At the brink of extinction, the Helsinki HiFi show raised from the ashes and with slightly over 4000 visitors during two days, showed some positive signs of life about Finnish audio culture. Two-channel audio is doing just fine, and big thanks go -- again -- to Finnish speaker manufacturers. But imports are also proliferating. The number of well-known international brands available is on a rising slope and for our thin population density, is not bad at all. |
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Amphion, Gradient and Penaudio, the three major players, came up with new speaker model/s each. The most surprising of all must have been Gradient's new 1.5 above, showing with MacIntosh electronics. This speaker got and will get loads of attention, believe me - and not just for its looks but unconventional yet carefully considered design. It's a completely new creation by Jorma Salmi, combining the virtues of the Gradient Revolutions (dipole bass, resistive loading for the midrange etc) with the spirit and design of the original 1.3. The new CEO Topi Lintukangas has renewed the company's image and the 1.5 is an elegant manifestation of the trend. |
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In 2006, Amphion hired Ole Lund Christensen from Denmark (who earlier worked for Gamut) to refine existing functional solutions into successful commercial products. The fruit of this cooperation is a new speaker called Amphion Prio. The Prio was already present at the Munich Highend 2007 but in Helsinki was shown in final form and function [future review in these pages planned - Ed.]. Another Amphion novelty was the Ion L, an advanced version of the Amphion Ion that just received The Absolute Sound 2007 Editor's Choice Award. |
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Penaudio and its head designer Sami Penttilä keep on insisting that sophisticated and natural sound need not be incompatible with outstanding looks as exemplified by the new Ambient Series of speakers, the Chronos and Rogue models. The pervasive-sounding Chronos has to be seen in person in order to appreciate its awesome looks. |
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Other Finnish speaker brands present at the show included Aurelia [above], WaveDynamics, ForVoice, Harrin kaiutin and OR. According to their designer, the Aurelias were not yet in their final production form but it was clear, by ear and sight, that the speaker swears by what many Finnish speakers insist on, namely controlled directivity. Two models are currently available but more will follow. |
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ForVoice 7.7 is a new, smooth and openly sounding two-way (SEAS coaxial) while OR is already a 40-year old company better known in its homeland than abroad. OR proudly demoed its new E1, a 2-way with a horn around its 27mm dome tweeter and a high-quality leather surface. |
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Active speakers have always been fairly popular in Finland thanks to Genelec, perhaps the most well-known Finnish pro speaker manufacturer abroad. Apart from Genelec and Profel, another Finnish pro-speaker firm, the British active speaker specialist PMC made its first appearance on these shores. Martin Logan too had gone active with its new Purity, a model with a 200-watt class D internal amplifier. The speaker pair in Helsinki was an upgraded version of the one presented at Munich in May. |
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Danish speaker manufacturer System Audio was represented in several rooms. The slim SA Ranger produced a big, full sound while the new small SA Comet played music with the help of Consonance electronics. |
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WLM Divas with Melody, a meeting of Austrians and Chinese: |
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