John
Contiguous: “to share a common border or touching”. The traditional loudspeaker stand’s top and base plates act as common borders to its pillar/s. In unboxing the loudspeaker stand that Q Acoustics ship with their Concept 300 2-way standmount (US$4499/£2999), we are confronted with something completely different: three non-contiguous poles that don’t touch and have no ‘common border’ base plate. Instead, they are kept separate and held together by a series of contiguous and tensioned wires to meet the definition of tensegrity, a portmanteau of tensional integrity: “the characteristic property of a stable three-dimensional structure consisting of members under tension that are contiguous and members under compression that are not.”
It isn’t just smart engineering, inspired by the work of Bucky Fuller and Kenneth Snelson, that sets this loudspeaker stand apart from the steel-pillared norm. Their outward appearance is likely to strike a chord with listeners, like me, who value elegant minimalism and who see loudspeakers as pieces of furniture that play music. For proper stereophony, loudspeakers must sit front and centre in our listening/lounge rooms, effectively forcing their designers to have them satisfy more than one sense. More on that here.
Despite being offered less than a week with the Concept 300 by Q Acoustics’ German distributor, I took the opportunity to share their visual appeal in video form as well as break my own rule on offering up initial impressions:
Further information: Q Acoustics
With thanks to Max Schlundt Kultur Technik for organising the short-term loaner.
