I first met Jonathan Magnus Cook when he greeted me at the door of the Ø Audio room in Warsaw at Audio Video Show 2024. At that time, they were playing some seriously ominous metal. I turned to Cook and asked about this terrifying music, which was being played at a very high volume. “This is Norwegian metal,” he responded. “We are Norwegian.”
Cook is a very large, solid, serious Norwegian who needs longer hair and should be swinging a hammer. At this meeting, in Florida, the Ø Audio folks weren’t playing metal—it was more a mix of typical show music, but that was fine, as they were introducing their new Icon 12 speaker, which sells for $23,400 per pair (USD). It’s an update of the company’s first product, simply called Icon. For a tidy but slightly chubby floorstander, the Icon 12 belts out some serious bass and has a neutral sound profile overall.
But it was polite show-music time, I guess. After I’d sat through a couple of breathy female singers accompanied by sparse but reverb-laden piano, I could take no more. The room was crowded, and I had to clear it out. “Could you play ‘Purple Hat’ by Sofi Tukker?” I asked Sveinung Mala, Cook’s co-founding partner. “And turn it up, please.”
The Icon 12 has (obviously) a 12″ woofer, and the speakers pressurized the room with healthy waves of gut-punching bass. This clever techno track seemed tailor-made for the Icon 12s, and I noted one other show-goer who seemed to agree, although the rest of those flopdicks left after a few bars.
This is a beautiful speaker, if you like large drivers staring out at you. The gloss-walnut veneer contrasted with the black drivers, in a mid-century Stanley Kubrick aesthetic. The asymmetrical cabinet is heavily damped, with bitumen pads and felt, which contribute to the sturdy 121-pound weight.
Ø Audio describes the horn as a “Constant Directivity Quad Vertex Sound Field” design. It’s loaded with a 3.4″ carbon-fiber driver that, in concert with the 12″ woofer, promises sensitivity of 92dB; a nice, easy 8-ohm impedance; and a sturdy 28Hz–20kHz frequency response.
Fronting the Icon 12s were a Boulder 1110 preamplifier and 1160 power amplifier, with digital audio coming from an Electrocompaniet ECM 1 MkII streaming DAC. Tellurium Q cables strung it all together.
This frostbitten, slightly homesick Canadian boy was charmed when a lady sitting behind me asked, in a lilting southern drawl, for a track from Blue Rodeo’s Five Days in July. “Jim Cuddy lives just up the street from me,” I said over my shoulder. “You should drop by.”
The Icon 12 has a wonderful way with male voices. The demo pair sounded slightly rich in the lower midrange, but not so rich as to obscure—just enough to endear. If my show experience is any indication, I’d wager that these are speakers you could listen to for long periods with no ear strain. I left wanting to learn more.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
