CLOSE UP – VIMBERG AMEA

Since late 2018 when ourselves and UK importers Kog audio first experienced Vimberg at the Tidal factory in Koln Germany, it is fair to say that the it is the Mino floorstander that has probably received the most attention from the line up. The Amea did appear a little later in 2020 but in truth it has proven to be equally as popular as the smaller floorstander and we have placed a good number of sets over the last few years. At less than half the cost they represent a far more wallet friendly way to join the Vimberg club and the actual sound quality that you get is really no different from the more expensive models in the range.

I have personally always had a soft spot for a standmount and the unique way they present. I listen to a lot of reflective gentle material which does not necessarily require thunderous bass and large double helpings of weight and scale. Clarity, purity, three dimensional realism projected into the room and real instruments with all their nuance and subtlety. A few years ago we used to occasionally retail Estelon speakers when called for. They are really rather good, very good in fact albeit with slightly challenging looks for a UK marketplace (I happen to really like their aesthetics). The Estelon XC was a standmount I sold a few times over and a superb model it is too. So it is not since the XC that we have had a standmount in our folio and the Amea not only now fills that gap but arguably sounds a degree more natural again than the Estonian offering.

In the flesh the Amea are larger than you would think. They have a heft about them, the proportions and topology pretty much like a Mino chopped off just below its midrange woofer. When you acknowledge this physicality and then spy the large 220mm rear mounted passive radiator, you suspect that you are in for a sound which belies the normal extents of a standmount and you would be right. This then is perhaps the very first property you notice upon listening. The Amea have a fullness and weight about them which perhaps invites you to question their associated form factor. This is not what we typically expect from a standmount, not a monitor experience or an analytical midrange tool but rather, a complete and fully formed transducer which will cater for your entire music collection and not necessarily leave you wanting in the lower registers, especially in a typical UK home. Shut your eyes and it most certainly doesn’t seem like you are listening to a modest size cabinet on top of a 30 inch tall stand.

The Vimberg sonic hallmarks are of course directly descended from Tidal Audio, the flagship marque out of which Vimberg was born as a lower cost brand. That is to say purity, neutrality, naturalness, musical expression and effortless composure and ease of listening. In a Tidal, all properties from these sonics to component choice and exterior finish is of course realised to a much higher level and you would expect that at the Tidal prices, but all the essential DNA that we all love, it’s still echoed in a Vimberg and the Amea is no exception. So on first acquaintance the standmount from Koln will charm you with its high resolve and extraordinary levels of detail and musical insight but not merely just for the high scoring of those hifi elements but the way in which it is combined into a package that at the same time does not sound bright, does not fatigue or offer up remarkable resolution in an ostentatious way. Like the ceramic Mino and Tonda, the midrange and highs are smooth and silky and there is a sense of the speaker being reasonably forgiving, not just of recording quality but also (we know from lots of experimentation) from the system upstream. Like the Mino, the Amea give you a sense that almost anything thrown at them will sound enjoyable.

A decent midrange in a standmount is easy to pull off so you would expect something of the prestige of an Amea to be absolutely sensational in this frequency band and indeed it is. They project a wide and deep holographic panorama throughout the room and your resultant joy from the feeling of openness never really wanes. There is no excess biting though, no over pronunciation, nothing emphasised, no edges sharpened or prominently offered up into space, nothing spot lit or underscored, its all just there, like it formed naturally without employing any electronics or hifi equipment for its own creation. Regular customers/readers will know that this exactly the stye of presentation I like and what Lotus is known for. The Amea like all the Vimberg family is generously apportioned in the treble with a very strong hand when it comes to perception of space and air and ambience, but the very upper frequencies are more rounded than sharpened and the result is a transducer that is usefully forgiving and can be listened to for prolonged sessions over many hours.

Whilst the treble and often its less than seamless integration with the rest of the spectrum will very quickly find out cheaper and lower calibre speakers, the lower registers is generally where the biggest mistakes occur, not just in speakers but in all electronics and mechanical devices too like Turntables and Tonearms. The bass is where even very well regarded components can begin to unravel. The Amea feel almost as see through and accurate here as anywhere else in the range though. Any blurring of the front edge of bass notes, any slight degree of overhang or inaccuracy, any feeling of reinforcement or leanness is surely down to room acoustics. The Amea bass output is not only generous but delightfully transparent and integrated into the whole sound.

