Adopting a bigger midrange plus taller AMT will lower their transition point over the original IQ. The tweeter will do more work. Dipole dispersion not only has room-tuning benefits by causing lateral nulls for fewer sidewall reflections. It eliminates the box, resultant box talk from enclosure reactivity and compressing the driver's back with high acoustic impedance from air trapped in cubic volume wildly smaller than our room. Extending a dipole concept down to 25Hz simply requires honking cone surface to compensate for the acoustic short circuit of anti-phase rear waves. Consider these dual 15" woofers of Dutch brand daudio. This model also marries a Satori midrange to a Mundorf AMT. If IQ30 went dipole all the way, it'd have to look similar.

So sticking to omnipolar not dipole bass shrinks the cone surface required to reach low. Porting the box further shrinks its cubic volume for a given -3dB point. Like IQ before it, IQ30 bridges two worlds like a tube hybrid does with transistor outputs. Here the bridge connects open-baffle dipole radiation with bass reflex. The whole IQ branding isn't just attitude. Since Poland is on the metric system, the model name is the centimetre conversion of 12 inches coming to 30.48cm. IQ30 simply has the purer ring.

The tweeter waveguide doesn't mill into the acrylic baffle but mounts to it. The concave terminal plate now houses three pairs of binding posts for potential bi-amping. The top terminals are for the AMT padding resistor whereby we set our preferred treble balance. IsoAcoustics Gaia II isolation footers are standard. All of it is apparent to the naked eye to safely pronounce that the IQ30 doesn't reimagine the first IQ, just scales it up.

When mounting these open baffles, each only takes four bolts to attach to the bass bin. They and the included ratchet hex driver will operate close to a powerful magnet. Be mindful to not end up with flying metal bits. "The specs are height of 111cm/43.7", width of 50cm/19.7", depth of 42cm/16.5"." Over my IQ that adds roughly 10cm in each dimension. "Weight is 43kg/94.6lbs"—that adds roughly 10kg—"nominal impedance is 8Ω"—IQ rates at 4Ω—"and bandwidth spans 27Hz to 30kHz. Available RAL colours include satin and gloss finishes as well as oiled or high-gloss wood veneers. The on-axis crossover points are 400Hz and 2.2kHz with electrical 1st-order filters with amplitude and phase correction. After taking into account the drivers' own characteristics and dipole operation, the acoustic response slope is 12-18dB similar to the IQ/IQ Ultra."

With a bigger midrange and tweeter, their handover now sits right in the middle of the classic 1-3kHz window. "The short AMT waveguide is optimized not just for the tweeter but also its interaction with the midrange. It evens out the tweeter's response below 3kHz. The crossover uses the same high-quality parts as IQ Ultra: capacitors, resistors and wiring from Mundorf, waxed ribbon coils from Jantzen. My goal was to create speakers with the advantages of the IQ but greater scale and dynamics to be suitable for even larger rooms. Jumpers for single wiring are included as are five sets of AMT padding resistors. The same value as in the IQ Ultra works very well. Efficiency is 90dB, seemingly not much higher but the IQ30 has an 8Ω impedance so is easier to drive."

Numerous readers have asked about the collaborative status between Marek and Grzegorz Rulka given the latter's formation of his own brand then Marek's recently teased own solo venture. Cube and Qualio are set in their ways. We'd never expect hornspeakers from Cube for example, sealed active boxes from Qualio. Fixed identities preclude either man from exercising ideas outside of what's expected from these brands. Added solo ventures give each an outlet to explore other concepts whilst continuing to support their joint brands with evolutions like today's IQ30; or the new Monet for Cube. Creative people feel stymied when fenced in. On fences of the brick-wall sort, my room obviously won't expand just because IQ30 scales up my 9½" IQ which already is all I could ever want for bandwidth and loudness. I'd not tap IQ30's spare headroom. I'd only test how its extras manifest at the same SPL I use on the standard IQ. It's a proviso borne of fixed practicality which can't fully plumb all of a bigger speaker's presumed advantages.

On paper or pixels, the advantages that should translate were the larger dipole AMT working a good octave lower for more airiness and resolution; a bigger midrange for more meatiness; a bigger woofer for greater dynamic wallop; upgraded filter parts for higher resolution. Would all of it weigh enough in my room to justify a bigger taller box that (cough!) smokes twice the cashish?

Going in, that dense puff was my chief concern. When we pay double, we want to hear the benefits now, not theorize over their potential in a bigger future house. What constitutes overkill, exactly?