Theophany’s Airo Loudspeakers are a sonic marvel

For many years I had wanted to hear Theophany speakers, but this Kiwi brand somehow managed to elude these curious ears. Until, that is, around the middle of 2023 when Garth Murray, Theophany’s creator and designer, offered to give me a home demo during one of his regular treks around the country. Based in Christchurch, New Zealand, where Theophany speakers are designed and built, Garth and his wife Steph eschew the more usual in-store distribution (with perhaps one or two exceptions) preferring to bring their speakers directly to the potential buyer.

I live in a semi-rural location at the end of a narrow lane that stops abruptly at two driveways. Turning any vehicle around here can be tricky but Garth (sans wife on this occasion) skilfully manoeuvred his SUV and large speaker-stocked trailer, reversing in as close as possible to my music room. I enjoyed a fascinating few hours while Garth demoed a range of his speakers from smallest and most affordable to the largest and most expensive. Garth is a great orator, and he spoke at length about each speaker as well as his design philosophies. While some of the more technical stuff didn’t quite land in my old mind tank as much as I would’ve liked, it was certainly far from boring. Thus, once Garth had packed up his wares and driven off promising to return soon with a pair of speakers for me to review, I felt that I could have spent hours more listening to both him and his speakers. I looked forward to spending some in-depth time with whatever he chose to bring me.

Some months later Garth (this time with Steph in tow) brought me a pair of the newly revised popular-selling Airo loudspeakers, which sit one below the top-of-the-line Rhapsody model.

Design and philosophy

Standing 112.5cm at the front and sloping along the top up to 117.5cm at the back, the Airos are quite big and visually impressive speakers. They’re approximately 40cm deep and roughly the same at their widest point, while the frontmost face tapers from the base at 26cm wide up to 15cm wide at the top. The cabinet – made from beautifully worked and finished laminated New Zealand and imported timber – flares out and around to the back in roughly a teardrop shape and the edges of the front are brought in as close as possible to the edges of the speaker drivers. You’ll notice there are no straight edges, and all of this is part of Garth’s clever design concept to reduce the turbulence caused as sound waves circulate from around the rear of the cabinets, interfering with the sound as it makes its way from the drivers to the listener’s ears. (Think of an outdoor concert on a windy day where the wind blows across the front of the speakers – it’s a very similar effect.) Internal standing waves and “baffle step” where traditional baffles can interfere with sound waves as they exit the front of the speakers are also reduced or eliminated due to the cabinet design. According to Garth, Theophany speakers use “a combination of fibreglass, polyester and wool baffle internally, which is designed to improve the sound at each frequency response required.” The speakers lean back slightly, and this is to time-align the drivers to the listener’s ears.

The Airos have six drivers each – three 6” bass, two 4” mid-woofers and a 2.5” tweeter which is located between the two mid drivers. The three lower drivers are covered by circular metal mesh covers which Garth tells me make little to no difference to the sound – they’re there to protect them from poking, prodding and general household incidents which can cause damage. Material-wise, the bass woofers are made from paper and fibreglass – chosen for its clean and punchy sound. The mid-woofers operate in a sealed chamber and are made from Kevlar and carbon fibre – a combination Garth says gives a “very detailed but non-aggressive mid-range”.

Of the tweeter, he told me it’s “… a combination of ceramic cone and silk dome, [with] neodymium ferro cooled fluid and its own sealed case. It is flat, accurate and detailed going all the way to 45khz”. The bass drivers go down to 23Hz. For those interested in crossover design, Garth says, “The crossovers feature non inductive resistors, air core inductors and poly-propylene metalized capacitors. They are typically second order which means a roll off of 12db per octave from the filter frequency. They are all impedance balanced giving flatter, smoother response. We have no notch filters on our crossover as with just the use of several impedance balance circuits and attenuation circuits we’ve managed to balance the output such that we typically get close to 1.5db variation between 300hz and 10khz. It goes up to +or-3 dB outside of these points. We have our own wire made for them. All of the main wires are 12awg silver tinned OFC copper except the tweeter wires which are 18awg.” He also informed me the cabinets are finished with a low-toxicity and low gloss (which I like) acrylic clear coat – better for the environment and for those applying it – however a high-gloss finish is available if requested. The speakers stand on nice black plinths and are down ported. Two sets of binding posts allow for biwiring if desired.

Setup

I was told the Airos are unfussy when it comes to room positioning and indeed, when I placed them in the spots usually occupied by my Reference 3A floorstanders, they sounded immediately impressive. I experimented a little with toe-in and slight adjustments in positioning, but I found that I liked them just as they were in those original spots.

