Axion

+Reviewer: Srajan Ebaen
Financial interests: click here
Main system: Sources: Retina 5K 27" iMac (i5, 256GB SSD, 40GB RAM, Sonoma 14), 4TB external SSD with Thunderbolt 3, Audirvana Studio, Qobuz Sublime, Singxer SU-6 USB bridge, LHY Audio SW-8 & SW-6 switch, Sonnet Pasithea, LAiV Audio Harmony; Active filter: spl Audio Crossover MkII; Power amplifiers: Vinshine/Kinki Dazzle & mono Ncore 500 Nord Acoustic amps on subwoofer; Headamp: Enleum AMP-23R; Phones: Raal 1995 Immanis; Loudspeakers: Qualio IQ [on loan] Cables: Exact Express Flame, Furutech; Power delivery: 2 x Kinki/Vinshine Tai Hang on amps and source stack, Furutech DPS-4.1 between wall and conditioners; Equipment rack: Artesanía Audio Exoteryc double-wide 3-tier with optional glass shelves, Exoteryc amp stands; Sundry accessories: Acoustic System resonators, AudioQuest FogLifters; Room: 6 x 8m with open door behind listening seat; Room treatment: 2 x PSI Audio AVAA C214 active bass traps
2nd system: Source: FiiO R7 into Soundaware D300Ref SD transport to Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe with POW; Preamp/filter: Lifesaver Audio Gradient Box 2; Amplifier: Kinki Studio EX-B7 monos; Loudspeakers: ModalAkustik MusikBoxx; Subwoofer: Zu Method; Cable loom: Exact Express Earth; Power delivery: Vibex Granada/Alhambra, Akiko Audio Corelli Corundum & Castello Solo; Equipment rack: Hifistay Mythology Transform X-Frame [on extended loan]; Sundry accessories: Furutech cable lifts, Furutech NFC Clear Lines; Room: ~3.5 x 8m
2nd headfi system: DAC: Cen.Grand DSDAC 1.0 Deluxe with POW; Headamp: Cen.Grand Silver Fox; Headphones: Raal 1995 Magna, HifiMan Susvara
Desktop system: Source: HP Z2 workstation Win11/64; USB bridge: LHY UIP; Ethernet bridge: LHY EFI; Ethernet reclocker: Stack SmoothLAN; DACs: Audalytic DR701 & Gustard R26II; Headphone/preamp: FangSound Dionysus; Speaker amps: Topping B200 monos; Loudspeakers: Virtual Hifi Viper; Headphones: Final D-8000, aune SR7000, FiiO FT7
Upstairs headfi system: FiiO R7; Headphones: Meze 109 Pro, Fiio FT3
2nd upstairs speaker system: Source: FiiO R7; DAC/pre: COS D1; Amplifier: Kinki EX-M7; Loudspeakers: sound|kaos Vox3 with Dynaudio S18 subwoofer
2-channel video system: Source: Oppo BDP-105; All-in-One: Gold Note IS-1000 Deluxe; Loudspeakers: Zu Mission; Subwoofer: Zu Mission; Power delivery: Furutech eTP-8, Room: ~6x4m
Review component retail: €13K/pr standard, €16K/pr Signature (silver wiring, Duelund copper-foil cap on the tweeter circuit)

What's the matter? Particularly below ~200Hz, our rooms fight back; hard. Once the audible bandwidth involves sufficiently long wavelengths, those interact with the room's physical dimensions to ride room modes and their resonances. Hello bloom, bloat and boom from amplitude peaks and time-domain smear. The speaker itself fights back against being pressurized. Unless its enclosure were completely absorptive, at least some rear-wave energy re-radiates through cones and domes delayed in time for more now micro smear of the direct signal. Because successful reduction of such bleed-thru is key to lower distortion and higher clarity, we've seen elaborate internal skyline diffusors executed in wood and metal. We've read of cork absorbers with Sonus faber and sound|kaos; foamed aluminium liners with Audio Physic; 3D-printed inner waveguides with sound|kaos; unusual port shapes to control airflow and minimize turbulence. Particularly for tweeters we've seen meta-material absorbers à la KEF. Alon Wolf's sealed midranges may use semi-spherical rear chambers. Sven Boenicke's equivalents execute in milled solid wood. Pat McGinty uses triangular trap chambers. Michael Børresen has exploited perforated dividers for airflow management, break-up vanes in his vertical slot ports. No matter the details, serious box speakers must combat box talk. A classic approach to negate such cabinet conniptions and lower those of the room omits the box altogether. Enter the so-called open baffle. It's a dipole whose lateral nulls—front-going '+' and rear-going '-' polarities wrap around the baffle to meet and cancel out—eliminate our sidewalls as reflective contributors. Hello reduced room loading. Allowing driver rear waves free passage rather than attempting to contain them in a heroically inert box also creates equal loading on both sides of a driver's membrane which avoids the in-cab reflection/compression issues. All gain no pain? Like free lunches, not. Because of lateral LF short circuits and related room-gain loss, dipoles must compensate with raw surface area. Dual 15" woofers or their equivalent divvied out over smaller woofers are a common tactic. Yet below the baffle step of ~200-400Hz—Axiom's width sets it at 300Hz—they exhibit a 1st-order acoustic roll-off. This could want DSP to compensate being down 24dB/25Hz; or baffle step compensation whereby everything above the acoustic hinge rolls off at the same rate. Also, chucking the ubiquitous bass bin and its compressed trapped air means that dipole bass can lack some upper-bass punch which listeners accustomed to box bass consider desirable.

