Argon Audio Fenris A55

I am back in love with floorstanders - nice looks, decent modern inputs and great sound

The Fenris A55 is a pair of powered towers where the left speaker holds the amplifier and all the inputs, and the right is a passive cabinet driven over a single speaker cable. Each side runs two 5.25″ paper-cone woofers and a 0.75″ soft-dome tweeter from a Class D amplifier, in a tall MDF enclosure that is clearly built to move air.

What makes the A55 interesting is how much it functionality you get in one box. It takes HDMI ARC for your TV, optical and analogue RCA for a source, a moving-magnet phono input for a turntable, and even Bluetooth — so it can be a TV system, a desktop system, or a turntable system without a separate amplifier or receiver in the chain. The Fenris series is pitched squarely at people who want real floorstanding sound without building a rack of separates or spending a lot of money. In short, it is a perfect Pragmatic floorstanding speaker.

A return to floor standers that I didn’t expect

My audiophile journey started over 25 years ago setting up two rooms of my house with two floorstanders and an ampifier wired with A/B speakers outputs feeding them via underfloor cabling ( this was a time before wireless streaming audio). The 2 floorstanders I had (for many years) where a Mordaunt Short Avant’s in one room and Castle Severn in the other, both of these are from that classic British speaker design heritage that also gave us Wharfedale and KEF.

Note: At Vienna High End this year I spotted Castle making what looks like a genuine comeback, which was a lovely surprise to see in person:

But a lot has changed in the 25 years since. Back then, nobody would have suggested pairing a subwoofer with bookshelf speakers as a serious audiophile setup — that was a compromise, not a choice. So when I got back into the hobby five years ago, the general wisdom was that a bookshelf-plus-subwoofer pairing (e.g. a KEF LS50 Meta with a KEF subwoofer) is exactly what I ended up building, and I followed that formula into several of my other rooms since. Floorstanders had become something I mostly ignored.

This review, and the extended period I’ve spent living with the Fenris A55, changed my mind about that — at least for one particular room in my house. That room has always been a problem. Space for a subwoofer is limited, and in the past only larger bookshelf speakers — like the SVS Ultra Evolution Bookshelf I reviewed — could provide enough bass to sound tonally neutral once room-corrected, even if they were arguably a bit large for the space:

My wife, who generally doesn’t want visible “boxes” around the house, was never going to agree to the multiple subwoofers you’d normally want in that Room to help cancel out room nulls. The Fenris A55’s pair with genuinely good bass per tower, helped along by a little DSP, solved that bass problem without needing bass traps or a small army of subwoofers, and I know I’ll miss the sound in that room when the Fenris go back to Argon after this review.

The short version of this review’s sentiment: the Fenris A55 made me believe that decent floorstanders could solve a problem I had couldn’t with multiple bookshelves and subwoofers.

But first, let’s take a look at what’s in the box.

Unboxing and Packaging

The A55 arrives in a single large carton, and as you open it both speakers are right there, carefully secured in place and cradled top and bottom in foam:

Underneath that, each speaker is still in its protective wrapping. Lifting one out, the speaker stays bagged with the driver outline pressing through the wrap:

The accessories are straightforward and complete for a plug-and-play system: the 6 m speaker cable that links the two cabinets, the remote with its battery, and the power cable. That 6 m run is generous and, thankfully, long — I wanted to route the cable discreetly around the room so it wasn’t on show (keeping it out of my wife’s eyeline), and the extra length made that easy. With a cable like this, the longer the better:

The base of each cabinet ships bare, with mounting points for the supplied adhesive felt protector pads — I applied the feet to each speaker before standing them up:

Design and Build Quality

These are proper floorstanders rather than desktop boxes — tall MDF cabinets in a walnut PVC wrap, with two 5.25″ woofers stacked below a small soft-dome tweeter and a front bass port. They look at home standing on the floor in a room rather than perched on a desk:

The supplied magnet-mount fabric grilles clip on cleanly if you prefer to hide the drivers.

At 25 kg for the pair these are substantial, and the felt pads are the only floor protection, so plan placement before you set them down.

Features and Connectivity

This is where the A55 earns its keep. The left speaker is the active one and carries the amplifier and all the connections; the right is passive and is fed from the active side. Setting it up over HDMI ARC was genuinely straightforward — connect the one HDMI cable to the TV and the speakers just work.