Garth brought along an Atoll SDA 300 integrated streaming amplifier as they’re one of his favourite amps to pair with his speakers and left it with me to use in the review. (Atoll importer Stephen Seque of Soul to Sole Audio subsequently asked me to review the SDA 300, so that’ll be on its way in the near future.) I also used the fantastic M2Tech Classic integrated as well as my Unico SE amplifier. I listened to vinyl using my Wand 14/4 Turntable with EMT and Hana cartridges, The Wand EQ and EV phonostage and power supply and my Electrocompaniet ECD 2 DAC provided hi-res digital music via Roon. My Reference 3A floorstanding speakers provided my only reference point for speaker comparisons, but my home is full of instruments – guitars, keyboards, synths, a piano, and a full acoustic drum kit – which gives me an excellent reference point when listening for things like timbre and texture. I have a small to medium sized listening room (which, incidentally, during his first visit, Garth complimented as sounding “really good”) but the somewhat imposing Airos, I think, neither looked nor sounded at all out of place.

Often big speakers – like the Perlistens I reviewed a while back – will make an initial impression with their scale and bass power abilities. While the Airos certainly have scale and power, I was first bowled over by the absolute clarity and presence they offered. It was a genuine, bona fide “wow!” moment. It’s a level of presence – not to mention the high standard of timbral accuracy – that not only puts the instruments in the room with you, but makes you feel part of the action. At times I felt as though I could be playing one of the instruments, such was the physical nature of the images being reproduced. The Airos managed to construct the most believable soundstages I have heard to date. Regardless of how an album was recorded, before me was an illusionary stage with performers placed as you would imagine them to be in real life – drums at the back, bass here, guitar there, piano there, singer in the front or perhaps slightly to the left, each one superbly outlined and isolated. And I was really impressed by how easily I could, for example, lock into a drumbeat. Not just hear the beat but actually perceive how the drummer was playing the groove – it was uncanny but highly enjoyable. With bass guitar, individual notes, even down to the lower octaves, remained clear, concise and intact, stopping with precision and control with no overhang or muddy follow-through. This meant that while bass was punchy and deep, it didn’t swamp the room – or the rest of the frequency range – with overpowering low-end. I detected no trace of cabinet colouration, just a beautifully transparent midrange and detail levels that are wonderfully natural and crisp without the treble ever becoming fatiguing or bright.

Listening

Black Sabbath’s ‘War Pigs’ from the album Paranoid (1970, Warner/Rhino) has become one of my go-to tracks for demonstrating dynamics, speed, transient attack and frequency response and is, in my opinion, the perfect way to hear what the Airos can do. Dropping the needle, I cranked the volume up as loud as my pounding heart could stand and the Airos showed not the slightest hint of strain. The sheer force and speed of those drum rolls was incredibly exhilarating, and their size, position, and scale was expressed in a completely believable manner. It really did sound like I was sat in front of an actual drum kit. The electric guitar was raw and visceral, notes cutting through the listening room like lightning, while its player, Tony Iommi, was perfectly – tangibly – placed in the mix. I know you’ve read time and again in hi-fi reviews that “the singer sounded like they were in the room”, but on this occasion, well… Ozzy had an uncannily realistic presence, an ultra-realistic hologram where every element of his voice seemed to be perceivable. And not once did the treble sound bright or fatiguing. The Airos produced a wall of sound with perfect clarity and not a hint of congestion or protest. There are times when I play ‘War Pigs’ through my Ref 3As and feel that they could go off the rails at any moment. They never do, of course, but it gives a bit of an exciting edge to loud listening sessions. With the Airos I sensed I could double or even triple the volume and the only thing to break would be me. In saying that, when listening at lower levels, the Airos retained their sense of dynamics and image scale, meaning late night listening sessions in a shared house were very much possible.

Xylouris White is a duo consisting of lute and lyra player Giorgos Xylouris and Dirty Three (also Cat Power, Bill Callahan and many more) drummer Jim White. Their album The Forest In Me (2023, Drag City) is an intimate, skeletal affair, most of the songs being merely snippets or short and sweet musical postcards with an improvisational quality. White employs various percussive techniques with toms and snare while using the kick drum very sparingly – one track has but a solitary kick note, yet its impact playing through the Airos is so dramatic and sudden as to give a flash of adrenaline – goosebumps, even – to the listener. I believe the album was recorded by the musicians separately, during the pandemic, yet it genuinely sounds as though they are performing together. The Airos conveyed the intimacy, the transient attack and dynamics beautifully while even seeming to make the silences, or the “black backgrounds” just as important as every musical note played. The timbre and resonance of the toms was incredible and, when used, the kicks were breathtaking in their attack.

Surfing through my spclnch Records catalogue (dub techno, EDM, et cetera), I marvelled at all the electronic synth textures billowing forth in luxurious layers of sound. It was akin to some kind of aural massage that I never wanted to stop. The bottom end had a superb club-like punch and depth with beautifully defined and textured individual notes. Everything across the frequency range fitted together in perfect harmony, while standing out from each other with dynamic and tonal precision. Detail across the board was outstanding and the extra level of presence offered by those tweeters often caused my head to shake in disbelief.

