QUALIO IQ LOUDSPEAKERS

Built and designed by the same people behind the Cube Audio range of speakers and drivers, we first heard the Qualio IQ loudspeakers at the Warsaw Show last November. We were immediately impressed with them, even in the show’s less-than-perfect listening environment, and immediately began discussions into ordering a pair, which have resided in our upstairs second system for a few months now.

Build And Features Of Qualio Iq Loudspeakers

Linette ordered a white version of these, though you can order them in any RAL colour you like with either a gloss or satin finish and natural veneer finishes are available in Oak, Walnut, Indian Apple, or Rosewood. The colour you choose relates to the bass-reflex box you see that has the nine-and-a-half inch SB Acoustic Satori bass driver towards the top of the front panel. This box is well-finished and looks great. It comes with spikes, but not being a fan I didn’t use them but will likely experiment with some IsoAcoustic footers at some point –however, that’s not in the scope of this review.

Around the back of the bass box you have WBT binding posts plus a pair that connect only to the dipole (the Perspex bitt on the top that I will get onto in due course). This is quite an interesting feature and you can choose to buy the speakers with either a Standard or Precision kit of Mundorf resistors that allow you to tailor the high-frequency output of the AMT tweeter. The standard package comes with two resistors and the Precision comes with five resistors that attach across the terminals. This is a cool idea and allows the owners of these speakers to work out what sounds best to them and in their listening space. I like this non-prescriptive attitude and concept; to me, it recognises that we all have different hearing, different presentation preferences and different rooms in which we listen. Swapping these in and out is a doddle and takes barely no time at all but is a back-and-forth process to get the ones you want the first time round.

This is a bass-reflex box and so naturally there is a port around the back too and this comes with a bung so that you can, to an extent, tune its output…or at least limit it….depending on what your room will allow. Qualio reckons that this box will take the bass down to 28HZ.

The next interesting feature of the IQ speakers is the dipole arrangement that bolts simply on the top panel with the four included bolts and takes a few minutes to attach. The Perspex plate is thick but is a bit of a fingerprint magnet – no fear, once you have it set up, there is no need to faff with it again. The dipole attaches to the rest of the speaker by a short XLR plug affair. It’s a neat solution, looks interesting, and is quick and easy to set up.

Attached to the dipole is another smaller Satori driver that acts as the mid-driver, though Qualio says that it could be considered a full-range unit given that it can, if required, extend up to 15KHz. Above the mid-unit, is the aforementioned Mundorf AMT tweeter that goes all the way up to 31kHz, way beyond the scope of human hearing and Qualio refer to this as a super-tweeter. Now, super tweeters should make sod all sense given we can’t physically hear what they are doing beyond 15 or so kHz, but they do add something to the sound and the spatial representation of the ambience of a track. I use super tweeters pretty much all the time in our main system and love what they add to a system – YMMV.

So, without stating the bleeding obvious, it’s clear that the mids and tops of the IQ speakers are an open baffle (dipole) design and open baffles are something I have toyed with in the past in a more DIY sense and with the Pure Audio Project speakers we had in for review many moons ago. I like what they can do to the way music is presented and they tend (without commenting on the speakers here for review) to allow for a more open and less coloured presentation…pretty obvious when you realise there’s no box to induce boxiness to the sound.

So that’s pretty much the build and technical aspects of the IQ by Qualio. Overall they are well put together and very well thought out. They offer a good degree of user-tweekability with the resistors that I mentioned earlier. I suppose the only other thing to add is that the crossover that’s housed in the bass box is made up of Mundorf, Jantzen and WBT components- whether these make a difference over standard components I can’t comment on.

Speaking in general terms, I absolutely love the look of these speakers and think their slightly squat stature looks really rather classy and that the Perspex dipole unit pretty much disappears in the room.

Oh, you get a three-year warranty and you get lifetime support, which is nice.

I have these speakers set up and running off a pair of Merrill Thor Class D amplifiers with a LAB 12 pre before them. In fact, the full system apart from the amps is Lab 12. The speakers are set up about three metres apart, somewhat but not wholly in the corners of the room (they are around 1m from the back and side walls) and the listening position is 3m or so from the central position of the speakers. The room is well-treated with GIK acoustic panels.

Sound Quality

All that time ago at the Warsaw show, the thing that I recall grabbing my attention was the hugely open mids and tops allied with a solid and speedy bass response, making them very much my kind of speakers. Obviously, having ordered them, it was to be hoped that this fairly casual flirtation with the Qualios would not be a short-lived affair… and you will be pleased to know that it wasn’t. I do bang on a fair old bit about shows not being the ideal environment for critically assessing a product, and I do stand by this, however, if you listen to a lot of products week in week out then it’s possible to pick out the products that have potential to be more than a quick fling. Anyway, let’s see how these get on.

The report you read here is a conglomeration of several weeks’ notes brought into one.

The first thing I noted when listening to the Clash and then Generation X was the immediacy of these speakers and the way that they have a very spatial quality to them. These aren’t particularly audiophile records, in fact, they are possibly the antithesis of audiophile recordings and are off a compilation record I have on file, and yet the liveness and rawness of the music shines out from these loudspeakers in that “I feel connected”…and not sedated (for those that will get the punk reference)… kind of way. You can “see” the mix off the main desk and this is important for me in feeling the music in a real