{"id":22,"title":"Amphion's Anssi Hyvönen on building long-term and opening up a large clean window into music","bg_image":{"url":"https://eap-spaces.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/storage/newsfeed/article/bg_image/22/d1c5-image.jpg","collage":{"url":"https://eap-spaces.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/storage/newsfeed/article/bg_image/22/collage_d1c5-image.jpg"}},"type":"Newsfeed::Article","preview":"Amphion\u0026nbsp;is a 23-year-old company located in the heart of Finland that designs domestic loudspeakers and professional studio monitors. Anssi Hyvönen, the company’s founder and CEO, begins our c...","views":0,"content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://amphion.fi/\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color: var(--color-action);\"\u003eAmphion\u003c/a\u003e\u0026nbsp;is a 23-year-old company located in the heart of Finland that designs domestic loudspeakers and professional studio monitors. Anssi Hyvönen, the company’s founder and CEO, begins our conversation by saying that “the reason why there’s a lot of speaker manufacturing in that part of the world is that it’s very dark and cold during the wintertime so you need to find to do something inside, and in the two and a half months when the temperatures are actually humane, [they] have millions of mosquitoes, so again it’s nice to be inside.” Jokes aside, Finland is a beautiful place that is very close to nature, and launching a speakers’ venture that embodied that simplicity and connection seemed just right.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe core of everything that Amphion does is designing simple and long-term products that will bring value to its community. “It’s typical [for] the modern world [to] always try to get something new, flashy, [and] exciting, but luckily there are trends that remind us that actually you don’t have to do anything else — for example in cooking — than select perfect ingredients [and] use coal,” Anssi says. “You can’t beat it… and in many ways, this is what we’re doing.” Even though the basic technology of using dynamic drivers has been around for over 100 years, there are a plethora of ways to still improve and get more performance out of it.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: var(--color-text);\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5612AQGIfL5xIhXdHA/article-inline_image-shrink_1000_1488/0/1656628201035?e=1676505600\u0026amp;v=beta\u0026amp;t=GE4oHKcgJU-n74AKMKffUjcqmPl1xCyGkBNW996AHEc\" alt=\"No alt text provided for this image\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBelieving that the bottleneck has been in monitoring, the Finnish manufacturer centered its philosophy around pushing acoustic design since, as Hyvönen explains, whatever can be achieved acoustically doesn’t need to be fixed electronically. It’s very straightforward: everything that can be removed from the product increases resolution and transparency.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eOne of the key things Amphion did was lower the crossover point to be outside of the critical hearing range. “If you look at a sofa manufacturer, [he] would never put the seam in a cushion in the most visible place — they’ll always hide it to the side — but for some reason most of the speaker manufacturers feel that the good place for the crossover is exactly in the middle of that area where hearing is the best,” Anssi notices, wondering whether anyone still remembers that the true purpose of developing these products is to please the human ear.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBy lowering that crossover point, the company can now control the tweeters — the driver with the lowest possible mass and where our hearing is the most sensitive — better than ever before. The transient speed and the distortion levels are also very low. This technology is becoming increasingly important as the industry steps foot into the immersive world as it allows to integrate the drivers and channels into a cohesive sound field. As opposed to the headphones, achieving a good result in terms of the timing phase for other hardware is much more arduous.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is more innovation to come, but the CEO admits that he is a bit shocked by the current results in the field, saying that people need to set up a certain reference point for the targets companies should be aiming at. “From a marketing point of view, the boring, safe, farm-to-table solution has now become, performance-wise, one of the top solutions,” he elaborates. “The situation has totally changed: the highest DSP engine is now in the monitor controller. The best synergy can be achieved by having a top-notch monitor controller and a speaker with the highest resolution and control dispersion.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan style=\"color: var(--color-text);\"\u003e\u003cimg src=\"https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5612AQF3v5zaU_ZZEw/article-inline_image-shrink_1500_2232/0/1656628354723?e=1676505600\u0026amp;v=beta\u0026amp;t=PViWN0bUDlfCakFlfUAPFPaEOoMaIq0fpmT5f_I9e-0\" alt=\"No alt text provided for this image\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe idea of trying to open a large, clean window into music has made it easy to transition into the pro audio world. “We are there not to recreate; we are there trying to reproduce,” Hyvönen adds. “This is what it’s all about — hearing what you’re supposed to hear and nothing else.” If anything, the Head believes that the product’s value is not in how it looks or sounds, but in whether it allows the message behind the sound to come through. As he puts it, he’s only happy when Amphion gets forgotten: “it shouldn’t be about the gear, it should be about you, your music, and your feelings.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe shift to pro audio happened when there was a feeling coming from the community that Amphion has an angle that is different from what was normally done in the field. The fact that the playback aspect changed so rapidly — if before you had only a boombox and a radio, now you have everything from your phone to flatscreen TVs — it was necessary to ensure that the artists’ work translated equally well across all devices. “We knew we needed to offer something else [because] we couldn’t go head-to-head with the rest of the pro companies,” Anssi shares. The team chose to prioritize not breaking the bond not only in terms of the frequency band but also the timing and phase, the two things which are often overlooked. After doing five iterations of various balances and launching pilots in LA and other industry hubs, the product was ready for the market.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePutting the customer first, the company often circles back to its community. The founder tells me that a lot of good ideas come from the users — even the “beautifully honest” slogan actually came from a Grammy-winning vocalist that wrote an email saying he is done with brutally honest, Amphion’s products are beautifully honest.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhen looking at any of the manufacturer’s products, one of the first things you pay attention to is the fact that there is no logo. Anywhere. “Of course, my teachers in business school wouldn’t approve this,” Anssi laughs. “This is not the way to do a product, but this has become our trademark.” At the same time, the white waveguide has become Amphion’s trademark instead, but just like with the carry-on case, this happened by accident.\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“It was time to do a prototype again [and] my idea was that it should be totally black,” he conveys. When calling the cabinet manufacturer, however, it turned out that that material was only available in white and it would take two weeks to ship the black one. Of course, like all startups, Amphion didn’t have two weeks and decided to send it anyway. “It’s just a sonic prototype, it doesn’t matter what it looks like!” he continues. “I send it to Henka, he gives me a call and says: ‘Anssi, whatever you do, don’t change the looks. In my 20 years in this business, nobody ever paid any attention to what I was using.’ So, it’s been really funny to listen to the wonderful speculations [about] how [we] so smartly went for that NS10 look but with a modern twist.”\u003c/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAlthough Amphion is one of the most respected manufacturers in the industry, the company is still focused on exploring and understanding the whole chain — everything from what happens at the microphone to how it gets to the listener. “The world is changing very quickly and the tools have to follow. The tools can’t remain the same,” Anssi concludes, smiling.\u003c/p\u003e","pathname":"amphion-s-anssi-hyvonen-on-building-long-term-and-opening-up-a-large-clean-window-into-music-22","human_date":"11 Jul 2022","read_time":"5 minute read","category":null,"related_items":[{"id":1,"title":"ADOBE MAX LOS ANGELES 2022","bg_image":{"url":"https://eap-spaces.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/storage/newsfeed/event/bg_image/1/efa3-image.jpg","collage":{"url":"https://eap-spaces.fra1.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/storage/newsfeed/event/bg_image/1/collage_efa3-image.jpg"}},"type":"Newsfeed::Event","preview":"GPU Audio joins our partners, AMD, to demonstrate how GPU Audio plugins can be used to enhance workflows of post production workstations. 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