Certain readers are angered by sentences such as “it sounded like the performers were in the room” or “the speakers disappeared” or “this is an excellent product, 10/10” but such sentiments are natural reactions that anyone can have. During the four or so months I lived with the Airos, I had a musician friend visit from Hong Kong. He composes, performs and teaches music but is in no way an audiophile. When he insisted on hearing these magnificent looking Kiwi speakers for himself, I was only too happy to indulge him. After a mere few seconds of listening, the first words out of his mouth were: “Wow, that sounds amazing! It’s like the instruments are here in the room – like I’m listening to the real thing.” Much headshaking and exclamations of disbelief ensued. I rest my case.

Listening to Laurie Anderson’s Big Science (1982, Warner Bros), on the track ‘Sweaters’, I enjoyed how the speakers showed off the contrasting tones of each drum component – the toms, the snare, kick and cymbals. Unlike previously, I now felt there was a real sense of how they were tuned and how hard the drummer was striking and working around the kit. And I wish I could more easily put into words how realistic Anderson’s vocal now sounded. The depth and palpable layers of her voice were stunning, and it really was like listening to an actual mouth singing, rather than the mere holographic illusion it actually was. From the way she was placed in the centre of the soundstage to every little vocal inflection and nuance was simply remarkable. And the vocal samples, violin and bagpipes added extra layers of lovely textures and complexity. I loathe bagpipes. My mother is from Scotland and my wife and I lived there in the late 1990s. It seemed like every Edinburgh Street corner was occupied by a kilted bagpiping busker and it drove me nuts. But I have to say this cacophonic baggy instrument gives ‘Sweaters’ a certain necessary edge that would absolutely not be there in its absence and the Airos seemed to relish in their conveyance of this.

A song I always love to spin when testing new equipment is ‘Fried Hockey Boogie’ from Canned Heat’s album Boogie With Canned Heat (1968, Liberty Records). This 11.08-minute track is the one where singer Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite introduces each member of the band, and they perform a solo to show y’all what they can do. You can hear the ferocity of the guitar amps, the intensity of the playing and, above all, the sheer love the performers have for their instruments. Thanks to the Airos, guitars sounded profoundly raw and visceral, with the lead in particular crackling, buzzing and squealing out into the room. I noticed there was somehow an extra layer of harmonics coming off the guitar strings. Especially notable were the bass guitar notes which had exceptional tone and individual separation – easily discernible and not blurring into each other. As for the drum solo, I had never heard the drum rolls sound so clear, precise or impactful and the scale of the kit was to die for. From stylus to speaker, this track came alive, grooving with lifelike sparkle which enthralled right to the run-out groove.

Going for a bit of “audiophile quality recorded” music, I gave the Christian Jormin 3’s track ‘Pärlor sköna’ from the album Sol Salutis (2010, Footprint Records) a spin (or should I say, stream). The drums (yep, drums again) had to have been closely and meticulously mic-ed to sound the way they do and the extra level of life the Airos brought was breathtaking. They glistened with clarity and the dynamics from top to bottom were a thing to behold. The imaging here was more focused and lifelike than ever – the drums were clearly placed in behind the speakers with the upright bass just in front. The piano appeared to float dead centre and just out into the room and despite the busy, vibrant drumming, each note stood out clearly – percussive, expressive and superb. This track sounds great with my Ref 3As, but it isn’t as effortless as it is with the Theophany’s and the imaging not as sharp. Where the Airos put a piano in front of me, the 3As spread the keys out a bit – the notes sound right but it isn’t quite as real sounding in terms of a palpable image.

To say I thoroughly enjoyed my time with these speakers would be a vast understatement. Music sounded so right, natural and lifelike that I could simply sit back and enjoy my own private concert. Would I mistake a recorded instrument playing from the Airos with an actual one being played in my room? Probably not, but damn (depending on the recording) it sure is getting pretty close.

Final thoughts

The Theophany Airos let you hear straight off the recording without adding colour of their own, effortlessly conveying the groove, atmosphere dynamics and tonal qualities of music. They are transparent, detailed, sparklingly clear, impactful, and they make instruments sound as near to the real thing you’ll hear. Every layer of sound has body and weight, texture and nuance.

I imagine there will be people who prefer a speaker that lends their music a bit of colour, and I understand that. I used to own a pair of Spendor SP2/3 speakers and there was definite – and quite possibly intentional – colouring of the sound from the cabinets themselves. I loved them and could easily own another pair, but they simply cannot compete with the graceful realism and musical beauty wrought by the Airos.

If I had to fault anything about these speakers, then it would be their price – they should easily be five to 10 thousand dollars more. Jokes aside, these amazing sounding pieces of beautiful furniture nigh on represent a bargain within the high-end audio market. Book yourselves an audition today!

theophany.co.nz