Q Acoustics QB12
AV SOUND
Itroduced originally to work with Q Acoustics’ 3000i surround packages, the Q B12 has talents that can stretch beyond its own kin to general purpose subwoofer work, given its performance and price ($1099 in satin and $1399 for gloss finishes), pretty reasonable by the standard of a quality subwoofer of this size. The 21.5kg Q B12 has 46cm depth and a 40cm frontage, big enough to include a big 12-inch driver in its sealed and braced MDF cabinet, powered by a 220W Texas Instruments TPA3255 Class D amplifier of unusually high performance characteristics. The driver cone itself is made from paper, but the dustcap, made from plastic, is so large that its surface area is almost one quarter of the total area.
It’s a neat and clean design externally, with rubber ‘cups’ that fit snugly over four chromium plated spiked feet, and connections that lead up through a hole in the bottom of the subwoofer. With no port and no wires coming out of the back of the cabinet, positioning is simplified since you can push the Q B12 right back against a rear wall, though of course, you’ll also need to position it correctly (a process for which we recommend
Greg Borrowman’s reverse sticky tape method described at tinyurl.com/subcal).
A custom die-cast aluminium heat sink on the rear panel supports and cools the amplifier and power supply, adjacent to a 0/180-degree phase switch as well as level and crossover dials to help integration with the rest of your speaker package.
With movies the Q B12 smashed through the action like a steam train, able to deliver the deep bass component of explosions, high-speed crashes — all the deep sounds that make action movies so thrilling to watch. But the Q B12 isn’t all about brute force, just as all movies aren’t action; it’s also about precise, detailed and really rather dynamic sound, so you can quite happily spend a few hours watching a regency costume drama and barely notice that the Q B12 is even there. These same qualities made it impressive with music: very fast and very tuneful, blessed with pace, rhythm and timing, so that if you’ve got the space — and with subwoofers, there are strong reasons not to go too small — we can wholeheartedly recommend the Q Acoustics Q B12 for either home theatre or home hi-fi use. Info: www.busisoft.com.au
Large, well-powered, fast and tuneful, the Q B12 is a neatly designed subwoofer effective for both movies and music.