Q Acoustics Q Sub 100 subwoofer
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I were lucky enough to visit Paris for a few days. One of the things on our ‘must do’ list was to visit Notre Dame, which was re-opened to visitors last December following a disastrous fire that started on 15 April 2019. Our route to the site involved walking down to the Île de France from the metro station at Hotel de Ville. The pedestrian walkway past the administrative centre of the city passed a huge area that was fenced off for a FNAC music festival that had been going on every night that week, featuring many of France’s hottest musical acts.
Just as we reached it a sound check was carried out from the stage across the empty space that a few hours later would be packed with partying Parisians. The bass energy that pulsed from the huge speaker stacks was astonishing. I felt as if my organs were being pummelled by an invisible hand. The physicality of the sound was intense. We crossed the area in less than a minute but as we moved beyond it I said to my wife “Just be grateful that the subwoofer at home is a bit more subtle than that!”. I was referring to the rather sleek bit of kit that I had installed the week before our trip, the Q Acoustic Q Sub 100, which is the subject of this review.
Q Acoustics are well known in audio circles for producing loudspeakers which consistently seem to perform at a level that belies the price tags that they carry. Since 2006 they have been producing a range of stylish loudspeakers, from entry level to higher end models, which look good and sound great. For some reason however, this is the first time that I have had any of their products here for review so I was particularly looking forward to hosting the Q Sub 100.
Unboxing the Q Sub 100 revealed a nicely proportioned box with elegantly curved corners. The cabinet is black, with a black cloth grille in front of the 10” (254mm) forward firing driver and on the rear panel a standby indicator, a volume dial and a pair of smaller dials. The left hand one allows fine tuning of signal delay and the right side one sets the frequency at which the subwoofer will join in with the main loudspeakers. There are two small horizontal switches, one to invert phase and the other selects12v trigger operation or not. I chose the latter setting. The Q Sub 100 also sports a figure of eight power input, the 12V trigger socket and a pair of RCAs marked left/mono and right. At the very bottom is a USB input for servicing.
I screwed in the four spikes supplied with unit and carefully lowered it into the corner of our room where my own subwoofer normally resides. It too has a 10” drive unit so it seems a fair bet that Q Sub 100 would work in the same spot. I connected my Audioquest subwoofer cable to the left hand RCA input as recommended in the manual. Guided by the same book I chose initial setting of 100Hz and then set the volume level at about one third. Finally, I plugged in the mains cable to a nearby wall socket. All that took longer to write than it did to actually do.
The rest of my system comprised my Linn Sondek LP12, Gold Note PH10/PSU phono stage, Yamaha CD-S3000 SACD/CD player and DAC, Auralic Aries Mini streamer and Primaluna EVO300 Hybrid integrated amplifier. My resident loudspeakers are the Harbeth Compact7ES-3XD2s sitting on HiFi Racks Fortis stands and these were deployed for the first part of the review period (before and after the Parisian interlude).
Set up
Normally I would now go straight into the listening experience at this stage, but with subwoofers in particular one gains the most benefit with some essentially trial and error attempts at getting the the ideal balance between the sub and the main speakers. n this case I used three different tracks, with very different content, to find a good starting point. One Of These Days from Pink Floyd’s Meddle, Gary Karr and Harmon Lewis on double bass and organ playing Albinoni’s Adagio in G Minor and George Ezra’s Shotgun from Staying At Tamara’s. It took me a morning of back and forth to the Sub100 (there is no remote control, nor should one be expected at this price point) to be confident that the subwoofers and Harbeths were in lockstep. In my experience the best way to judge how well a subwoofer is integrated is not to hear it when it is playing but to miss it when it is not.
Listening to the Q Sub 100
Actually, it would be more accurate to call this section Not listening to the Q Sub 100, but that might give the wrong impression. Once I had dialled in what I deemed to be the ideal settings, which was with the crossover at about 80 Hz and the volume just over half way up, all three of those test tracks had really come to life. That subtle enhancement to the lower frequencies really gave the music life and breath. The Harbeth Compact7s are wonderful musical communicators and do not start rolling off the bass until 45Hz, but the Sub 100 filled out the sound well above the frequency at which it was programmed to kick in, so everything sounded bigger, more lifelike.
Gary Karr’s double bass sounded like the large, brilliant-crafted instrument that it is, drawing me right into the space where the Adagio was recorded by the two musicians. Roger Waters’ menacing bass lines really encouraged me to make merry with the volume control on the Primaluna while George Ezra’s baritone vocals commanded much more attention with Q Sub 100 playing.
Our television sound comes to us through the hi-fi system and we both were impressed by how much more realistic not just action scenes but also dialogue and scene ambience was with the Q Sub 100 playing. I am sure others will test this subwoofer in a proper multichannel A/V system, perhaps with several of them. All I can say that in our rather less extravagant two channel system this excellent unit really added to our audio enjoyment.
More recently, I switched out the Harbeth Compact7s and replaced them with the smallest of the Harbeth models, the P3ESRs. These are smaller sealed box speakers, with a similar design ethos to the venerable LS3/5As designed by BBC engineers many decades ago, but re-imagined by Harbeth. Having smaller drivers, the P3ESRs start to roll off the bass at 75Hz, so I advanced the frequency for the Q Sub 100 to start at 100 Hz and once again played my three test tracks. Unplugging the Q Sub 100, the little P3s did a very decent job with all three pieces of music but they lacked the ability to express the scale, the majesty even, of the recordings. Adding the Q Sub 100 was like an audio version of Super Size Me. The scale was back and the little P3s puffed out their chests and sang their hearts out.
Conclusion
I am coming to the end of my time with Q Sub 100 and I shall be genuinely sorry to wave it a fond farewell when the courier comes. I think that for most real world music lovers one of the Q Sub series, depending on your room size, (there are 8, 10 and 12 inch variants available) would be a better investment than a new pair of loudspeakers.
If you can borrow one from a friendly dealer, try it out at home. Try it in different positions in the room too. I could only accommodate in the corner where I placed it. Use those dials to get it exactly to the point where you only realise it is there when you turn it off; when you know, you’ll know. This has really whetted my appetite to try out other Q Acoustics products. If they all have this level of impeccable build quality and musical ability at such a competitive price I think I shall have an absolute blast.