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Until
now, the only way to acquire a set of Ingvar Öhman’s
loudspeakers was to be invited to an impromptu showing
at his basement mad scientist laboratory in suburban Stockholm.
After paying Ingvar up-front, one anxiously waited for
a year or two for his speakers to arrive. Thankfully,
a team of musicians and engineers - GURU Proaudio - has
unleashed these raves of the Scandinavian underground
on the world. And they’re available right now.
Brush up on your Swedish and consult the blogs: these
diminutive wonders exceed the performance of
vaunted audiophile speakers costing ten times the price
- and more. In a blind listening test by the Stockholm
Audiophile Society of thirty loudspeakers - including
the $30,000 Wilson Watt Puppys - the INO Audio PiP (the
GURU QM10, in different clothing) came out on top –
and it was the least expensive product on test, by a wide
margin. It was also the physically smallest and one of
only two tested speakers which can sit within inches of
the rear wall (more on that feature later).
It’s no wonder that Art Dudley, in the August,
’07, edition of The Stereophile, called
the QM10 “amazing” (emphasis Dudley’s).
And that’s the most prestigious audio magazine in
the world talking, folks!
The world’s only known full-range mini-monitor,
this two-way, vented-port design boasts accurate bass
all the way into the bottom octave - and is flat down
to 30 Hz. Yes, we know: the putative laws of physics state
that one can’t possibly achieve such low-frequency
response in a ten cubic liter enclosure (about 12”
x 9” x 9”). But Ingvar’s done it: At
the 2007 Home Electronics Show in New York, most frequently
heard from attendees ( besides “Wow!” and
“Holy s**t!”) was “Where’s the
sub-woofer?” And the stunning bass of the QM10 is
far from its only unique feature…
Now,
most speakers are designed such that there’s a “sweet
spot” for listening: a single listening location
in the room at which the speakers sound as they’re
supposed to (almost always just behind the apex of an
imaginary equilateral triangle comprised of the listener
and the two speakers; multi-channel setups get even much
dicier). At any other spot in the listening environment…Well,
they can sound pretty horrid. Designed originally for
use in recording studios, Ingvar determined early on that
his speakers should sound virtually the same wherever
one is located in the environment.
Imagine a playback room in a recording studio: musicians,
engineers, producers, groupies, et al, are all over the
place; they’re sitting, standing, crouching, hanging
upside-down from the ceiling. At your crib, if a friend
(or friends) are over for a listening session, if you’re
throwing a party, or if you’re just moving about
the listening environment, the QM10s deliver the same
outstanding performance wherever one happens to be. That
is to say, these guys are genuinely holographic.
Most speakers, furthermore, are designed to exhibit flat
frequency response (i.e., the same sound level from the
lower limit of human hearing at about 20 Hz to its upper
limit of 20,000 Hz). However, this response is measured
in an anechoic chamber (essentially, a “dead”
room, with no reflections) by a microphone. The QM10 delivers
flat response at your ear drum and in a typical listening
environment! Ingvar spent eleven years developing
instruments and structures that closely approximate what
one hears when the curvatures of the ear and the damping
effect of one’s shoulders and chest alter frequency
response; he then fine-tuned the frequency response of
the QM10 to compensate. Bass, treble, midrange, and harmonics
are in consummate balance - not for a microphone in an
anechoic chamber, but for the musical space in a human
being’s mind and soul.
And unlike the vast majority of speakers, which are designed
to be out in the middle of the room and away from boundaries
(in a vain attempt to simulate an anechoic chamber), the
GURUs use the acoustics of a typical listening environment
to augment their performance. By placing them up against
a wall, the QM10s are able to use the room as a kind of
auxiliary enclosure. In other words, your room provides
the kind of huge box necessary for the reproduction of
low bass. Furthermore, Ingvar has discovered how to use
wall reflections to create the immense sound stage (especially
image height) previously only available from behemoth
loudspeakers.
The treated paper/pulp midrange/woofer unit of the QM10
is Ingvar’s own design, custom-made for him by Tymphany
of Denmark; its Mylar tweeter, manufactured by German
micro-industry, is modified by Ingvar to accommodate his
design. Such custom units are far more expensive to produce
- but absolutely necessary to effect the precision instrument
that is the QM10. The speaker’s cabinet can be produced
(to better-than-military-grade tolerances) only by a scarce,
computer-aided milling machine; none of these machines
reside in China, Malaysia, or any other third-world country.
The diminutive QM10, with its unobtrusive placement against
a wall, is an obvious choice for the condo, apartment,
studio, den, or bedroom of the discerning music lover.
(And hey, a pair weighs less than 30 pounds: you can take
them to the summer place, the party, or the recording
site with ease.) But with their colossal stereo (or multi-channel)
image and ability to fill up even large rooms with astonishingly
accurate sound, the QM10s just have to be the most wife-friendly
audiophile speakers on the planet…
Put ‘em on a 24” stand, put ‘em on
a shelf with the tweeter just below ear level,
whatever: men will never again have to endure cries of,
“When are you taking those big, ugly things out
of the middle of my living room?!” But
you’ll achieve more accurate, natural sound than
with those aesthetic monstrosities for which one pays
$10,000+.
And,
ladies: did you know that your hearing is much more sensitive
than that of the average male? You can make out fine details
and hear high frequencies significantly better than men.
Almost always, when women hear music accurately reproduced,
they like it even better than does the porcine gender.
With the QM10s, you can fill your living room with orgasmically
realistic music, without spending an arm and a leg –-
and without any of those huge phallus substitutes
ruining your décor!
What we have here, folks, is nothing short of the Holy
Grail of audio: a stunningly accurate loudspeaker, in
a compact enclosure, with all the deep bass for which
one could hope - at a price that the average person can
actually afford. And they’re 100% made in Sweden:
a land where they have universal health care, a squeaky-clean
environment, and a military that hasn’t been to
war in over two hundred years - and where they take music,
engineering, and build quality very seriously.
One listen - and you will Know. And the insurgent army
of Ingvar acolytes will grow by One.
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