Audiovector QR 7 Loudspeaker

REVIEW
by Andrew Quint
Apr 19, 2023

It was my enviable task to spend quality time with two loudspeakers in Audiovector’s premium R-Series, the R3 floorstander ($13,500, Issue 305) and the standmount/bookshelf R1 ($7250, Issue 319). The R1 and R3 are each available in three versions and, in both instances, I reviewed the top Arreté model that employs the Danish manufacturer’s best Air Motion Transformer (AMT) tweeter and its Freedom Concept mechanical-grounding system, which increases the cost of each by $850. When Robert Harley proposed a review of the flagship in Audiovector’s “entry level”—the company’s term—QR Series, I readily took the assignment. But, on a sunny October morning when Audiovector’s Brand Manager P.J. Zornosa pulled the two boxes containing the three-way, four-driver QR 7s from the back of his well-traveled Honda Pilot, I’ll admit that some doubts began to arise. Would these speakers be a disappointment after I’d twice experienced the “high-priced spread?” Would they ultimately feel like a… compromise? As I looked at, listened to, read about, and asked questions regarding the $6500-per-pair QR 7s, I was on the lookout for what those compromises might be.

Mads Klifoth, CEO and owner of Audiovector and his father Ole Klifoth, the founder and still R&D manager of the company, jointly explained that Audiovector has defined 20 fundamental principles for manufacturing loudspeakers. “We always design our products from scratch, with great respect for our 20 golden rules of speaker design. The R11 Arreté and R8 Arreté are our reference models and represent all 20 rules. We decided to choose the 10 most important for the QR 7 (for example, asymmetrical internal cabinet structure, sandwich membranes, 7-nines copper wiring, AMT tweeters, etc.) Everything we design is compared against our reference models. Live music, of course, is the ultimate reference—music in small jazz or folk clubs, and music from the Tivoli Concert Hall, where the favorite listening spot is the middle of Row 13.”

So, how could manufacturing-cost savings (and a resultant lower sticker price) be achieved? As most audiophiles are aware, the most expensive “part” in any loudspeaker is the cabinet, and it’s not unusual for some well-regarded manufacturers to build the enclosures for their top models in Europe or North America, while those for the less expensive ones come from Asia. On the outside of the QR 7 cartons was printed “Handmade in Denmark.” This is potentially misleading, as the Danish government permits this designation if more than half the value of the parts and labor considered can be shown to have been sourced locally. But it turns out that, since Audiovector’s Scandinavian cabinet fabricators went under, all Audiovector’s enclosures are now made “elsewhere,” which I’d assume means China. The Klifoths do allow that different suppliers build the R Series and QR Series cabinets, but as I extracted the speakers from their cartons, they didn’t appear to be cheaply made by any measure. The dark walnut veneer on the review pair was a single thick piece that wrapped from the bottom of one side over the top and down the other, thanks to diffraction-mitigating, front-to-back-rounded top edges. They are really quite handsome. Still, the QR speakers are basically rectangular boxes that are less expensive to build than the teardrop-shaped enclosures of the R Series models. Beneath the fascia, both product lines use hardwood-based HDF loaded with acoustic glue, the material high-frequency-oscillated in the course of production.

Unspiked, the QR 7 rises 45″ above the floor. This includes a 1″-thick plinth that connects to the undersurface of the cabinet via four half-inch metal discs. The functional reason for those spacers is that the box is vented downwards via a slit-like “Q-Port” that runs the width of the loudspeaker near the front. Inside, bracing elements in the enclosure’s bass section assure that internal standing waves won’t be generated; the compartment for the midrange driver also has an asymmetrical geometry.

