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Amphion Loudspeakers has been around for 25 years yet you’ve probably never heard of them. The Finnish company, known best for making professional studio monitors, ventured into home audio several years ago and is now promoting its Helium speaker series on these shores. And it’s doing so with a twist.

It’s pretty standard for audio companies to provide a choice of finish options for speaker cabinets but Amphion goes a step further, offering grilles in a variety of colors in addition to the choice of black or white acoustic waveguides — the cone-shaped depression around the tweeter that controls sound dispersion and provides other sonic benefits. The idea is to make it easy to match the aesthetics of your listening space or make a design statement.

The Helium Series includes two bookshelf/stand-mount models mdash; Helium410 ($1,200/pair) and slightly larger Helium510 ($1,560/pair) — the Helium520C center-channel speaker ($1,150), and the floorstanding Helium520 ($3,600/ pair).

In many speakers, waveguides are used to make tweeters more directional but Amphion’s waveguide — now in its fifth generation — is different; it’s designed to achieve wide, even dispersion throughout the frequency band, which is said to translate into a “pleasing neutral sound” wherever the speaker is placed in the room — even at low volumes.

“Well-executed, controlled dispersion ensures off-axis (reflected) sounds are correctly balanced,” Amphion explained. “This results in more controlled and predictable performance in different rooms and with different speaker placements. This is especially important in rooms with acoustically hard, reflective surfaces such as concrete and stone.”

A second defining characteristic of Helium series speakers is the use of time-adjusted drivers and a 1,600-Hz tweeter crossover for “point-source-like behavior and seamless driver integration.” Amphion promises a “rock-solid ‘phantom’ center channel, life-like 3D imaging, and an extremely wide and deep sweet-spot.”

Handmade in Finland, all models are ported designs that use paper-cone woofers and the same titanium tweeter.

The 10-inch-tall Helium410 and 12.5-inch-tall Helium510 are two-way designs combining the 1-inch tweeter with a 4.5- or 5.25-inch woofer rated down to 52 Hz or 48 Hz, respectively. At 42 inches tall, the Helium520 tower places a 5.25-inch woofer above and below the tweeter and is rated down to 40 Hz. The Helium520C center speaker is 18 inches wide with a tweeter flanked on either side by a 5.25-inch woofer rated down to 48 Hz. All bass performance specs are at –6 dB.

Helium series speakers are offered in three cabinet finishes — black, white, and real walnut veneer — with a choice of a black or white tweeter waveguide and eight (woofer and tweeter) grille colors: gray, red, violet, turquoise, blue, green, yellow, and beige or the RAL color of your choice.

Amphion Speakers are guaranteed for 5 years. For more information on the Helium speaker series, click here.