UK loudspeaker maker Q Acoustics’ home page states up front: ‘the best affordable speakers in the world’. Stephen Dawson puts this bold claim to the test.

The Q Acoustics ‘About’ page proclaims that it hasn’t been around for decades, nor that it was established by people disgruntled with the loudspeakers that have gone before. Instead, it started in 2006 ‘with the sole aim of developing a highly successful loudspeaker brand’. But of course the only way to do that ‘was to design and produce loudspeakers that were, without question, demonstrably superior to their similarly priced competitors’.

So let’s see how good one of its systems is.

Drivers and construction
The company has three conventional ranges (it also offers installation speakers and music systems): the Concept range, the 2000i compact series and the 7000i sub/sat series. It is this last one that we’re looking at here.

Its predecessor, the 7000 series had won a prestigious award in 2011, but was beaten in 2012, so the company redesigned the subwoofer, replaced the crossovers and drivers in the satellites, and reclaimed the title in 2013.

Each of the satellites is equipped with a pair of 75mm long throw bass/midrange drivers above and below (either side of, in the case of the centre channel) a 25mm ring radiator tweeter. The tweeter design has most of the acoustic energy generated not by a dome, but by a convex ring around halfway out from the centre of the tweeter. At the very centre is a pointed section which acts as a phase plug. Some rather high end loudspeaker designs choose this style of tweeter rather than a dome.

These are in compact enclosures – available in either black or white – which present a rectangular face to the world, but one with rounded tops and bottoms (sides for the centre channel). The satellites stand 240mm tall on their stands and just 100mm wide and 160mm deep. The body of the satellites was 207mm tall. A swivel stand allows for a range of adjustment (an Allen key for loosening the securing bolts is included) and also doubles as a neat and effective wall mount. The speaker terminals are in the base of the stand. These are spring clip connections, but well designed ones that allow the cables to be inserted all the way through them, and accommodate a reasonable gauge of wire.

The centre channel is the same as the satellites, except for the orientation of the main body.

A little strangely, Q Acoustics refers to the centre and surround speakers as ‘full range’, despite specifying the bass response as good down to only 95Hz. Indeed, the manual recommends that the crossover between the satellites and subwoofer be set at 200Hz. My home theatre receiver – the high-end Pioneer SC-LX87 – chose 150Hz during its automatic set up. We’ll see why a bit later.

The subwoofer is an unusual design. A compact rectangle, it’s 320mm tall, 460mm deep, but less than 200mm wide. Within it – actually entirely inside the body of the unit – is a 200mm driver backed by 150W of Class D power. The sound is emitted through a 45mm wide slot that goes all the way around the unit’s body. Most of the controls and all the connections are hidden away under a neat metal plate. Only the level and crossover frequency adjustments remain visible.

In all, the Q Acoustics 7000i system is very pretty to the eye.

Sound
With an 85dB sensitivity (1W input), it turned out that to reach my customary listening levels the volume needed to be advanced more than usual. Q Acoustics specifies the satellites and centre channel as capable of handling 100W of power, so that proved to be no problem. Indeed, at no point did I feel that the system was running out of capacity for achieving exciting volume levels (noting that I had well above 100W available for each channel).

The difference in sound with the receiver’s calibrated EQ on and off was virtually nil, which speaks well of the tonal balance of the satellites.

The system was thrilling on movies, with plenty of capacity and a great deal of precision in the placement of surround sound. I found myself happily advancing the volume level without any noticeable distress from any of the speakers. Even Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound delivered with this system resulted in thoroughly effective surround sound.

The one missing element of sound was the really deep bass available from some movies. There was loud deep bass available, but it was above the frequencies which engage the whole body of the listener and is restricted mostly to the ears.

Stereo music delivered excellent detail and an extremely accurate tonal balance from midrange through treble, although the bass was clearly uneven.

The stereo imaging was pleasing too, with a wide left-right stage and a modest amount of depth in the sound. Orchestral strings were smooth and nicely sweet, while cymbals rang with their full, complex mix of harmonic and non-harmonic elements.

The dynamics of their performance was impressive, with no apparent compression in sound level, even during percussive blasts. Drums rose above the musical mix as necessitated by the recording, allowing a wonderfully strong rhythmic delivery.

As for the bass, it seemed uneven in output. Listening to the high resolution version of Is This Love, Bob Marley delivered a very strong bass guitar line. Yet with other music there was a slight thinness, as though the upper bass were a bit lacking. It all depended on the bass mix. On the same album, Buffalo Soldier was alternately exciting in the bass (during the descending sequences) and wearyingly piercing (during the repeated bass notes which seemed to hit the peak). Easy Skanking was consistently exciting due to the bass emphasis.

Measurements
The satellites delivered a very flat frequency response – exceptionally flat – from around 200Hz all the way up to at least 18,000Hz (I didn’t have confidence in my measurements beyond that, given I was using 44.1kHz). Below 200Hz there was a kind of step down to a new average level that was about 6dB lower, and this extended all the way to 85Hz, below which the output fell away rapidly.

That would suggest a crossover frequency of around 200Hz would be optimal. So why did the receiver choose 150Hz?

As it turned out, the subwoofer simply wasn’t very good at producing the frequencies all the way up to 200Hz.

I measured the subwoofer’s output up close, as is my usual practice, and then at several other points in the room just to make sure that this wasn’t unusually disadvantageous to the sub. The output was quite surprising. It peaked strongly around 70Hz, with the output falling away to either side to be down by 6dB at 100Hz and 48Hz, and 9dB at 140Hz and 42Hz. At 30Hz, the output was 21dB down. For all practical purposes, there was nothing useful down there.

At the top end the sub was down by 15dB at 200Hz, which is presumably why the receiver went for a 150Hz crossover rather than 200.

Note: I used the mono line level input and set the crossover to ‘AV’ as instructed in the manual. There was no additional bypass switch on the sub for the skipping the crossover adjustment, so I assume that this setting achieved the same result.

Those output figures explained quite a lot: specifically the sense that the bass was both a tad strong, yet a little thin at the same time. The receiver in adjusting the subwoofer balance seems to have gone for averaging the subwoofer output level and using this to balance against the satellites.

I measured the system response at the listening position and the bass peak, at around 70Hz, was around 12dB above the 200 to 2,000Hz band, and the band from 50 to 80Hz up by at least 6dB – thus the excessive strength. But the octave between 95 and 190Hz was down by three to 6dB compared to that average, thus the thinness. You can manually adjust the subwoofer level of course, but reducing the thin upper bass comes at the cost of even stronger mid bass, while balancing the 50 to 80Hz region results in weakening even more the upper bass.

Conclusion
The quality of the satellite speakers in the Q Acoustics 7000i system is first class, so long as they are only required to handle tones above 200Hz. Unfortunately, the subwoofer of the system leaves a bit of a gap between its peak output and that frequency, making it hard unit to tune all the components into a cohesive system.