Q Acoustics Concept 300 – Black & Rosewood – Bookshelf Speaker

About the Q Acoustics Concept 300 – Black & Rosewood – Bookshelf Speaker:

Price per pair, sold and delivered per pair

• Concept 300 redefines the relationship between loudspeaker and stand
• Tensegrity tripods consist of a structure of load-bearing solid stainless steel rods that form an inherently stable tripod
• Isolation Base Suspension System prevents vibrations from traveling through the bottom of the speaker
• P2P™ cabinet bracing eliminates unwanted energy and reduces distortion

Since its founding in 2006, Q Acoustics has built an unparalleled reputation for designing, developing, and manufacturing innovative, high-quality, and class-leading loudspeakers in every price range. This consistent and collaborative effort towards excellence has culminated in Concept 300.

The brief for Concept 300 is simple, yet stunningly ambitious: build on the overwhelming success of the floor-standing Concept 500 and deliver a more affordable alternative to floor-standing mounting, with completely uncompromising performance and stylish, understated elegance.

What follows is a brief explanation of how Q Acoustics made this possible and, by extension, why the Concept 300 represents the state of loudspeaker art in the 21st century.

Design of the Q Acoustics Concept 300

The days when performance was the most important aspect of a loudspeaker are long gone. Aesthetic considerations are perfectly valid, and with this in mind, Q Acoustics has designed the Concept 300 as a high-end, powerful loudspeaker that is unobtrusively refined and capable of discreetly interacting with any interior design vocabulary.

On the exterior, numerous layers of lacquer combine with real wood veneers to create a high-quality gloss finish. This results in a cabinet that is clean and understated, yet has a distinctly high perceived value.

The cabinets' uncluttered appearance is further enhanced by the innovative mounting of the drive units. Both the tweeter and the midrange/bass driver are secured from the rear by strong, spring-loaded mounting bolts, eliminating the need for visible bolt heads on the speaker surface.

On the rear of the speaker, the Concept 300 features an over-specified connection panel designed to withstand cabinet vibration. It's equipped for bi-wiring (or bi-amping) via electrically isolated terminals – these accept bare wire, spade connectors, or 4mm banana plugs.

Cabinet and stand

Ideally, the only vibrations a loudspeaker produces are those necessary to generate the sound. Of course, it's impossible to completely rid a speaker cabinet of unwanted vibrations that can disrupt performance, but as Q Acoustics demonstrated with the Concept 300, it is possible to keep cabinet vibrations to an absolute minimum to deliver completely distortion-free sound.

Q Acoustics uses MDF instead of one of the more glamorous and/or expensive alternatives to construct the Concept 300 cabinet. There are a couple of reasons for this: a) alternative materials offer no advantages in damping, or even ease and simplicity of construction, compared to the very high-quality MDF materials, and b) more expensive materials simply drive up the final price of the speaker without any audio amplification.

P2P™ reinforcement

The intelligence of the Concept 300 cabinet's design is clearly evident in the use of P2P™ bracing. Q Acoustics can measure the performance of the cabinet structure at a microscopic level and identify the precise positions that require support.

The targeted P2P™ method for cabinet bracing means the cabinet receives exactly the support it needs, and no more. In this case, a long and thorough analysis of a problem results in a simple and brilliantly effective solution.

Double Gelcore™, the Q Acoustics Concept 300

After addressing lower frequency vibrations using P2P™ bracing, Q Acoustics then neutralizes higher frequency vibrations within the cabinet using its custom-developed Dual Gelcore™ technology.

The Concept 300 cabinet consists of three separate layers, each separated by a non-hardening gel – the gel acts more like a high-tech and highly effective gasket. Any high-frequency vibrations are converted into heat that dissipates into the gel.

Tensegrity standard and insulation base system

In a floor-standing loudspeaker design like this, the relationship between the speaker and its stand is, of course, fundamental. It's the design of the new Tensegrity stand and the new suspension system with isolation base that the Concept 300 combines with it that allows Q Acoustics to redefine the level of performance possible with a smaller loudspeaker.

Tensegrity is a stand—by definition, an extremely stable structure. It's constructed from lightweight aluminum tubes (which form the supporting element) and thin stainless steel cables (which maintain the position of the supporting tubes). The result is a light, exceptionally rigid, and self-supporting construction with a remarkably small footprint and—let's not pretend otherwise—a beautifully elegant appearance. It's not so much a speaker stand as a completely new speaker support concept.

But of course, it doesn't matter much how efficient your speaker cabinet is, or how ingenious the stand it sits on, if the combination of the two is unsympathetic or inefficient. Q Acoustics is joining the Concept 300 loudspeaker on the Tensegrity stand with its new suspension system with isolation base, which is about as sympathetic and efficient as it gets.

The entire mass of the Concept 300 is suspended by the four springs of the newly developed integrated base plate. This isolation base system works in several ways: it prevents energy from the speaker leaking into the Tensegrity stand and affecting the sound, it prevents vibrations from the floor from being transmitted from the stand to the speaker, and it ensures a rigid coupling between the speaker and the stand under all conditions.

Thanks to the combination of Tensegrity stand and isolation base suspension, the Concept 300's performance is completely unhindered by internal or external influences.

Driver units and crossover

Q Acoustics has taken the proven (and acclaimed) driver technology from the Concept 500 floorstanding loudspeaker and refined its performance to perfectly suit the demands of the Concept 300’s smaller cabinet.

The midrange/bass driver is a 165mm impregnated/coated paper cone with very low resonance thanks to its high-quality rubber surround. It sits in front of a large (35mm) fiberglass voice coil and an equally large ferrite magnet. The result is a midrange and bass response that is as powerful and dynamic as it is balanced and eloquent.

Above that, the 28mm high-frequency driver, made of superfine strands of coated microfiber, is decoupled from the speaker cabinet using a rubber gasket. This protects the tweeter from transmitting or receiving unwanted vibrations and allows it to be mounted close to the midbass driver. This improves integration with the larger driver – and the very subtle horn-shaped profile of the tweeter's baffle ensures perfect impedance matching with the surroundings without coloration.

The results

A combination of rigorous engineering, uncompromising industrial design, and ambitious aesthetics makes the Concept 300 the most fully realized loudspeaker Q Acoustics has ever produced. Combined with the equally meticulous Tensegrity stand, the Concept 300 represents a step change in loudspeaker design and a redefinition of what's possible at its price point.

Technical specifications of the Q Acoustics Concept 300 – Black & Rosewood – Bookshelf Speaker

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