The AMT high-frequency driver is a simpler affair than the one used for the R1 and R3 Arreté models, which fires backwards into the listening environment as well as forwards to realize Audiovector’s “Soundstage Enhancement Concept.” As the QR tweeter’s backwave is absorbed in a double chamber behind the driver’s membrane, the entire tweeter assembly can be sited within the speaker’s midrange compartment. The HF extension is less than that of the R series treble transducers, though still goes beyond 40kHz. So that the QR 7s could utilize a sandwich membrane for the 6″ midrange driver and the two 8″ woofers—Mads and Ole Klifoth maintain that this kind of construction allows for simple crossovers with very little loss of signal integrity at the chosen handover points of 425Hz and 3kHz—Audiovector specifies a cone made from two layers of aluminum bonded together with a “light foamy glue” for its lower-priced speakers, as opposed to the carbon-composite material used for R Series products. It’s a compromise, to be sure, yet the design remains true to one of those 20 basic principles observed for all Audiovector loudspeakers.

Around back, there’s a single pair of high-quality binding posts—no option for bi-wiring no bi-amping is offered, as there is with all but the smallest of the R Series models. One-piece grilles that attach magnetically and cover all four drivers are provided. They are as acoustically transparent as the best I’ve heard (from Sonus faber), though most audiophiles will remove them for critical listening, as I did. Audiovector has limited the choice of finish to just three: the walnut veneer of the review sample, plus white silk and piano black. This is, of course, a savvy production decision that contributes to a lower retail cost with no impact on sound quality.

For positioning of the QR 7s, the four-page owner’s manual recommends against the frequently encountered equilateral triangle paradigm and instead proposes an isosceles triangle—is middle-school geometry coming back to you?—with the distance between the speakers being three-quarters of that from the front baffle to the sweet spot. This happens to be exactly the disposition I arrived at in my 15′ x 15′ room, where the ceiling height varies from 11′ to 13′ and a hallway leads off from a sidewall, reducing standing waves. After several hours of experimentation, the loudspeakers were 7′ 9″ apart center-to-center and 9′ from my ears. (The lesson here? Read the four-page owner’s manual.) Regarding the distance to the room boundary behind them, Audiovector suggests anything from 20 to 60cm, about 8″ to 24″. I found that a distance of 22″ resulted in the best spatiality without diminution of the room’s inherent bass support.

The primary amplifiers used with the QR 7s were Tidal Ferios monoblocks, which provided the 6-ohm speakers with a hearty diet of 440 watts per channel. I drove them, as well, with my other long-term reference, a pair of Pass XA60.8s, more likely collaborators with the QR 7s in terms of both their power output and cost. (My intention was to also report on the Audiovector’s performance with a Class D Bel Canto e.One REF501S stereo amplifier [$2495], borrowed from the manufacturer. However, the right channel went out after just a few hours, way too soon for any meaningful conclusions.) For a preamp/DAC, I used the recently reviewed (Issue 333) BACCH-SP adio processor, the crosstalk-cancellation filter bypassed for the purposes of this review. Transparent Audio interconnects and speaker cables were in service. Although I did play vinyl and silver discs via the QR 7s over the four weeks that the well-broken-in review pair saw daily use, most of my critical listening was accomplished by making my way through the Roon playlist assembled to facilitate the process—mostly local files residing on my Synology NAS, but also material streamed via Tidal and Qobuz.

Clearly, there were no compromises to be made when it came to the sort of musical content that would make the QR 7s happy. Vocals were reproduced with their characteristic color and texture fully intact, whether it was the plush immensity of early music specialist Joel Frederiksen’s basso profundo (“Whittingham Faire”) or the casual intimacy of Diana Krall’s delivery. Close-up recordings of small groups of singers didn’t seem claustrophobic—Anonymous 4 with Bruce Molsky performing “Weeping, Sad and Lonely” from 1985: Songs of Hope and Home from the American Civil War, for instance.

The QR 7s love piano in any context. That includes the instrument recorded alone (Marc-André Hamelin’s astounding virtuosity on Kaleidoscope) or as a concerto soloist (Byron Janis’ for-the-ages recording of Rach 3 with Dorati and the LSO on Mercury.) They were unperturbed by textural density of two-piano repertoire (Milhaud’s Scaramouche, as recorded by Christian Ivaldi and Noël Lee for EMI) and made sense of Wayne Horvitz’s advanced but highly communicative jazz vocabulary in a small group setting (Sweeter Than the Day). With all these examples, the Audiovectors kept up with rapid passagework, believably connected the initial attack of a note to the main body of the sound, and gave a good sense of the volume and mass of the instrument.

