Quadral Aurum Altan Aktiv loudspeakers

The limitations of many loudspeakers exist further up the chain. With the Quadral Aurum Altan, those limitations are predominantly between the ears of the listener. Quadral has joined a select group of audiophile loudspeaker makers to begin exploring the joys of active loudspeaker drive, and the two-loudspeaker Aurum Aktiv range is the result. The standmount Altan is the smaller of the two.

To recap, active loudspeakers place an electronic crossover before the power amplifiers, so they can be used to optimally feed the individual requirements of the drive units. In many cases (including the Aurum range), the electronics are housed within the loudspeaker cabinet itself, meaning that the loudspeakers need to be connected to the AC mains. Also, active loudspeakers require a line-level input from a preamplifier or possibly a DAC with a volume control, and in the Altan there is a choice of balanced XLR or single-ended RCA jack inputs. We went with the latter, primarily because so much domestic audio runs on single-ended lines.

Active loudspeakers have few followers among the audio reviewing fraternity, but that’s more out of necessity than choice. To prosecute the job properly, we have to be able to use and review a range of products, including integrated amplifiers and power amplifiers: these options simply cease to be possible when using active loudspeakers, and the resultant limits on the opportunities for work is not a snug fit with the aspirations of the jobbing freelance review writer. The audiophile equivalent of a game of ‘Chinese whispers’ (or ‘telephone’) ends up twisting this desire to work more into ‘active isn’t audiophile quality’, which is nonsense. 

Nevertheless, the Quadral loudspeakers are part of a significant change in audio enthusiast aspirations. I call it the ‘studiophile’ movement: a growing contingent of audiophiles, no longer prepared to pay the healthy price tags of high-end, have taken to choosing high-performance products from the studio world instead. In the process, many of the conventions of traditional home audio have been overturned, including the need to have separate amplifiers driving passive crossovers. 

Quadral’s take on the active two-way standmount is a bass-reflex design in a solid cabinet, finished in a rich black or white ‘high’ gloss that gets close to piano lacquer finish. The loudspeaker itself shares a lot in common with Quadral’s passive Altan VIII model, including the distinctive cabinet shape with its rounded off edges. Where it differs is the Aktiv cabinet contains a pair of 200W Class D amplifiers, one to drive the ‘Chromium’ ribbon tweeter and another to power the 170mm Altima mid-bass. Both drivers are unique to Quadral. The former is a strip of aluminium foil, bent in a zig-zag layout and housed between two magnets. This precludes the need for a voice coil, because the drive unit membrane is effectively its own voice coil. Ribbons are not unique to Quadral, but few companies use the ribbon so extensively throughout the range. 

The Altima, meanwhile, is a clever metal-alloy cone drive unit, combining aluminium, titanium and magnesium. This alloy is claimed to push the resonant frequency of the cone so far out of band as to be negligible, while retaining the transient response and tonal accuracy of aluminium cone mid-woofers. 

Both units combined give a phenomenally impressive frequency response for a two-way standmount in its flattest setting.

Quadral has designed the Aurum Aktiv loudspeakers with a high degree of user involvement, offering adjustment  for basic room correction, installation flexibility, and some tailoring for taste. There is a basic bass adjustment, a linear treble control from +3dB to -3dB for frequencies above 3kHz, and frequency and gain controls. Used carefully, these last two can be used as a kind of parametric equaliser, providing up to 6dB of boost or cut at specific frequencies between 30Hz and 200Hz. As this is all performed electronically before the power amplifiers, this is not a brute-force fix, but a fine surgical strike at the kind of room problems only DSP or big Helmholtz resonators can typically repair. 

As a consequence of these tuning parameters, installation can be quick but set-up can be very slow. The loudspeakers demand to be placed in the standard, “2-3m apart, 1m from the rear and side walls, and a good distance from the listener” placement. Alternately, the Altan Aktivs can be spaced further apart with the listener in the near-field, as if firing across rather than along the length of the room. Both work well, but my view is the latter near-field placement sounds better. 

