Q Acoustics Concept 30

Q Acoustics bridges the gap between its affordable and premium ranges - borrowing from both. But does life really begin at 30?

Sometimes, the obvious' product that a company should make can be a long time coming. The circa-£1,000 speaker market is booming and you'd have thought it a natural area for Q Acoustics. Some 15 years since the introduction of its original Concept range, the company is a recognised force at entry-level price points and at more premium ones too. Until recently, the space between these two points was less well covered, but the Concept 30 is intended to bridge this gap.

As you'd expect, the engineering it employs can be seen as a simplified version of the more expensive 300, but that does rather underplay how much of it is all new. The 25mm soft dome tweeter and 125mm doped paper mid/bass driver are very much in keeping with what you would expect to find in a Q Acoustics design, but have been specifically developed for this range. The focus for both is resonance control. The tweeter is placed in a hefty metal frame that helps to drop the resonance to 700Hz. Care has also been taken to limit the back pressure it experiences.

The mid/bass driver also has a large front frame to assist its relationship with the front panel. The size of the voice coil may have been increased, but - thanks to the use of coppercoated aluminium - the weight of the overall assembly has not. The quoted frequency response of the Concept 30, however, is far from spectacular; Q Acoustics claims 54Hz-30kHz at +/-6dB, but the results in room suggest that lower figures can be comfortably bettered in reality.