Q Acoustics Q Active 200
It’s rare to encounter something genuinely different in the loudspeaker arena. It’s more than a century since Jensen and Pridham created the moving coil speaker, and getting on for seven decades since Edgar Villchur created the acoustic suspension principle. Since then nearly every speaker has put a tweeter and some woofers facing forward in a box. Occasionally someone has drivers firing backwards. But Q Acoustics not only does none of that with the Active 200 speakers, it’s introducing the new speaker design not as a conversion from a passive model, as with most contenders here, but as an active model from its genesis. What is the company up to?
Strange drivers, neat hub
The Q Active’s design is certainly a differentiator. The 28cm-high boxes are finished in a lovely matt white (black is also available), extending onto the front baffle, which has just that dark rectangular grille cut-out on one side – a look which seems highly on-trend for today’s open and light homes, although different enough to raise eyebrows; we have been unable to erase from our minds the description of one visitor who thought it looked like
