Grammy Award-Winning Engineer Cranks Up the Volume with Amphion’s One25A
Stefano Pizzaia shares his experience with the perfect one-piece solution
Bogota, Colombia, June 20, 2024 — When Latin GRAMMY® Award-winning mixing and mastering engineer Stefano Pizzaia bought a pair of Amphion One15 reference monitors, for his home studio in Bogota, he had never heard any of the brand’s speakers in action. Now in another act of faith, over six years later, he has installed a pair of Amphion's new One25A 3-way active studio monitors without first hearing a single note of music played through them. Pizzaia had hoped to hear the One25A speakers at a trade show, but the opportunity never arose. “So, I said to myself, ‘If I chose Amphion once and I made the right decision, without listening to the speakers at the time, I will do the same with the One25As,” he says. “Because I very much trust the brand.”
Thinking back, Pizzaia recalls, “When I discovered Amphion it was a revelation, because they had everything that I have always liked from a speaker,” he says. “They are passive with a closed design and I also like the crossover stage. Everything made a lot of sense to me. I like the relationship between the tweeter and the size of the driver in the One15s. And they are quick, because the driver is smaller, and faithfully represents fast transients.” At first, he paired his One15s with an Amp100 power amplifier before transitioning to the Amp500 then the Amp700, which he still uses.
Precise and Responsive
Pizzaia started out studying classical guitar in Italy, later playing electric guitar in various bands before furthering his interest in technology and electronics by switching his focus to audio engineering. For the past 12 years he has worked at Audiovision Studios in Bogota, one of Colombia’s top music production facilities, and also maintaining his own mixing and mastering studio. Originally, he had a concentration on Colombian folk and jazz, but now works with artists across a range of modern music genres. Along the way he has picked up five Latin GRAMMY Awards and a dozen or more nominations, for projects by artists such as Carlos Vives, Andrés Cepeda and Jorge Celedón.
Most recently, Pizzaia has been working with artists in the pop, fusion and urban genres, music with a lot of samples and synthesizers, he says, and for the last couple of years he has been doing more mastering than mixing. “Especially with a lot of transient information in the low end you need a very quick, precise and responsive speaker. You can check some things in headphones, if you have a good pair of headphones, but it's a very different experience to listening through a good monitoring system.”
He continues, “That's why I needed a more complete monitoring system, because I was feeling the necessity of a complete and extended response range from my speakers.” He reports that he had been thinking about trying Amphion’s Two18s, which Audiovision Studios also has, with a BaseTwo25 bass extension system. “But when Amphion came up with the One25As, I said, ‘That's perfect,’ because it's a one-piece solution.”
A Musical Sound
The One25A, Amphion’s first 3-way active monitor system that debuted in 2023, has lived up to Pizzaia’s expectations. “It has a very, very wide response, and it's perfect for mastering. It’s a new design and a step up in technology with new drivers and a new amplifier — and they sound beautiful. A three-way design is very convenient, but it has to be constructed the right way to work. And Amphions always work!”
The One25As are similar to his One15s, he says, not least because they both use the same diameter woofer. “So it makes sense to transition from the One15s to the One25As. The One15s, One18s and the Two18s have more of a signature sound, especially in the mid-range. But the One25A is a different speaker. It has much more resolution. I very much hear resolution in the mid-range, the high end and in the low end. They're very well balanced, so quick and deep. The One25A, I think, is more of a neutral, mastering-grade speaker. They have a very neutral, natural and beautiful sound, a very musical sound.”
As for power, he says, the One25A’s on-board amplification delivers more than enough. “If I'm alone, I work at very low levels because I don't like to crank the speakers. You can also listen at very low volumes and have a very good representation of transients, and the low and mid-range. But you can crank up the volume if you want. The One25A has a lot of power, and in a recording scenario, in a big studio with a big live room, with clients that want loud monitoring, they have a lot of headroom to work with. The impressive thing is, I tried a couple of times to crank up the volume. It was too loud for me, but I wasn't even able to activate the limiter in the One25As!”
Pizzaia has worked over the years with hybrid systems and also in the box. However, how an engineer chooses to work the technology is ultimately secondary, he says. “The most important things, of course, are the musicians and the music. Because if you don't have a good song or a good artist, it's very difficult. But after that, for me, the most important thing is always, and will always be, the monitoring system. Because it's the only way that you can make the right decisions.”
To learn more about Amphion Loudspeakers, please visit https://amphion.fi/.
About Amphion
Amphion Loudspeakers Ltd. was established in 1998. We design and build loudspeakers that are characterized by honest and accurate sound reproduction. Precise driver integration ensures world-class imaging and phase coherency. Controlled dispersion technology helps achieve more stable results in a variety of room acoustics. All products are handmade in Finland (and the Amphion amplifiers are assembled in Finland) to ensure enduring listening quality.