Spatial information, when it’s on the recording, was rendered faithfully: The seating arrangement of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra woodwind section for Bernard Haitink’s recording of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 15, or the seemingly endless depth of field (to borrow a term from photography) created in the studio for Dire Straits on “Why Worry” from the mega-classic Brothers in Arms. The scaling of different-sized instruments—say, Anthony McGill’s B-flat clarinet and Gloria Chien’s Steinway—was just right on their recording of the Brahms Sonatas for the Cedille label.

Dynamics are attention grabbing, though never hyped up. The sense of a concussive sound wave being produced by electric bass and kick drum on a good rock or blues recording was very satisfying—”Too Proud,” featuring “Mighty” Sam McClain on the Bernie Grundman-mastered BluesQuest SACD sampler, or Kevyn Lettau’s take on “Wrapped Around Your Finger” from Songs of the Police. Coherence is maintained when the music gets complex, as with the challenging charts created for virtuoso big band ensembles led by Bob Mintzer and Gordon Goodwin, or with exuberant early twentieth century orchestral scores like Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Järvi/Cincinnati) or Prokofiev’s Scythian Suite (Litton/Bergen).

High-frequency sparkle is present in abundance, thanks to the Heil AMT tweeter. It assures that the ethereal divisi violins at the beginning of Wagner’s Lohengrin are as otherworldly as intended, as well as the charged sense of occasion that obtains on the Analogue Productions vinyl reissue of “Keith Don’t Go” from Nils Lofgren’s Acoustic Live. Once again, the listener is reaping the benefits of a no-compromise compromise: The AMT driver designed for the QR Series loudspeakers “only” extends out to 45kHz, as opposed to the 53kHz specification given for the R Series products. Both, of course, leave a typical soft dome tweeter receding quickly in the rearview mirror when it comes to high-frequency extension. Deep bass isn’t what you’d call prodigious, but LF slam and extension will be quite satisfactory for most rooms, even with such demanding examples as Jean Guillou’s complete Franck organ music set, recorded at St. Eustache in Paris for Dorian in 1989, or the bounding synthesized bass on Steve Winwood’s Higher Love. I’m wary of modest-sized floorstanders that produce too much bass: For the kind of room they’re intended for, they’re destined to fail. For the first time ever, Yair Tammam—Magico’s CTO who graciously volunteers to remotely optimize the integration of my Magico S-Sub with every loudspeaker I evaluate—concluded that, in this instance, the subwoofer should remain off. At least in my room, Tammam felt, bass performance couldn’t be improved upon. Coming from a rival loudspeaker manufacturer, that’s pretty high praise.

One more thing. Listening to some of the tests tracks with both the Tidal and Pass amplifiers was another telling indicator of the QR’s quality. It actually mattered which amplifier I was using. That’s no surprise with loudspeakers priced in the mid-five figures; it’s something of a shocker that a $6500 pair of speakers could so readily parse the differences between two elite brands of electronics.

The Audiovector QR 7 is the best-sounding full-range loudspeaker I’ve heard at length in a familiar setting that costs less than $10k. Is it “better” than substantially more expensive products from Magico, Wilson, Von Schweikert, YG, Rockport or, for that matter, Audiovector’s larger R Series models? Probably not. But that isn’t, I feel, the question we should be asking. The QR 7 is an exceptionally overachieving product. By diligently developing alternative technologies and manufacturing practices, Audiovector provides entry to the most exalted level of performance that high-end audio has to offer. It’s a compromise…that isn’t.

Specs & Pricing

Type: Floorstanding, three-way, bass-reflex loudspeaker
Driver complement: Air-Motion Transformer tweeter, 6″ aluminum-sandwich midrange, two 8″ aluminum-sandwich woofers
Frequency response: 28Hz–45kHz
Impedance: 6 ohms
Sensitivity: 90.5dB
Dimensions: 9.8″ x 44.9″ x 15.7″
Weight: 79.8 lbs.
Price: $6500/pr.