Q Acoustics 3020i Bookshelf Speaker Review

[restorer-john]

The enclosure is 1” MDF and the overall construction is so much better than any $199 (delivered price with no tax) deserves to be.

Whatever way you look at it, USD$199 for a product like that is a bargain.

 

[Xyrium]

I was interested in the q acoustics 3030 at one point. Not anymore.

Triangle borea br03 on the review docket?

Indeed, something from Triangle would be interesting. The Comete and Titus have received high praise in many audio circles, but to me, for a bookshelf model, their Theta is most intriguing.

Me thinks Triangle needs to step up and get a pair over to you.

I sent these in. Very disappointed, but that's what the testing is for, so back to Amazon they go. I can see these working in a small room where they are against a wall, toed in, and run at moderate volume. But for me, placed near the ceiling in a large room and played loud they would emphasize that vertical suck-out and load up on distortion. So.... moving on.

Thanks for having them shipped over though. Thank goodness folks are willing to put in the time, and put up their credit card to make this stuff possible!

 

[ROOSKIE]

I am thinking Elac Debut Reference DBR62 (then I will have to get a sub) or Revel M105, but with the extra cost I'll have to forego the sub.

Net cost would be close to the same but I'm concerned the sub is 11 ms closer to my listening position so integration could be a problem.

The revel M105 is just not going to play loudly in a large room, it will require a sub and active high pass. I have owned it. It does sound great, it is a small speaker though and it does not punch like a bigger speaker.
Mounting your speakers high up negates much of the scoring system here. These scores and ratings and subjective impressions are all on axis or at least the listening window.
I HIGHLY suggest looking at a coaxil design for mounting any speaker high up.
IMHO The sub being 11ms closer to your listening position is the really way, way down on the list here. Deal with getting good on axis frequency response and dispersion first. This is hard to do for speakers mounted near the ceiling unless you only care about the one person sweet spot, in which case it will be easier.

 

[ROOSKIE]

I just picked up a 550p on sale. Have not tested it yet but I did unpack it and inspect the driver and internals (my usual routine whenever I get new speakers). The driver is WAY nicer than I thought it would be. Aluminum cast frame and huge magnet. The enclosure is 1” MDF and the overall construction is so much better than any $199 (delivered price with no tax) deserves to be. It weighs 50lbs and has a powerful amp as well. I’ll post more when I have a chance to fire it up and measure it. I’m waiting for a splitter for my preamp because I only have two preamp outs and I’m using the second set for my existing two subs (Peerless XLS with Peerless PR’s).

My current subs are well integrated with an active digital xover. I may run the third sub through the xover eventually or through minidsp. Need to sort out a couple things and I’ll probably purchase the Minidsp HD and use Dirac. I’m just not sure if I can run three subs with the minidsp. It was an impulse buy and if it sounds half as good as it looks, the 550p (Sale price) might be one of the best bargains in Audio land.

I can vouch as well for that sub being very well constructed. It is a bargain as a music sub-woofer and at this price you could buy 4 for under $800.
If you are like me you prefer sealed sub-woofers as you hate port chuffing. I am still open to good ported products but man when a quality bass product is sealed or uses a radiator I fell happy, I just can't do the chuffing.

 

[Beave]

I saw that before. We have very good correlation but boy, are their measurements messy. They have a ton of low frequency room modes in addition to three lines all black on top of each other. And in a compressed graph no less. I wonder if they do this to make it hard for anyone to decipher.

Yes, the correlation is very good. The listening window in your measurement matches theirs very closely.

Their low frequency measurements might not be room modes. They don't have the ability to account for rear ports correctly, so rear ported speakers never look quite right in the bass.

As for the looks of their measurements, yeah, they're stuck in 1980s graphics. In 20 or 30 years, the only change they've made in the way they present the curves is that a few years ago the plots got a little bigger.

 

[carlosmante]

I saw that before. We have very good correlation but boy, are their measurements messy. They have a ton of low frequency room modes in addition to three lines all black on top of each other. And in a compressed graph no less. I wonder if they do this to make it hard for anyone to decipher.

