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The crossover filter runs the paralleled woofers to about 250Hz and the midrange to ca. 2.800kHz. Slopes are 12dB and a steep 24dB respectively. Herr Reckert isn’t too fond of general discussions on the pros and cons of steep vs. shallow slopes since each speaker design has unique requirements. Regardless of actual steepness, what’s important to him is "avoiding sharp-edged responses in the overlap region between drivers".
The exposed tweeter/midrange network suggests a small firecracker array. Tucked behind it sits the separate bass circuit with obligatory coil. Altogether 42 parts make up the speaker's filter.
To give music fiends something to fuss with, Quadral has endowed its new VIII with a few switches below the network window to adjust the response to taste or room. Neutral can be raised or lowered by 2dB for the bass, midrange and treble units respectively. Which now should be enough foreplay to leave grey theory behind and get to hopefully high-color practice. Here it required no golden ears to quickly appreciate that it’s not merely the name which suggests authority. Quadral’s Titan VIII sounded decidedly like a big speaker. My not really petite Thiel CS3.7 generated noticeably less shove and subsonic nonchalance during macrodynamic attacks.
On soundstaging too the Hannoverians played it more generous. Particularly impressive was height which clearly was due to their ca. 1.4-meter profile. I was a bit taken aback though to suddenly realize just how much more infrasonic pressure and output hid in the Legendary Pink Dot’s "Rainbows Too" from their Plutonium Blonde album and how massive and compelling this hypnotically limping song can really sound.
Moving right along, "Afterglow" from A Gilded Eternity by London’s sadly disbanded drone rockers Loop can easily feel too bright and lightweight when its bass drum impact isn’t properly excavated. Even bigger floorstanders can ran afoul here on occasion but the Titan handled this cut extraordinarily robust and convincing. This came off without any special effects bombast to sound spectacular, accurate and relaxed all at once.
This casual effortlessness clearly connected to the VIII’s ability to generate macrodynamic attacks as easily as smoke rings. Be it the sudden appearance of electronic fanfares on the otherwise stately "Aging Musician" from the Residents’ Gingerbread Man or the apocalyptic beats of Downloads’ effects-laden "Suni C" from The Eyes of Stanley Pain, Quadral’s Titan undermined the sensation of hosting acoustic transformers. Instead I experienced a direct connection with the music as I’m really mostly familiar with from sonically agreeable live concerts.
Unexpected was how all this came off at already 2.5 meters given that the driver array spans about 90 vertical centimetres. Despite such a relative short seating distance the sonic image didn’t fall apart into individual frequency bands. But back to effortlessness. Here the Titan’s treble was responsible too by contributing something very fetching and easily digested not least by avoiding attention for both showy precision and playing it extra smooth. There was long-term ease and silkiness coupled to precision, the latter brilliantly displayed on how the triangle attack and fine decay of Alarma Man’s "Pitch Grammar" from Love Forever was differentiated against the rest (if you enjoy math rock like the Foals, you should give these Swedes a spin).
