a recommendation of 15-350 Watts.
Includes the 2 Amphion grills for the midrange drivers.

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I would not be letting the Xenons go, but I have decided to go with some large Wilsons. (they finally got me)
If you are looking for a GREAT pair of speakers for your system at a GREAT price, here they are. Simply put, you will not find another set of full range speakers with this quality of sound on Audiogon at anywhere near this price.

First 1600. + shipping gets them
(USA lower 48)
- A Trade of quality gear may be considered if MSRPs are comparable - Possibly a DAC.

(these will ship in the original Amphion boxes which are 47 x 20 x 12 inches)
I will help the new owner to get shipping quotes after the sale.
I will bring the speakers to the new owner's shipper of choice.

Please check my Audiogon feedback and buy with complete confidence.
Thank you for looking at my ad.