Using finite-element analysis and laser interferometry, Fink has determined that this is where the bracing will be most needed and most effective.
JM SOUND REFERENCE 500 DRIVERS
This cross-bracing, which Q Acoustics has trademarked P2P (point to point), is used primarily near the top of the cabinet, where all three drivers are. The bracing in the Concept 500 consists mainly of cross-bracing between the sidewalls rather than the more conventional shelf braces.
JM SOUND REFERENCE 500 FREE
(Humble particleboard, once used for speakers in audio's Jurassic Age, is even better damped and easier to work with, but MDF is stronger, denser, and free of voids.) It's the three other aspects of the design that set the Concept 500 apart, though two of them, bracing and constrained-layer damping, aren't really new. The main cabinet material is MDF, commonly used in loudspeakers for its low cost, workability, and good damping properties. In a white paper, Q Acoustics describes the four key aspects of the Concept 500's design in more depth than I have room for here. It avoids the extreme-mass solutions popular in cost-no-object speakers, but impractical with speakers priced for the real world. The approach they've used is sophisticated. With the Concept 500, and in cooperation with Fink Audio-Consulting, in Germany, Q Acoustics has launched a serious attack on speaker-cabinet vibrations.
JM SOUND REFERENCE 500 DRIVER
The driver configuration is only part of the design. The Concept 500 is a two-way system employing a 1" soft-dome tweeter and two 6.5" mid/bass drivers, the three drivers arrayed in a vertical D'Appolito configuration: a column with the tweeter in the middle. The speakers are delivered with their metal bases, or plinths, firmly attached, rather than the usual "some assembly required." The speaker sits 45.3" high, but only 7.8" wide and 13.8" deepit shouldn't look overbearing in a room of medium to large size. Yet while the Concept 500 itself is relatively largethe biggest speaker Q Acoustics has ever madethose boxes were a little misleading. This might be familiar territory for those who review multi-hundred-pound speakers costing five or six figures per pair, but not for me.
When the review samples arrived in two huge, well-padded, double-thick cartons tied to a shipping pallet, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.
But you won't find it at your local audio shop (if you still have one) in the US it's currently sold only online, through Q Acoustics' US website, with a 30-day, money-back guarantee that includes shipping costsboth ways. The result is the Concept 500 ($5999.99/pair), first seen in the UK in 2017 and recently made available here. Until recently, Q has aimed its efforts at the budget sector, earning enthusiastic reviews and commercial success.īut during that time the company also been quietly working on a product considerably more upscale, though still affordable in a marketplace now glutted with products at if-you-have-to-ask prices. Q Acoustics was founded in the UK in 2006, but has appeared on the radar of US buyers only in the last few years.