The Q113 Evolution compact speaker is currently the best speaker in the project. This is the opinion of both the team behind the speakers and the large listening panel of 92 Ingeniørens readers.

Let me take the easy part first. It's fantastic that 92 people have wanted to take part in the project's listening test. Great to see the commitment to the subject, mixed up with the desire to discuss good sound, music, experiences and the quirkiness of life in general. On a personal level, it has once again been an incredible experience to open my doors to the readers of the Engineer, and if I have forgotten to be grateful in haste, I will hasten to make amends and say thank you. Thank you very much. I go with the feeling that many more companies should look to remove the No Access sign from the development department, but what right does a speaker builder have to think anything of it?

Historically large test panel

I can't think of a time when a larger listening panel was used in the development of an audio product. Not that it's necessarily the luck of the draw to have a lot of opinions, but it's a mainstay of Speaker Q113 to involve the readers of the Engineer and so it's great that so many want to be involved. I had the pleasure of talking to many of the participants and although it is not possible to pass on the conversations, it is clear that the listening panel is made up of competent people whose input adds great value to the project.

Q113 Evolution

Q113 Evolution now in production

The compact speaker is currently the winner among the four speakers that were included in the big listening test. The result is reassuring in a way, because it's the same conclusion that the team behind the speakers came to. In essence, the Q113 Evolution scored higher than its predecessor, the SA2K, in all seven disciplines that the test panel was asked to listen for. With a price tag of DKK 20,000 for a pair, the Q113 Evolution even costs the same as the SA2K did 13 years ago, so one has to say that the project has really hit its stride here. I will therefore be putting the Q113 Evolution into production, with the expectation that it will be in the shops sometime this autumn. 49% of test participants, by the way, answered in Part 1 that they would place a compact speaker on a stand, as opposed to on a bookshelf or on the wall. There's no doubt that the speaker sounds best when it's placed precisely on a pair of sturdy stands that bring it up to ear level, so I'd better start designing stands. Some of the testers said that if they had to criticise the speaker, they would like to see a slightly milder reproduction of the upper octaves. This needs to be looked at before finally pressing the GO button.

The wall speaker and the floor speaker. Do their designs need to change to suit us?

The further fate of the other speakers

The team behind the speakers actually agrees with the testers that the floorstander is only the second best speaker in the field, as the design is made today. The scores given to the floorstander in the listening test place it a hair behind the compact speaker in almost every respect. Only the bass reproduction was rated better. Of course, you don't care about that, because now we've found a winner. But it doesn't go! Remember that the floorstanding speaker costs twice as much as the compact speaker. Shouldn't it be perceived as a much better speaker? Test participants revealed in Part 1 that they are more interested in the floorstander than in the compact speaker. If this is also true for the rest of the world, there is every reason to continue working on the floorstanding speaker. The same goes for the wall speaker. It's certainly not the testers' favourite, but it's the speaker that the vast majority of readers would like to see do well. It's the project's second most expensive speaker, but it was rated by testers as the worst in the field. Is this due to the sound or the fact that testers don't care much for wall speakers? I've said countless times that good speakers are 50% science and 50% art. Half of good sound is made by measurements and calculations. The rest is listening tests and adjusting the sound in a long and unmeasurable process of unfolding what is the voice of the speaker itself. But it is and remains a subjective process.

Can the subjective be made scientific?

The paradox of where the project is right now is that the compact speaker can be crowned the winner and we can pack it all up and go home. But isn't it just a little bit interesting that the project's most expensive speakers can't stand the distance, for reasons we can't explain? Isn't it really rather fascinating that the differences that make the Compact a better speaker are probably due to it being constructed in a slightly more traditional way than the Revolution speakers? I'm thinking in particular of the design of the woofers and cabinets, where the Revolution undeniably goes down unconventional paths. Could it even be that the compact speaker won because its sound characteristics remind the testers of a sound they recognise from home and feel comfortable with? Or does the speaker you like best sound a little bit better because you like it best? Here in the artistic half of the project, there's little that can capture impressions the way measurements can over in the scientific camp. Judgements are even coloured by many impressions and some of them may have nothing to do with sound. We'll look at that now.

In the listening room. The Q113 speakers are being set up in DELTA's special listening room.

DELTA contributes to Q113 with double blind tests

Loudspeaker Q113 is the first Danish loudspeaker project to be tested by double blind tests at the renowned test institute DELTA in Hørsholm. Right now, the four pairs of loudspeakers tested by Ingeniørens readers are being installed in a specially designed listening room, where DELTA's specialists will conduct the tests. The purpose of the blind test is to get a sound assessment that is completely clean of all other impressions. This may give us a clearer picture of the difference between the speakers, although it does not change the fact that the compact speaker will soon go into production. The test participants this time are DELTA's own specially trained listening team, but 10 of Ingeniørens readers are also part of the wildly exciting test. I'll be back when there's news!