One of the great truths is lost in this project, namely that you must always think new
Three loudspeakers have been created in the project Loudspeaker Q113. One has won and the other two are losers, but the work doesn't stop there. Because honestly, isn't it just a little bit interesting that the losers are the most innovative?
Did you see the smoke? Project winner Q113 Evolution (or SA pandion 2) contains more craftsmanship than innovation. There's a drama unfolding in the Q113 speaker that not everyone has spotted, but which should shake all technology fans up a little. A drama that has been played out so peacefully that it has barely been noticed. We have now reached a point where the outcome of this drama can no longer be overlooked. The stories of the various speakers in the project are all about construction methods, ideas, choices and some subsequent consequences of those choices. At first, the consequences are explained through technical descriptions that are professionally exciting and instructive, but we have now come to a point where we are feeling the effects of many of our earlier decisions. And some of them are starting to hurt.
Q113 Revolution. The wall and floor speaker. They both cost far more than the project winner, but they still lose out on sound quality. No way!
The most advanced speakers have lost
We have developed three speakers in the project. None of them are ordinary, because the project aims to create a world-class speaker. In that respect, all three rise above the ordinary. Yet two of them are a notch more advanced than the third. These are the project's floor-standing and wall-mounted speakers, both of which have been given the project name 'Revolution' because their design takes a more daring route, in an attempt to push the boundaries. We've gone all out in terms of some exciting material choices and patented acoustic lenses, all of which are quite novel and exciting solutions. A number of choices have been made in the design and workmanship of the speakers that are not cheap, but express the desire to create something new. It is in the spirit of the project that the sound should have the last word, and here both the advanced speakers have not scored top points. That's the result after more than 100 people rated the sound of the speakers. The project's most advanced speakers are good, but not world class.
Contrary to the logic of the times
I find that thought-provoking and the showdown between Evolution and Revolution constitutes the drama I mentioned earlier. The thought-provoking thing is that we have gone for more sophisticated materials and solutions, all of which should give a better result. We have even been able to prove that these daring designs actually work, because on paper they do all the good things they are designed to do. Now I'm not saying that innovation is wrong or bad, because I have no idea about that. I'm just saying that in our project it hasn't got us anywhere. What is considered one of the truest ways of thinking of our time has not worked in our project. But the Evolution loudspeaker, based on a thorough refinement of existing ideas, does. But there's more.
In the blind test at DELTA, the 13-year-old SA2K was rated as good as the brand new and twice as expensive floorstander.
The revolution has a (high) price
The innovative Revolution speakers are not just inferior to both the Evolution speaker and the project's 13-year-old predecessor. They're also 50% and 100% more expensive, respectively! In other words, we've created a pair of products that are technologically challenging, that demonstrably work on paper, but that cost quite a bit more than the project's winner. The design choices have all been made with the best of intentions, but to no avail to the ears that should ultimately benefit from the effort. To put it bluntly, it's quite crazy that we can, with great effort, develop some exciting and expensive speakers that are subsequently beaten by their slightly more traditional and rather much cheaper little brother. The Q113 Evolution is simply a double winner in the project, as it is not only better, but also considerably cheaper than the other two speakers in the project.
The floorstander is rebuilt. It has inherited a lot from Evolution and the Revolution is cancelled.
It calls for a decision
We're left with a winning recipe that does the job better than its more innovative counterpart. The mainstay of the recipe is that it is based on ideas that work ..... and further development could therefore consist of going off on that tangent. The revolution has run into the ditch for us so many times that there is probably no point in pulling it up again. Therefore, we have decided that the work on the Revolution has come to an end, but the floor speaker, for example, will be resurrected immediately as a further development of the project's winner. As you can see from the picture, the floorstander has been rebuilt. It may not be very pretty, but that doesn't really matter right now. The important thing is to see if we can get it right. The interior of the cabinet has been rebuilt so that the internal volume is now 20 litres. Previously it held 10 litres. New woofers have been built, based on the design of the Q113 Evolution units. The new ones are just 8 ohms, so they can be paralleled and work in a two-way construction with the Evolution tweeter. I'll be back with more results, as the measurement team will now be doing some acoustic measurements to see if there is a future for this design. You can say very matter-of-factly that it might not matter that one speaker costs twice as much as the other. It just has to be twice as good. The old Revolution speakers just weren't. It will be interesting to see if the new experiment will succeed. In the meantime, I'll try to remember that innovation is fascinating for the brain, but it doesn't necessarily open the way to the heart.
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Ole Witthøft
Ole is the founder of System Audio. His 3 greatest passions are music, design and technology. Every day, Ole is working on some kind of projects, and you find him in the workshop, in the production, behind a computer or on one of his many presentations around the world.