Qln Prestige Three floorstanding speaker

In the hardbound manual that Qln supply they suggest that the Prestige Three be placed three to four metres apart and at least 50cm from the rear wall. Given that my room is on the bass light side I started with them at closer to 30cm and found the bass to be prodigious, a little too much so, so moved them out a bit further to what seemed like a better balance. However it wasn’t until I put Qln’s suggestion into practice did everything come together, the bass remained uncannily powerful for the size of speaker but was cleaner than a closer placement, and the mid and treble were better balanced against it. This is a calm sounding loudspeaker, it’s extensive use of damping and resonance control mean that there is little in the way of additive distortions that can be discerned, instead you hear the quality of the recording and ultimately of the music, loud and clear.

The Grateful Dead’s live version of ‘He’s Gone’ [Europe ’72, Warner Bros] came through with beautiful openness and a lovely easy groove, it reminded me once again that when it comes to timing two-way speakers are very hard to beat. Yo Miles! take on electric era Miles is an excellent SACD recording that contains bass which genuinely seems to growl beneath the guitar, trumpet and drums on ‘Go Ahead John’ [Upriver, Cuneiform]. Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet sears across the void of space and time between recording and replay, as alive as if it were yesterday and Henry Kaiser’s Strat abuse is borderline visceral; John McLaughlin never sounded like this. I’ve seen Jeff Beck play live a couple of times but he never sounded as good as he does on Performing this week… Live at Ronnie Scott’s [Eagle], the version of ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’ on this is both powerful, full bodied and intimate in only the way you get in a small venue and the Prestige Threes bring a lot of that goodness into the listening room at the appropriate volume.

Maria Kanegaard is a pianist with a powerful left hand and the track Godrot [Sand I En Vik, Jazzland] exemplifies this, the Qlns delivering its muscularity in a full depth soundstage with all the vitality that this decent recording can muster. At one point she appears to be hitting the strings under the lid of the piano behind a double bass solo, not something that has been apparent before, usually the power of the groove is a real distraction. Here you get both the engagement of the rhythm with the subtleties that go into creating it, suggesting that Andersen’s efforts at minimising vibration in the Prestige Three really pay off. By contrast, Fiona Boyes’ ‘I Can’t Stay Here No More’ [Professin’ the Blues, Reference] comes through with the scale of the studio behind her in full effect; the kick drum being powerful and deep and complemented by percussion that nails down the beat. Her voice is a little recessed but it’s full of gravel to go with the spit and sawdust.

One evening I put a few records on and while the sound quality of each was obvious what really struck home was that even the less appealing tracks that vinyl encourages you to listen to sounded more interesting than usual. Side two of Thiago Nassif’s Mente [Gearbox] has always been the weaker half but that wasn’t quite so apparent with the Qlns; it’s as if they pull of the theoretically impossible trick of improving the music. Clearly they do something or avoid something that other speakers don’t and this opens up the channels for intrinsic qualities to come through. Whatever it is it’s rather effective, especially if you get up to look for another record and find your feet moving involuntarily to the beat (dancing?). I was also able to give the Qlns a spin with the new Rogers E20a/ii valve amplifier, which as the name suggests has a mere 20W output yet delivered a controlled and compelling result. The bass wasn’t as taut as with the 150W transistor amp used for most of the listening but the sense of flow and musicality was spot on.