The rear of the active (left) speaker is a full input panel: HDMI TV ARC, optical (labelled D1), an analogue Aux RCA pair, a moving-magnet Phono input, a USB power output for accessories, and a Pre-out for adding a subwoofer or feeding another zone. A single rotary control selects the input and sets volume. In use the panel is easy to live with — the speaker auto-powers on the active input and auto-switches between sources, so in the living room the HDMI ARC connection simply wakes with the TV:

The connectivity also makes it a natural partner for a streamer. The passive cabinet has its rear bass port and a simple binding-post panel clearly labelled as the right speaker, taking the speaker cable from the left:

I really liked (and my wife especially appreciated) the simplicity of just a single cable required for other Speaker, this made it very easy to hide that typical cable mess and keep everything tidy.

Room correction with the WiiM

On aspect of the connectivity that I really liked was when pairing with a simple affordable WiiM Mini ‘streamer’. This was especially useful for the WiiM’s RoomFit room-correction. RoomFit measures both channels and generates a correction profile you can save and apply:

With the correction applied the stereo image tightened up noticeably and the bass stopped overwhelming the room, which is what made the A55 work for serious seated listening rather than just casual TV use.

For the price, and given how simple the whole setup is, and that it can be hidden behind the A55 with just 2 cables needed:

Note: I could have used a much shorter USB-C cable and Optical cable to make it tidier still, but I hope this give people an idea of how simple this setup was as this is using the A55’s own USB power output powering the WiiM Mini and the optical out of the WiiM Mini back into the A55.

A comparison of before and after

I also cross-checked the room response with HouseCurve, a small iOS app that measures in-room response quickly, with the A55 pair either side of the Samsung TV in that room, with a little EQ applied on top, this was the in-room result:

I love that I can get nice bass down to nearly 30hz which was never possible in this space without a subwoofer previously.

For comparison, here is just the original Samsung TV’s FR in that same room:

Overall, I was very happy with the A55’s sound profile in this larger space.

The Phono Stage

The phono input deserves its own section rather than a line in the input list. Alongside the phono RCA pair on the rear panel is a RIAA switch, and once I had the TT-4 MK2 running straight into it, I ended up doing a fuller subjective comparison than I’d originally planned, switching between the A55’s built-in phono stage and three other phono preamps I have on hand: the phono input on one of my Denon amplifiers, my standalone SMSL PH-1, and the phono stage built into my WiiM Ultra.

Argon’s own line is that unless you already own a genuinely expensive external phono preamp, their built-in stage of the TT4-MK2 should do the job without needing to add one — and based on this comparison, I agree with them. Subjectively, the A55’s phono stage was good but not as good as the one built into the TT4-MK2, and it even held its own credibly against both the dedicated SMSL PH-1 and the WiiM Ultra’s own phono stage.

Sound Impressions

The following impressions are focused on music enjoyment rather than TV or film sound. As a soundbar and subwoofer replacement the Fenris performed well, though my wife did note for the first few minutes that voices were not as forward as our normal TV setup — a dedicated “clear voice” mode would likely make a difference for that use case. For music, however, read on.

I listened across three different room setups, mainly over HDMI ARC from a TV or optical input from the WiiM Mini, switching between the speaker’s stock response and the WiiM’s room-corrected profile. In one of the rooms, I also did some A/B testing between the wall-mounted TV ‘stock’ response and the Fenris A55.

Bass

Bass is the A55’s signature, and there is a lot of it. The twin 5.25″ woofers and large ported cabinet deliver deep extension and real low-end weight — this is a pair of speakers that can shake a room. If anything there is too much of it in a small or untreated space, where the mid-bass can dominate before correction. On “Angel” by Massive Attack the low synth line lands with genuine physical weight and fills the room easily, though in the kids’ room it needed the WiiM’s correction to stop the bass from running away with the balance. For watching TV and films the abundance is welcome; for music it benefits from being reined in.

Midrange

The midrange is the one area I would call slightly recessed. Coming from a vocal-forward setup — the Samsung TV tuned to push voices forward (as my wife noticed) but then switching to the A55 made vocals seem a little more distant at first, sitting back behind the bass and treble rather than front and centre. But this was mainly an issue only when comparing to a TV with a ‘vocal’ forward tuning and when watching TV, when listening to music, I found the Fenris A55 had excellent midrange tonality.