Whichever installation option you go for, you should now spend some considerable time fine-tuning the bass and treble controls, to try and find the best sound for your room. The Altan Aktiv sounds good ‘flat’, but judicious experimentation can help integrate the loudspeaker into a room extremely well. This is a process that’s best done with 1/3 octave room measurement, but failing that some slow and painstaking listening, adjustment and comparison to the flat sound will achieve similar results. The words ‘slow’ and ‘painstaking’ are not merely there for effect; the road to (bad sounding) hell is paved with good adjustments, and the provision for adjustment to create excellent performance comes with it the darker side of making a complete hash of things. Slow and steady wins the race.

In some respects, this makes it difficult to pin down the Quadral sound, because the Altan Aktiv offers significant scope for tuning to suit your needs. But there is an over-arching sound quality, too. It’s an extremely refined and sophisticated sound, with excellent bass for a small room, but possibly not enough bass extension for larger spaces. The ribbon tweeter also demands that the listener is at the right height; too high or too low relative to the tweeter axis and treble fall-off is marked. This is a trait common to all ribbon designs, and a compromise 

commonly considered worth making to achieve the extended, detailed and accurate sound of a ribbon. In fact, many would never consider going back to dome tweeters (soft or metal, inney or outey) after discovering the joys of high frequencies, ribbon style.

Paradoxically, audiophile recordings that make them sing and soar do not expose the advantages of a ribbon tweeter. Such musical confectionary often serves up a sound so nice that it will sound good on absolutely anything, and the advantages of a good ribbon tweeter will not be as marked as possible. Replace the Danish Noseflute Jazz Orchestra with something more hard-bitten and mainstream and you begin to hear the differences. Night Visions by Imagine Dragons [Interscope] is probably the least well-recorded album of last year, with tracks like ‘Radioactive’ both distorted and compressed to the point of sounding broken: while the Altan Aktiv will not overcome the truly awful sound quality, it allows you to listen through to the musical content and makes the unlistenable, listenable. 

The big advantage to a good ribbon tweeter – and the Quadral’s tweeter is a good ribbon tweeter – is that it is almost uncannily fast. Brush strokes on a snare drum are a fine test for this; they are all leading edge attack, little decay to a sustained modulated white noise, and instant trailing edge release. In contrast, the larger mass of the bass driver often struggles to keep up. Here though, the Quadral mid-bass unit is very nearly as responsive as the tweeter. This gives a speed of attack, and perhaps just as importantly speed of release, that makes the loudspeaker seem exceptionally coherent across its frequency range, and gives the speaker the sort of presentation that makes you want to listen longer. This is not a sound that favours one kind of music; the presentation is detailed and extremely satisfying whether you are playing Pachelbel, Prokofiev, or Primus. Although powerful and capable of being played loud, it’s no headbanger system, but instead has the excellent and rare ability to present an even-handed balanced performance at very low levels and beyond.

It’s that sense of balance that shines through throughout. The Quadral Aurum Altan Aktiv isn’t the kind of loudspeaker that attracts audio extremists – the people who are quite prepared to put with a shrieking banshee of a loudspeaker for the magical way it deals with the sound of a ukulele. Nor is it a loudspeaker for someone intent on spending their later years trying on hearing aids. Instead, this is a loudspeaker that demands more  maturity of the listener, and in return gives an intrinsically ‘right’, detailed, and sophisticated sound of tremendous balance that will give discerning listeners years of satisfying sound. Box-swappers need not apply; the Aurum Altan Aktiv’s in it for the long game.

Technical Specifications

Type: 2-way, two-driver, standmount reflex-ported active loudspeaker

Driver complement: One Quadral Chromium ribbon tweeter, with aluminium foil transducer; one Quadral Altima 170mm bass driver, with aluminium, titanium and magnesium composite cone

Inputs: 1x XLR, 1x line RCA per loudspeaker

Internal amplifier modules: 2x 200W, Class D

Frequency response: 38Hz – 65kHz

Treble response adjustment: ±3dB

Bass response adjustment: ±6dB

Equaliser frequency range: 30-200Hz

Dimensions (HxWxD):  405 x 222 x 346mm

Weight: 14.7kg/each

Finishes: White high gloss, black high gloss.

Price: £3,000/pair

Manufacturer: Quadral GmbH

URL: www.aurumspeakers.com

UK Distributor: Quadral GB & Ireland

URL: www.quadral-ie.co.uk

Tel: +44(0)1785 748446