Sounds like high-end: Audiovector’s QR5 speakers

widthIf you want to play a leading role in speaker construction, it is difficult to avoid a small country between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Because it’s not just a cliché: straight Danish design combined with Danish expertise in speaker chassis construction are the coveted ingredients for successful formulas in the industry, think of major suppliers such as Scan Speak or Vifa. Nordic brands such as Dynaudio or Dali are a living proof. The Danish manufacturer Audiovector is not so well-known, even though it has been manufacturing high-quality speakers for more than 40 years. Are these musicians worth listening to? Let’s take the standing speaker QR 5 as an example. It shapes a beautiful figure with a slender, chest-like body, and arouses our interest with its superb technology.

QR 5 allocates the music spectrum in three ways. The highest pitch is played by the handmade Air Motion Transformer based on the construction principles of German physicist Oskar Heil, who developed this type of converter in the United States more than 50 years ago and obtained a patent there. This type of tweeter uses an extremely delicate folded foil membrane that vibrates like an accordion, squeezing air out of all cracks like a jet, thereby converting even slight surface movements into considerable sound pressure.

Using this tweeter converter, it is possible to achieve a frequency response extended to the ultrasonic spectrum. For example, Audiovector mentions 45 kHz as the highest transmission frequency in its data sheet. The manufacturer slightly improved its filigree tweeter. The sieve-like grid in front of the horizontal sound opening is designed to disperse the high notes and distribute them evenly in the room to eliminate any sharp signs of hissing, similar to the popular filter studio in front of the recording microphone in the recording.

Audiovector has a chassis for mid to low tones manufactured by Scan Speak according to its own specifications. The work is shared by three 15 cm wide concave films, and the silver shimmering front shows that aluminum is the surface material of lightweight composite materials. The two lower examples of these three rows work in parallel as woofers in a bass reflex arrangement. The part of the sound radiated to the inside of the case is transmitted through the reflection port at the bottom of the speaker, which is another feature of this model. The short stilts under the main body of the shell are screwed on the board to ensure the necessary distance from the floor, so that the deep vibration can be released.

This solution is both an opportunity and a risk. Since the back of the speaker does not emit any sound, it can be placed very close to the wall. Therefore, you have more freedom in choosing a location. On the other hand, the floor can cause problems: if it is too irritated to vibrate, it may block the bass too much. Therefore, we put our test subjects on the spikes as a precaution and quickly forgot any related fears. Because the Danish speakers emit strong bass, but are always precise and well-defined, even when the sinister synth bass starts to appear in Toto’s “Caught in the Balance”.