Billy Eilish’s “When we fall asleep” is a superb album for the lower registers of the thumping melodic kind. On the track “wish you were gay” the bass is potent, punchy and supremely accurate. As the energy and complexity builds in this arrangement the feeling of drama to the listener increases commensurately. In the  higher region the Amea sound deliciously spacious and the ambience and spatial cues of the recording space are all there to savour. Eilish’s voice feels very real and intimate too, the guitars imbued with so much delicacy, in part of course due to a fantastic recording.

The same can’t be said of Stevie Wonder’s “Never in your sun” from his 90’s electro fest “In square circle”. This is a lean and glassy recording full of bright snyth over a somewhat skeletal sounding Linn drum machine. The full Thrax system I had in front of the Amea made it sound more than palatable with body, weight and dimension. Whilst it had plenty of upper energy and projection, it still felt frequency balanced top to bottom and if you had a set of tone controls at hand, you wouldn’t be reaching to dial down the “treble” knob. This is a tight rhythmical track and the Amea kept everything very coherent and precise with fast accurate bass where the front of each note was well rendered. Not Stevie’s most musically profound moment but I enjoy the bounce and simple joy of this “summer holidays” song and the Amea reproduced it with all of that verve and enjoyment.

From Gagarin’s Point of View by Esbjörn Svensson is something quite beautiful and well recorded too on Qobuz. With the same Thrax pre/power and Thrax Maximinus DAC in tow, the Amea sounded wonderfully spacious and relaxed here. The decay on the percussion was really quite delectable and the overall delivery was full bodied with very well developed instrumentation replete with lots of body, texture, air and ambient cues. The Thrax system is some distance off of crazy 6 figure ultra high end audio retail pricing but punches far above its ranking so possesses an awful lot of transparency and information. The Amea were able to respond in kind and telegraph the smallest shifts in pressure, volume, intonation and tonal shading in this delicately beautiful track. In a similar vein, Nat King Cole’s Nature Boy in 24bit was equally as spacious and holographic. Nat’s voice felt very present and vivacious. The presentation was beautifully calm evoking very strong feelings of nostalgia and a the violin and flute were seductively haunting and believable.

Over the course of the next few weeks I tried the Amea with various electronics and they really did mate well with everything I threw at them. Whilst the ultra neutrality of the Brinkmann Nyquist DAC was fittingly matched by the Amea’s superb neutrality, the famed Vitus lustre in their SCD and Masterpiece DACs, and indeed their 025 and 030 Integrated amplifiers, mated extremely well with the Vimbergs inherent organic leanings. My favourite match was probably with the Thrax electronics as they squeezed so much performance from the speaker and brought a feeling of life and urgency to proceedings which worked well. The valve integrated Thrax Enyo is one of the most holographic and tactile amps I now sell and I found that combination – even when just using the Enyo’s £2900 inbuilt DAC module – made for a fabulously engaging and joyful setup.

As a stanmount the Amea’s upper band is prominent and the Thrax treble is in no way shy or recessed in this region either so I found that the full Thrax Dac/pre/power + Vimberg synergy really hit a high point when I used Tungsten Groover footers under the electronics instead of Stillpoints. The TG’s have a slightly darkening effect, bringing out more body, weight and texture in the music and this dovetailed beautifully with the standmount form factor. Conversely, when I employed Vitus digital and the class A amplifiers, Stillpoints were the order of the day as they are so often are with our favourite Danish brand.

And with Tidal ? The electronics from the same factory. Well you would expect a dazzling result and it certainly was that. Contros streamer/dac/pre into Intra power amp and Amea was a match made in heaven, the sound seemingly leaving the boundaries of the physical room and attaining a level of calmness and composure that made every single song sound completely different, half as complicated as they appeared in any other system.

Like everything else of late, the Amea have seen a strong price rise but they still for me represent good value for money, still lower than the old Estelon XC were some 5 or 6 years ago now. Are they a legitimate choice over an Avalon Idea ? Yes absolutely. Some may prefer their slighty more concise and precise delivery over an Avalon PM1 too. And if a standmount was all you wanted and you wanted the ultimate, then you can always option the diamond tweeter for a £9200 addition. Yes it becomes a very expensive speaker then but still some way below a ceramic Mino and as is well known, the diamond tweeter will turn it into a different animal altogether; simply far greater clarity and resolve again right the way throughout the range.

Note also that this year the Amea will be joined here by the Thrax Lyra, the very highly regarded standmount from Bulgaria which will sit at a slightly higher price point but promises to be equally as exemplary. Stay tuned for that important arrival here to the UK then. It will be great to have the choice of two here, both under the £20,000 mark.