They report as using an Anechoic Chamber. .https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=140

 

[MediumRare]

The revel M105 is just not going to play loudly in a large room, it will require a sub and active high pass. I have owned it. It does sound great, it is a small speaker though and it does not punch like a bigger speaker.
Mounting your speakers high up negates much of the scoring system here. These scores and ratings and subjective impressions are all on axis or at least the listening window.
I HIGHLY suggest looking at a coaxil design for mounting any speaker high up.
IMHO The sub being 11ms closer to your listening position is the really way, way down on the list here. Deal with getting good on axis frequency response and dispersion first. This is hard to do for speakers mounted near the ceiling unless you only care about the one person sweet spot, in which case it will be easier.

Not so sure about that. Here's my little back-of-the-envelope analysis. Stay with me, I want your feedback.

Start with a tweeter 9' up. Sounds high, right? 1 foot from the ceiling. But when I'm standing in the kitchen 15 feet away my ears are only 3.3 feet lower. That means the down angle is only 12.4 degrees. I can toe them down by that much easily, let's say 10 degrees. So I'm actually about on-axis at that location. Of course, the vertical dispersion is critical to give as long a sweet spot as possible. Looking at the M106, the vertical is pretty smooth +/- 20 degrees, so, with a toe-down of 10 degrees, that gives me a cone as close to the speakers as 6 feet and as far away as I like. Horizontally, I can't get much closer than 8 feet anyway, with a 10 degree toe-in.

SPL is the bigger issue, but the M105 is rated to about 106 dB so I reckon 96 dB at the end of the room. OK, let's say 90 sustained. Isn't that loud enough?

 

[Dennis Murphy]

Very large and expensive inductor that most people will not need. (cost more than the drivers)
Just use an electronic crossover or maybe for some who listen at the lower volume levels this extra bass extension is actually nice.

What topology did you have in mind? I think you would want to start with a very high value series capacitor, and then add a resister and inductor as the ground leg after the cap to get a sharper cut-off in the deep bass. I've never been able to pull that off, but if you have a better approach I would of course want to know what it is. I wish preamps still had rumble filters, because this sort of thing is much easier to implement actively than passively.

 

[amirm]

They report as using an Anechoic Chamber. .https://www.soundstagenetwork.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=140

I know. It is too small so at low frequencies doesn't absorb much.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

I saw that before. We have very good correlation but boy, are their measurements messy. They have a ton of low frequency room modes in addition to three lines all black on top of each other. And in a compressed graph no less. I wonder if they do this to make it hard for anyone to decipher.

They've been doing it like that for 14 years. I doubt there's anything nefarious about it--probably just inertia. The engineer at NRC claims the anechoic chamber is good down to 80 Hz, although that's not true for most rear-ported speakers. But there the issue isn't room modes--it's some woofer-port phase issue that's exacerbated in the anechoic chamber. I never really understood his explanation, but I'll take his word on it not being caused by room modes in the chamber.

 

[bobbooo]

Another highly-rated speaker destroyed by science..

It scores just 0.15 lower than the similarly priced JBL 305P MkII if both were used with a subwoofer, which the majority would do if they care about sound quality, and I don't think anyone would say the latter was 'destroyed' by its measurements. The 3020i's slope also has a perfect 0 dB deviation from ideal; I think the Genelec 8341A is the only other speaker to achieve this so far. Overall it's an average speaker at an average price (in Europe, overpriced in the US).

I wonder how the older 3020 performs.

Same here, it's going for around $100 less, and I haven't seen any proper measurements of it anywhere. All I can find is this comparison, replete with flowery audiophile-speak. My bullshit translator seems to indicate from what he says that the 3020 might not suffer from that 2-4 kHz scoop - "the original 3020 is quite dry in the upper mids, compared to the 3020i, which puts some emphasis on the 3020’s detail. That is, there is a slight claustrophobic quality to the original 3020 which enables the ear to pick up finer detail", and "the [Nat King] Cole voice is pushed way back [on the 3020i], giving the soundstage a greater 3D effect". And then there's this shite - "the 3020i adds a sense of air and space where there was relatively little with the original 3020 speakers" that might suggest a reduced treble response on the 3020, which seems to be the main complaint here with the 3020i. But who fucking knows. I can see the marketing guys now though - "Right, they loved the 3020 so let's slap some extra treble on there for some in-your-face 'air', turn up the 'soundstage' to 11 by scooping out the upper mids, whack up the price and stick an 'i' on the end, the reviewers and iPhonies will love it! Don't worry, they won't realize it's messed up the tonality..."