On “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman the vocal is clear and natural, just placed a touch further back than a deliberately vocal-forward speaker would put it.

Treble

The soft-dome tweeter is smooth and unfatiguing rather than sharp or sparkly, which suits long TV sessions and keeps bright recordings comfortable.

On “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson the hi-hats have enough energy and crispness to drive the track without ever turning hard or sibilant. It is a sensible, easy-going top end that pairs well with the generous bass.

Soundstage and Imaging

Out of the box the imaging is good enough for TV and casual listening, where you are not fussy about pinpoint placement. For serious listening the WiiM’s room correction made a bigger difference — it cleared up the stereo image considerably, pulling the centre into focus and letting instruments sit in defined places rather than being smeared by room modes.

On “Hotel California” by the Eagles the corrected setup placed the intro guitars and percussion clearly across the front, where the uncorrected response sounded broader but less precise. The takeaway is simple: the default response works well for watching TV, and a quick room correction unlocks the rest for music.

In the Living Room and the Kids’ Room

A large part of the A55’s appeal is how easily it dropped into three completely different roles. In the main living room it ran as a TV system over HDMI ARC, flanking the screen on a cabinet:

The moving-magnet phono input also makes it a one-box turntable system — I ran the Argon Audio TT-4 MK2 straight into it for the vinyl listening described in the phono stage section above, no separate phono preamp needed, though the phono built into the TT-4 MK2 was also excellent.

In a second living space they worked just as well flanking a wall-mounted TV, where the deep bass really filled the room, this is where I measured it previously:

But finally, in the kids’ room the A55 ran from the WiiM Mini over optical and RCA, and it is interesting to compare against a TV’s built-in speakers — the difference in scale and bass is not subtle:

This room was always problematic and Room Curve

HouseCurve’s independent measurement backs up what RoomFit already showed: usable output down near 30Hz from a pair of towers with no separate subwoofer. The only slightly annoying aspect while I can correctly the music streaming playback via the WiiM’s Room Fit correction, when listening to the TV (or playing games), you that slightly more bassy FR shown above. I would love Argon Audio to open up their internal DSP so it can be adjusted via HDMI, but overall that extra Bass worked well - at least my kids really enjoyed watching movies and playing games with that added bass.

Specifications

The frequency-response figures above are Argon’s published specification. The in-room sweeps shown earlier are room measurements taken with HouseCurve earlier show that with some careful placement and a little room correction you can do even better.

Rating Explanation

The Pragmatic Rating of 4 reflects a pair of active speakers that get the important things right: big, room-filling sound and genuinely useful connectivity in a single, simple package. The twin-woofer cabinets deliver deep, confident bass, the soft-dome tweeter keeps the top end smooth, and the HDMI ARC, optical, RCA, and phono inputs mean the A55 can be a TV system, a streaming system, and a turntable system without any extra boxes. The auto-on and auto-input-switching behaviour make daily use effortless.

There are two honest caveats. The bass is abundant to the point of being too much in a small or untreated room, and the midrange sits slightly recessed, so vocals can seem a little distant when you switch from a vocal-forward source — though in practice we acclimatised to that within a couple of hours and stopped noticing. Both points are largely addressed by room correction: pairing the A55 with a streamer that offers it, like the WiiM Mini, tightened the imaging and tamed the low-end enough to turn a great TV speaker into a satisfying music system. I wish the speaker’s internal DSP were directly tunable, but using the WiiM Mini ahead of it did a good job of smoothing out the room modes anyway.

This one is for the listener who wants real floor standing scale and proper TV and turntable connectivity without assembling a separates system, and who either has a larger room that can absorb the bass or is willing to apply a little room correction to get the best from it.

Conclusion

The Fenris A55 is a lot of speaker for the money and a genuinely convenient one. It will shake a room with some decent sub-bass, it takes almost any source relevant you can think of including a TV or a turntable, and it slots into a living room or a kids’ room with equal ease.

It is not perfectly neutral out of the box but Argon Audio have done a good job with the internal DSP to provide a generally neutral sounding frequency response with good deep bass, maybe there is more bass than a small room wants and my only real caveat is it would be great to have some simple way to tweak Bass without relying on WiiM Room Fit (or other external room correction utility ).

As a ‘do-everything’ active floor stander, the Fenris A55 has made me appreciate both the flexibility and the applicability of having a good floor-stander and especially at its price, I feel the A55 is an easy recommendation.