Loudspeakers

Appearances are most certainly deceptive because the Concept 50's tower is not just 'another curvy cabinet'. By contrast, a significant amount of computer modelling, driven by insights from freelance designer Karl-Heinz Fink's FAC (Fink Audio Consulting), has been ploughed into developing as inert a 'launch platform' for these drivers as possible. In practice, Q Acoustics deals with the ramifications of the drivers' unwanted kinetic energy in three distinct ways.

Firstly, there's its point-to-point bracing, connecting and stiffening the sidewalls of the cabinet at critical locations without bringing additional modes into play. The walls themselves are not bluff slabs of MDF but a laminate filled with a compliant gel [the thin blue line just visible in the illustration] that damps out higher frequency cabinet vibrations as heat. It's not unlike a far lower mass (and far lower cost) version of the constrained layer damping employed in high-end brand Magico's alloy cabinets [HFN Sep '11]. The final resonance-controlling bullet in the Concept 50's armoury are the two Helmholtz Pressure Equalisers (HPEs). These long tubes, mounted inside the enclosure, are tuned to 'knock out' the fundamental cabinet length resonance by reducing the pressure differential between the top and bottom spaces within this 29-litre floorstander. PM