Just Add Music

Q ACOUSTICS Q ACTIVE 200 LOUDSPEAKER

- Daniel Kumin

IF THERE were any doubts that we are well into the Age of Stream, the recent proliferation of just add music" audio systems should lay them to rest. Whether toaster-sized Bluetooth portables or full floor-standing systems, wireless all-in-one speakers conceived around high-quality streaming are definitely a thing, and one of the latest examples comes from Q Acoustics.

The British maker's new Q Active 200 is interesting on several fronts. First, it receives 24-bit/96kHz resolution music wirelessly via a 5GHz link from its supplied paperbacksized hub. Second, the Q A200 looks like no other speaker I've seen, and that's cool. Third, its electro-acoustic design is unusual, highlighted by a pair of Balanced Mode Radiator (BMR) drivers in each speaker, supported by a rear-firing woofer of conventional cone form.

BMR technology evolved from the late NXT (another Brit outfit) family of distributed-mode flat-panel drivers and has been getting a good bit of attention in the speakerdesign world lately. Briefly, a BMR driver is a round (usually), more-or-less flat transducer that, while driven by a conventional voice-coil motor, emphatically does not maintain the pistonic, linearly in-out motion of conventional cones and domes. Instead, as the reproduced frequency increases, its surface “breaks up" into multiple vibrational modes, something like a flat-panel driver of the ribbon, electrostatic, or planar-magnetic type used in speakers.