I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the incredibly exciting Loudspeaker Q113 Revolution tweeter is not delivering. It simply doesn't sound good enough.
Dumped. The special tweeter does not impress the listening team.
The resentment is almost indescribable when months of work temporarily go into the ditch. The innovative tweeter, with its acoustic lens, was supposed to have a particularly good experience in store for us. You may remember how the tweeter came to be, under interesting circumstances in a basement in Jutland, where the patented lens was designed especially for the Q113 Revolution. If not, you can brush up on the story here On paper, the tweeter should be well suited to work exactly the way required in the Q113 loudspeaker, and throughout the process it has behaved well, delivering acoustic measurement results that have certainly not given cause for concern. No matter what, it helps. The listening team and I have really done a lot of experimenting, but have not managed to crack the code that unleashes the music with the tweeter. It's really sad. Some speakers are hysterically sensitive to work with, while others have to have with the coarse file before they wake up. In this case, the desired sound just didn't occur.
New tweeter. Both the wall and floor-standing speakers now have a second tweeter.
The sound is massive
It has to be said that the sound is not without capabilities. The reproduction is of a high class, but one of the goals of the Loudspeaker Q113 is to surpass its predecessor SA2K and here the new tweeter unfortunately falls through. In direct comparison with the SA2K and slightly more expensive speakers, the sound is massive and without lightness.
Hard to find the cause
The tweeter is built from components that have each found their way into many very fine loudspeakers. The acoustic measurements have looked good throughout, so no one could have predicted that the sound would dump the new tweeter. An interesting study could probably be made of why the sound is not up to scratch, but at this stage we have to be content with the conclusion that we are not going to get anywhere with this tweeter.
Rescue operation brings speaker back on track
Today's good news is that everyone involved in the Q113 project has made an extraordinary effort (again) to find a way out of the ditch. Indeed, it's part of the story that while the Revolution speakers have been struggling with treble issues, the less daring Evolution speakers have no treble problems. So the engineers cleared the calendar and made brand new measurements on the Revolution speakers, fitted with the Evolution tweeters. Subsequently, new crossovers were simulated and then built and sound-tested. The sound of the speakers is not finished yet, as an Open House will be held where fresh and curious ears are invited to evaluate the sound, but the speakers are getting ready to be evaluated by others. This is an important part of the project. But a new opportunity has arisen, for a really interesting comparison of sound.
The rescue. The music is unleashed when the Revolution speakers use the Evolution tweeter. That is, after a proper round of new measurements, new simulations, new sub-filters and subsequent trimming of the sound using listening tests ....
Measurements do not reveal everything
The situation is unusual. For although it is not unknown that measurement results and listening impressions do not always manage to point in the same direction, it is not every day that one gets to experience two tweeters that measure relatively similarly but definitely sound different. It's healthy to be reminded that we can't always count on technology to make the world a better place for us. It's only when technology works on people that we can say it works.