Obviously stacking twin 15" woofers as below the break mandates a broader baffle to present cosmetic implications. Exposed derrières can add to those. Whilst two of Matter Audio's models do embrace fully-hung twinned 15-inch religion, today's 88dB model prays to triple 8". Where the dual big cones add up to a single 21" woofer, the smaller triplets sum to ~14". It remains beaucoup bass battery but slims visually. It plays a bit less room divider. The dot on this aye is a dipole AMT which takes over from a 6" midrange. Which begs the question, who is this matter? The answer is a Greek brand which has joined the rather small club of European dynamic dipoles which include Diesis of Italy, sound|kaos of Switzerland, Ecobox of Bulgaria, Hex3 of the UK, daudio of The Netherlands and Lyngdorf of Denmark. Australia have Kyron, the US Spatial, Emerald Physics and Clayton Shaw. Fanis Lagkadinos, co-founder and partner of Ypsilon Electronics, is the man behind Matter Loudspeakers.

In the 1980s, Demetris Backlavas and Fanis met on the benches of a university. Demetris studied electronics, Fanis civil engineering. A common passion for high fidelity brought them closer. Demetris specialized in amplifiers, Fanis built electronics and speakers. For several years the two future partners worked as sound engineers, acquiring experience with major musical projects from small to stadium concerts, sound reinforcement gigs and stage plays. They finally launched Ypsilon Electronics as a workshop for manufacturing an integrated amplifier and power amplifiers for professional use. At the same time they also made custom speakers. In 2005 they presented the first high-end Ypsilon model in the SET100 amplifier. At the same time they developed their own ribbon tweeter and speakers for their in-house R&D assessments. One of these presented at the high-end Heathrow show during the first international presentation of the SET100. Today this speaker remains their in-house reference for the development of the entire range of Ypsilon electronics.

Ypsilon at the time tested all available compression and regular tweeters. They searched for bandwidth so a part that could be taken quite low instead of yielding to the fashion of quasi super tweeters. This birthed the dream of their own planar tweeter inspired by the Raven ribbon. Gradually deepening R&D into the design and manufacture of output/interstage transformers led to very satisfactory tweeter designs. The end result featured in the above Erato LS-100 during the launch of the Phaethon integrated at 2014's High-End Munich show. However, this speaker never commercialized. Eventually Fanis together with Evgenia Panagiotopoulou struck out on their own with the family business Matter Loudspeakers. Evgenia is a researcher in particle physics, a singer and in charge of Matter administration and marketing. For this brand Fanis now focussed on open-baffle designs. It freed him from the constraints and high costs of cabinet production. According to him, the technical means for a completely neutral box speaker were more or less exhausted by Laurence Dickie's B&W Nautilus and his Vivid descendants already. After a year of R&D, the principle of the electrodynamic dipole suggested itself as the ideal, lighter yet still relatively compact solution. This required a new ribbon tweeter that could operate open-backed, had a larger radiation surface and broader bandwidth to remain compatible with 1st-order filters. This would eclipse the capabilities of the original Ypsilon ribbon.

Fanis & Demetris

After the Vienna 2026 HighEnd show closed its doors, I heard back from Fanis and Evgenia. "Thanks for mentioning us in your Vienna No-Show report! In a few days Axion is ready to travel to France for a review by Diapason. This loan duration is not yet fixed. We are also in discussion with a UK reviewer who visited our Vienna room. Therefore we cannot currently give you a firm answer. However, we are in production of the new Evolution model in two versions. It's a scaled-up Axion of 6 x 8" woofers. The second version will change the bass drivers to be optimal for valve amps. There's a possibility of one of these being available for a summer review. The Evolution was never at a show to present a first-view alternative. Please let us know your thoughts and/or time frame." I rather thought that six moons of the 8-inch persuasion would be too big a constellation for my room. Wouldn't I be better off putting my name on the travelling Axion loaners once they'd finished their prior engagements? At 115 high, 38cm wide, 34cm deep and 17kg per, Axion rather did have my numbers – unless the Evolution went faux isobaric by coupling pairs of woofers one behind the other to use the same baffle size? I of course had no idea whether such a geometry is even feasible for a dipole. I was grasping at straws. Better wait to hear back from this team in Kaissariani, a suburb of Athens. Other regional brands I knew of were Aries Cerat, Lab 12, TruLife Audio, Tsakiridis Devices and Tune Audio. When Evgenia's reply pinged my inbox later that day, it was a sideways move; literally.

"For your main room, take your pick. Axion—'worthy' in Greek and in science, a potential dark-matter particle—has a minimum impedance of 2.65Ω/70Hz and max SPL of 98dB at 1m/50Hz. Evolution doubles the minimum impedance to 5.2Ω, increases SPL by 6dB and baffle width by 10cm for a total of 48cm." With Axion's breadth virtually identical to my resident Qualio IQ, going sideways on double woofage struck me as too broad of profile even though Matter Audio temper Evolution's otherwise brutalist look with rounded edges. I just didn't feel the luv looking at a dirty dozen of woofers. My clear preference was for Axion; particularly when I could run my 2×15" folded dipole aka RiPol sound|kaos subwoofer fronted by two 700W/4Ω monos and spl's brilliant analog/active Crossover MkII. Despite knowing of my pick's unknown delay, I informed Evgenia that their particle of dark matter had my vote. This was a case where less would be more. More wait was simply part of it. "Perfect, Axion it is then. I only ask your patience and will update you as soon as I have the exact schedule. Thank you again for your interest!" Line. Cast. My Italian contributor Simone already listens to dynamic open baffles by his landsmen Diesis whilst a year ago my man in France, Joël Chevassus, had penned our first review on Matter with their AntiMatter. With today's assignment, I'd follow in both their footsteps. Boss. Late to the party. No matter. Still better than never.

… to be continued…