An award-winning acousmatic composer, Dr Antti Saario’s compositions bring together unusual sound sources to create moving emotional experiences from unexpected sonic relationships. This background in the experimental has also informed his work as Head of Music at Falmouth University in Cornwall, England, where he makes holistic listening a key component in his teaching and ongoing academic research.

Saario’s signature melding of the emotional and technical relies heavily on Two15 and Argon 7LS monitors from Finnish company Amphion as a critical part of his sonic explorations.

Although versed in numerous music genres, Saario’s experiences in acousmatic composition and what he calls ‘post-acousmatic’ composition have proven the most influential on his approach as a producer and audio engineer. His work requires extreme patience and a keen attention to detail, assembling compositions from found sources and exploring the results. This has given him a unique point of view in regard to the relationship between production and the effect that it can have on a listener.

‘In this type of composition, the technical and emotive aspects go hand-in-hand because there isn’t a set tone of how anything is “meant” to sound,’ he explains. ‘It’s all about discovering those relationships and bringing forth the feelings that they evoke. It may be closer to sound design than traditional composition, but the emotional goals are equally important.’

Saario’s emphasis on what he calls ‘affective critical listening’ has led him through a succession of monitoring systems in order to satisfy his needs. He found the balance between truthful detail and affecting musical experience when he made Amphion Two15 monitors a part of his studio.

‘It’s extremely uncommon to find studio monitors that give you both precision and a sense of emotional engagement with the music,’ he says. ‘Amphion has always been excellent at enabling both of those facets. You’re able to hear with extreme detail, but it’s an emotionally engaging listen that “feels” right. Being able to use this very holistic approach to listening so effectively had an immediate impact on my workflow, both as a composer and as an educator.’

Saario’s students at Falmouth University represent a diversity of musical approaches and genres, reflecting the school’s broad musical curriculum. Despite this, his emphasis on teaching the art of critical listening as a way of creative engagement is universal across the school’s songwriting and composition classes, as well as its audio engineering and sound design programmes. He does this to ensure that his pupils develop ears that are as emotionally engaged as they are critical, and always with an eye towards experimenting with process.

‘Music students come into educational programmes like ours with a higher level of technical know-how than they would have had in the past, but the danger in that is having preconceived notions of how everything should sound and work,’ he says. ‘My goal as an educator is to encourage them to step out of that technical comfort zone and really listen in the moment. When they take time to do that, they’ll often make the most interesting and honest creative decisions.’

Saario uses two monitoring set-ups when listening to his student’s assignments. In his private studio, designed and built by DACS Audio specifically for his critical listening needs in regards to research and studio composition, he uses five AmphionTwo15 monitors and a pair of BaseOne25 bass extension systems. When he wants a change of surroundings without losing the listening accuracy he’s come to rely on, however, he moves into his sitting room where a pair of Argon 7LS speakers are part of his home theatre set-up.

‘My partner and I both are music researchers and educators, so our home listening is just as important to us as our studio setups,’ he says. ‘Having that high resolution and quality of experience in an environment like this where you can comfortably immerse allows you to get into a different headspace when listening and I was impressed by how close they were to my Two15s. We’re using them every day for everything – and the ability to connect with that experience so fully has made them essential to us.

‘Being able to trust that one tool to shift so easily between those modes has been utterly crucial to my work,’ he adds. ‘The Amphions enable me to shift between very different listening modes – be they as an educator, producer and engineer, sound designer, or audio researcher – without any compromises.’

More: https://amphion.fi