Given how crowded the loudspeaker manufacturing space has always been, I am always surprised when a new brand not only springs into being but does so with new speakers that sound and measure well. Take the UK’s Q Acoustics, for example. The company didn’t exist before 2006 and didn’t have a presence in the US until 2018. However, two of its designs have already received very favorable coverage in Stereophile: the Concept 500 tower ($5999.99/pair), which Tom Norton reviewed in March 2019, and the Concept 300 standmount ($4499.99/pair, including stands), which I reviewed in January 2020.1
Q Acoustics’ new Concept 50 floorstanding loudspeaker ($2995/pair) is the top model in a new series of loudspeakers that uses technology trickled down from the earlier Concepts. Because my experience with the Concept 300 was so positive, I readily agreed to review the 50.
The Concept 50
Like the Concept 500, the Concept 50 uses a vertical D’Appolito driveunit configuration, the 0.9" fabricdome tweeter positioned between two 5" plastic-cone woofers. The propri-etary drivers are mounted on a 0.12"-thick aluminum sub-baffle at the top of the enclosure with pretensioned studs, and the tweeter is mechanically isolated from the front baffle to minimize mechanical interference from the woofers. The crossover is set
