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.