FIRST TESTS STYLE SPEAKER PACKAGE

Round the back… connections

This is a view of the Q7000 subwoofer you shouldn’t get more than once. Its innovative design means the drive unit fires horizontally towards an internal sounding board (held in position by a single bolt). This means sound is evenly dispersed, the subwoofer is very flexible about position and can even be wall-mounted (the neccesary bracket is already available), and that once you’ve connected power and input cables and bolted the sounding board into place, you’re left with a glossy, discreet box that’s a lot less intrusive than some competing designs.

1Plenty of power The 25cm paper cone is driven by an ample 250 watts of amplification

2Multiple inputs You’ve been given a choice between line-level or speaker-level inputs

3Put it where you like The subwoofer’s positional flexibility means you might need a long mains lead

The handover between satellites and sub (which occurs at around the 120Hz mark) is smoothly realised, and the subwoofer itself is something of a star. Everything its fixedboundary design seeks to achieve comes to pass: bass hits hard, digs deep, is tonally articulate and not remotely directional.

From the subtle underpinning of a basso profundo voice to the overt crash-bangwallop of your average action movie, the Q7000’s subwoofer is a fast, controlled and implacably punchy device.

Equally impressive with music A switch to the equally, if entirely differently, testing DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack to Stop Making Sense lets the Q Acoustics demonstrate another strength: the ability to play music in a convincing and, well, musical way.

Many rival speaker packages can deliver the meat of a musical performance, but the Q7000 serves up all the nuances – low frequencies start and stop promptly, the midrange information is packed with detail and the entire frequency range is integrated with a casual unfussiness more commonly the preserve of much more expensive packages.

Timing, and the co-dependence of instruments on each other, is outstanding, with the result that the Q7000 organises and delivers music as naturally as any similarly priced package we’ve heard.

Fundamentally, then, the Q7000 is among the most accomplished styleorientated packages we’ve heard in a good while. And it’s remarkably gregarious when it comes to partnering electronics, too.

That’s not to say it’s perfect, of course – little in life is. There’s that tendency to harden a little when the going gets really loud, for example, and you’re never going to fill a cinema-sized room with sound from five such modestly proportioned speakers.

But taken in context, the Q7000 is an outstanding offering from a young company that has yet to put a foot badly wrong, and something of a gauntlet to other, longer-established rivals.

TECH SPECS

Power Front: 100W, centre: 100W, rear: 100W • Biwirable No • Sensitivity Front: 85dB/W/m, centre: 85dB/W/m, rear: 85dB/W/m • Impedance Front: 6 ohms, centre: 6 ohms, rear: 6 ohms • Dimensions (hwd) Front: 24 x 10 x 16cm, centre: 12 x 21 x 16cm, rear: 24 x 10 x 16cm, subwoofer: 37 x 51 x 22cm • Subwoofer power 250W • Subwoofer driver 25cm • Subwoofer cabinet type Sealed • Subwoofer drive unit orientation Forward • Subwoofer inputs Line x 2, speaker x 2 • Rear speaker type Conventional • Finishes 2

Rating ★★★★★ FOR Well made; tidy finish; confident and well-integrated sound; impressively musical

AGAINST Fractionally short where out-andout scale is concerned; treble can get glassy at extremely high volume levels

VERDICT The stylish, gutsy Q7000 is an authentic contender for head of the class

REVIEWER’S NOTES... 5 DAYS WITH THE Q ACOUSTICS Q7000

DAY

1

In typically ‘can-do’ fashion we try to move the stand’s ball-joint into the ‘wallbracket position’ without loosening the bolts either side first. No harm done, fortunately. Speaker cable eventually attached with only minor cuticle damage.

DAY

2

More adjustmentrelated hi-jinks, although this time emphatically Not Our Fault. Undoing the subwoofer’s single bolt to get at the input board causes the sub to fall apart like a clown’s car. We recommend putting it on something soft first.

DAY

3

A few days of running-in has knocked the jagged edges off the treble and the it’s starting to sound like the real deal. The speakers are unfussy about position, which is useful in a product that can easily be bolted to a wall – even the sub.

DAY

4

The Q7000 really is remarkably composed when playing stereo music. Lots of packages fall to pieces here, but the Q Acoustics does a fair impression of a decent pair of budget speakers – once we’ve backed off the subwoofer just a touch.

DAY

5

It doesn’t matter what you throw at it. Wordy arthouse stuff, thunderous multiplex fare, pounding tunes, string quartets… the Q7000 rolls up its sleeves and gets stuck in. In terms of sheer adaptability alone, it’s mightily impressive.

8 www.whathifi.com