At Audio Emporium we have loads of great speakers. We cover all the bases from small to tall. We have have speakers of enormous power. Yet everyone doesn’t need those.

This entry will be about smallish (not tiny) stand mount speakers. If you don’t need big and bombastic, consider one of these transducers to float your musical boat.

Klipsch RP500M $600 Per Pair

RP500 is the first speaker out there that gives you a dose of being airy, dynamic and alive. It cannot be the last word in tonal balance and cabinet inertness given its cost. But at its extremely fair price point you’ve stepped above the main stream competition at the same money. Further, at 93dB SPL you can drive it with ANY amplifier.

Wharfedale Denton 85 $1000 Per Pair

Denton 85 is a full step above anything less. With lovely, rigid real walnut cabinet, 6.5” Kevlar driver and silk dome tweet, Denton 85 sounds more mellow and musical than its price range would lead you to expect.

As you look at the hardware within Denton 85… if this was made by Harbeth or Linn for example, it would run $5k per pair. It comes in at $1k because of the scale of W’s production and biz model.

GoldenEar BRX $1600 Per Pair

In BRX we’re getting a cleaner, less cabinet infused sound than D85. BRX has imaging qualities that are second to none. The cabinet doesn’t SING with the music. You can place it almost anywhere and still it will produce a huge, open field of sound.

With 6” bass/mid, ribbon tweet and a couple of side firing ABRs, BRX gives you a lot for the price. Think detail in spades with BRX, with no murky bass.

Bryston Mini A $1700 Per Pair

Mini A has a much more muscular sound than any mini short of Argon 3S. The warmth of the top end is very appealing. The depth of the bass far exceeds any of the speakers above.

Mini A is a full fledged 3-way, with 6” woof, dedicated mid & tweeter. It’s a full sounding mini built in Canada with an unbeatable 20 year warranty.

Amphion Argon One $1900 Per Pair (Black/White)

Argon One is massively revealing and brings mini performance to a higher echelon. It has exquisite detail and timbral definition to rival expensive stats and pans.

The 5.25 Pure Aluminum woofer and Titanium Tweeter in Amphion’s Wave Guide produces an intimate cardiod dispersion pattern. The result is, you hear more of the speaker/music, and less of YOUR ROOM than with anything else.

Argon One accurately purveys the last drop of vocal color. Its ability to depict nuance in voices of humans and instruments makes it a speaker to lust for. Amphion’s designers clearly made the choice to hit a great price point by not worrying about the lowest octave or trying to attain high volume levels.

Amphion Argon 3S $3000 Per Pair ($3200 walnut)

While Amphion is available in a few options of white and black, I positively love the 3S in walnut. It looks stately and elegant while giving you all that Argon One does- with an extra large dose of bass response.

3S has a 6.5” bass/mid and a rear firing ABR in a significantly larger enclosure than Argon One. If you’re tight on space or coin, ya can’t beat Argon One. If you have a little more of both, 3S will deliver a world of bass that Argon One just can’t.

Amphion, hand built in Finland, has cabinet and driver construction, crossover componentry and internal wiring with state of the art binding posts that allow it to soar over the other guys.

Both Amphions are more transparent and cast a larger/deeper soundstage than anything less. They are made with TLC and comprise a dozen or more construction tricks to yield more texture and color than the other guys. You hear character in pianos and the stand up bass that are simply masked with its competition. If you can swing Argon 3S, just buy it!

More Amphion

You can tell the Amphion designers care very deeply about the majesty and delineation of bass response.

In Argon One you cannot fault its resolution and soundstage. You can hear that Amphion said this is where we want to be- short of getting into the complicated strategy of going much deeper in bass response.

With the decision of going an octave or more lower, Amphion wanted to be sure not to muddle the bass. How do you add more without obfuscating articulation? Argon One walks right up to that line.

With Argon 3S you can hear they’re going for it! It’s a “perilous” path of adding bass to make music more real, but keeping the speaker out of the road. Argon 3S is a chameleon for your recordings.

Klipsch, for example, plays fast and hard. They’re convinced we need big dynamics, bass and sheer volume. They’re not about to sweat the fine details that Amphion does. K has its place too.

Falcon Gold Badge LS 3/5a $3300 Per Pair

The Falcon at its best can rival any speaker out there for lower mid on up musicality. But it takes some real attention to get there.

The Falcon needs to go on stands. Don’t plop it on a shelf.

The Falcon will reveal the character of your amp without compromise. Ya gotta have a great amp like a Hegel. Argon 3S plays nice with Hegel, of course, but even does well with modest NADs.

The Falcon plays musical colors as well as any speaker you can buy. But it will break if you ask it to play loud or throw deep bass its way. It is the ultimate audiophile’s tinkering speaker, revealing every change in front of it.