Q Acoustics 3050 Floor standing speakers
It is not simple to be a speaker brand that is new. Anyone trying to go into the loudspeaker market will find it crowded. Second, designing a speaker that is competitive takes a team of folks that are gifted, and that is not easy to come by. Q Acoustics solved this problem by collaborating with gifted engineer Karl-Heinz Fink, but getting around the first issue was more luck than judgement.
He confides that when the first 1000-series models came out, big names like Mission and Wharfedale weren't quite as weak as they had traditionally been - for various reasons. A space was opened up by this, he says to move in and begin selling decent-sounding but highly affordable cartons, traditionally the province of the larger, more established brands.
He freely admits the organization has been pushing for market share rather than gain. As (still) a newish name, the aim was to get people to be aware of the brand and trust it, and this also entails making a more expensive speaker - he suggests - than some competitors sell at the cost - to be able to entice customers of established names finished. Certainly one of the things that makes this possible is the truth that Q Acoustics can share office space and resources together with the group's other brands, and is a part of Armour Home Electronics. In a nutshell, the brand is just a little less expensive to run, more nimble and partnered up to an excellent designer who also does many other jobs for others.
The first 1050 was really striking at the cost. Few - including me - had heard this kind of competent-sounding cheap floorstander. It rather shook up the marketplace, offering sound more in keeping with GBP600 models. The 2050 followed, which was a big step forward, making its forerunner sound opaque and flabby. It too was exceptional for what it was, and now the new 3050 is tasked to be just the same again, since the earlier avatars arrived in 2015's loudspeaker marketplace which has evolved a reasonable manner.
Boxing intelligent
The 3050 isn't a tiny loudspeaker, standing one metre tall, and it weighs nearly 18kg apiece. Its softer, cleaner design gives it a more 'constructed' look, as if its creators have put some thinking into the way that it appears in a space. It was a huge pain to wire upward, although it definitely looked great, cleaning the back of the loudspeaker up; where it should be the 3050 has its terminal board in the rear of the cupboard. As it occurs, Steve says this has let the whole carton to be significantly more stiff too, which doesn't hurt the sound.
This new layout is the same as its predecessor inasmuch as it's a two-way floorstander using twin 165mm mid/bass units and a single 25mm soft dome tweeter, although paper doped in Aramid fibre is now featured by these. Steve says the designers moved from a paper/mica mix to this, and it has made the cone better managed and slightly stiffer. The crossover point is set at 2.6kHz, which is fairly conventional. The company claims a sensitivity of 92dB/1W/1m, which is an excellent figure that will suit low powered amplifiers and/or tube layouts. The crossover follows the 'less is more' principle, using a fourth order Linkwitz/Riley design, with a more streamlined magnetic field with new 'U inductors, helping reduce crosstalk involving the parts.
The large cupboards are decently rigid, although nowhere near as quiet as those on the twice-as-high-priced Concept 40, for instance. Truly, I'd indicate this is where much of the money has been saved around the 3050, which will be not somewhat shorter yet a little lighter.
Sound quality
I use the loudspeaker together with the supplied foam bung in its rear- mounted bass reflex port, which tightens up the timing and dials the bass down. As before, a little toe-in benefits stereo imaging, snapping the soundstage.
Its predecessor was the finest sizeable, budget floorstander on sale, in a price point where you can hardly get a listenable standmount, let alone a huge floorstander. It sounded musical, open and warm - making it a hard act to follow along with. To succeed, the 3050 not only must outperform its rivals, but also be an important upgrade on the 2050i - and thankfully for both Q Acoustics and budget loudspeakers as a breed, it is.
The brand new layout adds focus, grasp and insight to the 2050i's blend of smoothness, size as well as strength.
Its predecessor had a large, broad-brush stroke sound which was lots of pleasure, whereas the new one is more regimented, tauter and tighter. A part with this shows itself as low level information, another facet you detect is the precise place of instruments in the stereo soundstage. The most deep upgrade, nevertheless, is the improved dynamics, making the 3050 a much more engaging and musically articulated design.
As an example, Simply Red's Holding Back The Years is a soothing, almost balladic song with little in the manner of high strength energy that was musical, but the 3050's new found detail and delicacy causes it to be a lot more interesting to hear. The 2050i looked dull, a little leaden and compressed - while its replacement is better able enough to track the playing for the mild dynamic inflections and also vocalist Mick Hucknall's phrasing. The music acquires better place of the instruments inside the mixture, together with a sense of rhythmic snap that had previously been lost. There's a finer sense of flow, giving a superior sense of the song having a beginning, a middle and an end.
Moving to some higher powered house music, in the form of K Klass' Rhythm Is A Mystery - a nineties club anthem with pounding bass and thumping drums, along with a few rousing high-energy vocals. It is incredibly incendiary stuff, but can sound just a little tough and brittle on lesser loudspeakers, or all-too easily losing its dynamic impact. The 3050 contends impressively well, diving into the track with aplomb and punching out tons of clean, tuneful synthesised bass along with a tight, gripping snare drum sound. It is way beyond the realistic listening levels encountered in your typical terraced house, although at actually high levels it seems to compress this a little. You are able to hear the cupboards adding a slight slurring and overhang in the bass too - in a sense that you just do not in the gel-reinforced Concept 40.
Some of this new-found grasp comes from your mid/bass drive unit material that is brand new, I suppose. It definitely gives a more spry and clearer sensibility, which is able to get deeper to the recording without becoming bogged down to the 3050. The mid/bass units cross over smoothly to the tweeter, which can be likewise an apparent improvement over what came it seems
The track comes over really convincingly, with the many strands in the mixture separated out beautifully. That is a splendidly recorded tune that comes over with insight and considerably more depth, and gets better every single time you update your sound system than the 2050 i ever did. Truly, this new floorstander is summed up by that - it's a less superficial performer, getting more of the music out than its predecessor that is esteemed and digging down deeper into the mixture. That is no small accomplishment!
Judgment
Q Acoustics' new 3050 is a definite step up and that - lest we forget - was among the very best budget floorstanding speakers about. First, it is better looking than before; the previous variant was not unattractive, but this really is absolutely trendy and lifts any room where it sits. Second, it's incredibly well assembled at its cost; honestly there's nothing around that improved it. Then there is its absolute physical size; no competitor comes close, and size bestows any loudspeaker a deeper bass and/or better efficiency - the 3050 is quite easy to operate a vehicle and goes low. If you are a cash strapped audiophile, you just must hear this loudspeaker.
