IF THERE were any doubts that we are well into the Age of Stream, the recent proliferation of just add music" audio systems should lay them to rest. Whether toaster-sized Bluetooth portables or full floor-standing systems, wireless all-in-one speakers conceived around high-quality streaming are definitely a thing, and one of the latest examples comes from Q Acoustics.
The British maker's new Q Active 200 is interesting on several fronts. First, it receives 24-bit/96kHz resolution music wirelessly via a 5GHz link from its supplied paperbacksized hub. Second, the Q A200 looks like no other speaker I've seen, and that's cool. Third, its electro-acoustic design is unusual, highlighted by a pair of Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR) drivers in each speaker, supported by a rear-firing woofer of conventional cone form.
BMR technology evolved from the late NXT (another Brit outfit) family of distributed-mode flat-panel drivers and has been getting a good bit of attention in the speakerdesign world lately. Briefly, a BMR driver is a round (usually), more-or-less flat transducer that, while driven by a conventional voice-coil motor, emphatically does not maintain the pistonic, linearly in-out motion of conventional cones and domes. Instead, as the reproduced frequency increases, its surface “breaks up" into multiple vibrational modes, something like a flat-panel driver of the ribbon, electrostatic, or planar-magnetic type used in speakers.
This story is from the December 2021 - January 2022 edition of Sound & Vision.
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This story is from the December 2021 - January 2022 edition of Sound & Vision.
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Chances are you probably do not think about the state of your electronic devices too often. Oh, you might think about all the upgrades you would like to make; where you would put those new tower speakers, or how a second or third subwoofer would really tame those bass modes in your room, or how much more cinematic a larger screen would be. Sure, you think about that part of your system. But how often do you think about the well-being of your system?
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