Here in my third decade as a hi‑fi journalist, it still surprises me from time to time that there are legitimately major brands whose products I’ve never reviewed. Q Acoustics is one such brand, and I point that out merely as a way of underscoring my excitement during the unboxing process. A speaker with proper British pedigree, with a gorgeous design and good engineering for US$1199 per pair? Sign me the heck up. It took all the restraint I could muster to open the packaging for the new Q Acoustics 3050c properly—with a knife and all that—instead of just ripping into the cardboard like an unhinged beast.
Anyone who’s read more than, like, two of my unboxing blog posts will know from a glance at the image above that as soon as I did crack the carton, my excitement for the 3050c was overshadowed by my excitement about the packaging. Look at that! Molded pulp padding instead of foam? Are the folks at Q Acoustics pandering to me or what?
This is how you do sustainable packaging right without sacrificing a thing in terms of protection and presentation. In fact, it ups the swank factor on the presentation. And hey, if you’re not as turned on by eco-friendly packaging as I am, at least give the company props for making the speaker this easy to unbox, with neat little cubbies for accessories such as the included port bung, as well as the robust stabilizer feet.
Here’s a closer look at one of those stabilizers, as well as the included hardware, which encompasses not only fastening bolts but also floor spikes and little rubber spike caps if you’re setting the speakers up on hardwood floors.
There’s also a pretty beefy manual in the box that gives good setup advice, as well as a diagram of how those stabilizers are to be installed. You wouldn’t think that would be necessary, but you’ll see in a minute that these tootsies are quite unconventional and warrant some illustration.
Before we get there, though, lift up the molded pulp cap and you’ll find the speaker wrapped in thick foam paper, which provides oodles of scratch protection not only for the shipping process but also for the unboxing and setup itself.
And under that thick foam paper? Thinner foam paper cradling the cabinet. Q Acoustics seems to be unwilling to compromise at all on protecting the speaker, which at this point had me eager to see the cabinet worthy of such a delicate touch.
Here’s a close-up look at the installation of the stabilizer feet. As you might be able to tell from this image (or the aforementioned diagram), the feet go on the back of the speaker, not the front. With two mounting points per side, they’re also quite secure and unlikely to wiggle or wobble anytime soon.
And here they are with the speaker turned right side up. You’d be forgiven for looking straight past the stabilizers in situ and getting distracted by the gorgeous binding posts of the speakers themselves. It’s not merely the hardware that I’m swooning over here; it’s the fact that the positive and negative terminals are marked by a vivid white or red ring around the applicable binding post. I would imagine that’s going to save me from having to pull out my flashlight when hooking these things up in my stygian listening room, where I can almost never see the thin sliver of color letting me know which terminal is which.
Backing away from the back of the speaker a little, you can see just how massive the rear-firing port is. Its inside diameter is right at 3″ and it opens up into a flare that’s just over 4″, which isn’t wholly uncommon, of course. But it does mean that you’re probably not going to be able to place the beauties too close to the wall. It also means that, in my experience, I wouldn’t expect there to be any significant chuffing or compression to worry about. Still, I’m going to tinker with forward–back placement a lot during my full review, and might even experiment with the port bung, which is rarely necessary in my room.
Spinning the cabinet around, you can see that Q Acoustics puts just as much care into protecting the speaker from itself, layering a thin sheet of foam paper under the magnetically affixed grille.
Remove the grille and you’ll get a good look at the D’Appolito array beneath. The 3050c features dual 142mm (5.5″) C3 Continuous Curved Cone midrange-woofers and a 22mm (0.9″) soft-dome tweeter. Hold up, though. This array deserves a closer look.
What I hope my meager photography skills are sufficient to convey is just how much the 3050c’s trim not only gorgeously frames the drivers, but also plays with the light in the room in the most interesting of ways. That mix of wood, satin metal, and composite materials is utterly striking, and I took this image at least ten times so I could select the placement of light I liked best, because moving my head (and hence my camera) incrementally resulted in a wholly different distribution of highlights and shadows.
Here’s another view to give you a better sense of what I mean. It’s not merely the trim that catches the light, and hence the eye; it’s also the C3 Continuous Curved Cone, which plays with illumination in a different way than a traditional cone geometry would.
Notice, too, the fit and finish—the precision of the laminate finish, especially on the curves and edges, as well as the tight tolerances all the way around. I’ve been saying for years now that the biggest differentiator between affordable speakers and their aspirational counterparts is often this sort of industrial design and careful manufacturing. But that’s becoming an outdated truism.
Granted, you can’t simply assume that a $600 speaker is going to be this gorgeous, this well-built, this bougie in its presentation. But Q Acoustics proves that it doesn’t have to be that rare, either.
All that remains to be seen is whether the performance can match the aesthetics. It’s time to hook these babies up and start listening. Keep your eyes peeled for my full review, coming soon.
. . . Dennis Burger
dennisb@soundstagenetwork.com