Anyway, the 3020 could be a good choice for a cheap decent speaker for someone who wants something compact and with a modern, aesthetically pleasing look for a main lounge, maybe in a 5.1 setup (there's a matching center speaker, the 3090C available for a very reasonable $120). Hopefully the 3020 can get measured at some point. (Seems like Q Acoustics are very reluctant to retire older models as it's still for sale on their site and widely available elsewhere, and I've just seen their even older 2020i is also still available in some places!)

I watched every review I could find.

I'm hoping that was after you listened to the speaker? Cheers for the measurements!

 

[Blumlein 88]

Would it be difficult for the companies to build a high pass like that into the crossover? I haven't seen any hardware high-pass filters below 80 Hz so I'm not sure if the components get too big or costly if they move it lower; otherwise it would make sense with a speaker that lists its bottom spec at 67 Hz to not even try reproducing anything as low as 40.

In a passive speaker as others said, too expensive. Components to do so too large.

Way back in like 1980 had a Sherwood receiver which had a useful button. One was flat response and the other inserted a filter down -3 db at 30 hz and rolling off sharply. It was more often than not noticeably nicer with that filter in place with any ported speaker.

 

[carlosmante]

Another highly-rated speaker destroyed by science..

I don't think so. Just taking the proper place in the pecking order.

 

[Eetu]

I was interested in the q acoustics 3030 at one point. Not anymore.

Another highly-rated speaker destroyed by science..

I think there's a nice balance between low price and performance + looks. The new 3030i should be a good one. A lot better than this for sure.

 

[rxp]

I've got 4 of the 3010 as Atmos height channels in my office. They come with their own wall brackets that let you point them at a 45 degree angle towards the listening position. So ideal in places you don't want to cut into the ceiling, but would rather wall mount. Best of all they are small and cheap.

 

[Vuki]

What topology did you have in mind? I think you would want to start with a very high value series capacitor, and then add a resister and inductor as the ground leg after the cap to get a sharper cut-off in the deep bass. I've never been able to pull that off, but if you have a better approach I would of course want to know what it is. I wish preamps still had rumble filters, because this sort of thing is much easier to implement actively than passively.

It doesn't have to be higher order - simple 1st order highpass is ok. Topology such as this is sometimes used in commercial loudspeakers - some older smaller KEFs, ALR Jordans or even YG Acoustics models use it. Here is my diy project that also use highpass filter for bass (link to google translated page as original is in Croatian).

 

[YSC]

I do have a few including an Adam.

Great! So I can wait for your review before I jump in to spend on that to replace the kef x300a I have been using

 

[Thomas_A]

In my opinion, they almost nailed it. The dip is IMO a bit into the 1-2 kHz range, and it is about 1 dB to much energy above 5 kHz. My personal preference just looking at the response would be a boost around 1,7-1,8 kHz of 2 dB and lowering the tweeter response > 5 kHz to taste.

 

[tecnogadget]

@ROOSKIE Why not call it Coaxial intead of Coaxil ? I know the latter is still valid but most manufacturers just sticks for the first one.

 

[Dennis Murphy]

It doesn't have to be higher order - simple 1st order highpass is ok. Topology such as this is sometimes used in commercial loudspeakers - some older smaller KEFs, ALR Jordans or even YG Acoustics models use it. Here is my diy project that also use highpass filter for bass (link to google translated page as original is in Croatian).

Then why did you warn that it would require a large inductor? For a 1st order (electrical) high pass you would use a large capacitor in series, not an inductor. I think you must have meant a capacitor, because that's what you're using in the schematic you linked. But even the 470 uF shown in your schematic would cause the bass to start rolling off higher than you would want.