Qualio IQ

[holdingpants01]

I just came back from my first audio show! I didn't like most of what I heard, the sound ranged from super boomy, through boomy, boomy, distorted, extremely bright, boomy, bland, phasey and boomboxy, to fine and pretty good once or twice. I heard some electrostats (yikes, where's the low midrange?), dipoles, omnipolars, fullrange as in single speaker (horrible), big boys (Genelec 8381A), small boys (LS3/5A clones), rather neutral boys (Kii Seven, D&D, Genelec, Amphion) and everything in between like Audio Note (haha what, how much for that?). I work with sound and listen to neutral speakers everyday, so I wanted to experience something else.

Long story short: I heard Qualio IQ Ultra and I liked them very much. So much so, when I finished my tour through the whole show, I came back to listen to them some more. Obviously there are no measurements available anywhere, only subjective reviews mostly raving about them. Their sound wasn't especially colored, just bright but not in a bad way with some higher bass recessed. However there was something unique in their imaging, space, air, whatever you call it. Bright but not harsh (you get a set of resistors to change the volume of the tweeter), a lot of beautiful midrange but not honky, boxy or anything like that, I would say "transparent" if I wasn't here. Obviously too expensive to me (starting at 6500€ for non ultra model) and they look weird, but I wouldn't throw them away if I got them for free

I didn't find anything about them on this forum, therefore this thread. Does anyone heard them? Or maybe own them?

 

[holdingpants01]

here's cool comparison to the more boxed version of the same speaker, you can hear the difference between more conventional design and more open one clearly. Besides the obvious frequency response differences there's something else going on especially in the vocal range. There's some 100-300Hz missing though, I guess in this kind of room it's just better to not have it, therefore they sounded refreshing after 20 boomy systems

 

[Penelinfi]

Why not have made OB midrange with the smaller woofer? Were they worried about output?