Killing it. This slang for excelling continues the overkill question. The standard IQ nabbed awards from Hifi Pig, High Fidelity Poland, Mono & Stereo and us plus a plethora of enthusiastic reviews elsewhere including Warsaw contributor Dawid Grzyb of Hifi Knights. When tastes in hifi roam the Great Plains like a band of Sioux braves once did, concurrence is a rarer currency. Beyond testifying to being liked—so important in this Age of Social Media—it implies that the hybrid IQ concept worked in a number of very different rooms. Making the treble balance adjustable not with a lowly pot or jumper but precision resistor can't have hurt. After all, a pleated accordion tweeter's surface area and displacement velocity vs input signal far exceed that of a typical 1" dome. Listeners used to the latter could favour less HF energy. The Qualio solution brilliantly caters to it. Still more divergent is Qualio's dipole bandwidth also found at Carl Marchisotto and Wolf von Langa. It categorically erases the sonic fingerprints of box loading. Just as the imprimatur of filter parts hides under overpaint until laid bare by a filterless widebander, box talk goes undiagnosed until an open-backed planarmagnetic, electrostatic, ribbon or dynamic poses the counter argument. It's not fundamentally about being better or worse but different. Brands like Diesis, Emerald Physic, Kyron and Spatial specialize in pure open baffles populated by classic dynamic drivers. Brands like sound|kaos and Voxativ apply the Axel Ridthaler principle of folded open baffles for separate or integrated bass systems allied to box-based mid/high frequencies. Those create a reverse hybrid to IQ30. Previewing this larger picture extricates data points to set expectations. Those could include unusually holographic soundstaging. They could include fine dynamic reflexes when dipole radiation releases all created acoustic energies into our room and doesn't attempt to absorb half of them in a reactive box. They could include higher resolution because boxed-trapped energies won't reflect back out through cones delayed in time to always smear the signal. They might also anticipate the benefits of higher amplifier current and damping when the back of this 7½" midrange has lost the restorative element of trapped air compressing like a spring.

In my experience with the standard IQ, that's proven out. It prefers powerful transistors over tubes so quite the opposite to the Cube models. Because mid/high dipole radiation plays more of our room than box variants which radiate ever more directional with ascending frequencies, we also expect a pleasant textural enhancement similar to how a slightly reverberant room sounds better than a completely dry dead acoustic. Where the latter allied to overdamped speakers could have some owners reach for tone/texture injections with high-Ω tubes, the hybrid IQ and by extension IQ30 build in a quasi tube emulator by virtue of their radiation pattern. That and appreciation for current and damping recommend experiments with class D whose power/cost ratio could offset today's sticker. Given the already premium ingredients of transducers and filter parts, the only area where IQ30 doesn't splurge is geometry and whatever rakish Avalon facets or wind-slippery Børresen curves that might render. Given the very questionable justification for curving this open baffle, how would a highly stylized bass bin below it continue seamlessly in the first place? Rather than earmark a page from Pylon's book of the above Amethyst Gamma, Marek's form factor for IQ30 keeps it plain. I imagine that most prospective shoppers should find that the right call. It also reflects Marek's preference for "simple and functional designs which I think stand the test of time well". It's certainly not conflicted with the many victory laps the IQ took through the global hifi press. Having at Pylon access to an anechoic chamber and laser accelerometer helps Marek add precision measurement feedback to what the eye calls simple and functional.

The included IsoAcoustics isolation footers contain viscoelastic elements to be weight rated. They are engineered to be shape constrained and directional so won't deform freely in all directions like a slice of squishy rubber would when evenly loaded. Correct axial directionality is indicated by facing the logo forward or 180° back. These Canadian isolators have become OEM choices for speaker brands Amphion, Dynaudio, Gershman, JBL, Mårten, Perlisten, PSB, sonus Faber and Spatial whilst Magico and Wilson have authored their own. Either way, the concept of effective decoupling has more or less ended the previous Spike Age which coupled mechanical energy generators to resonant structures. Now brick, parquet and tile facings everywhere can relax. So can neighbours who suddenly suffer less structural noise leakage.

Where I won't weigh in for lack of four identical gain channels is bi-amping. It's something IQ30 invites. Those sold on the concept already know what it does. Likewise for 1st-order adherents who here focus on minimum-phase filters not matching physical time alignment. With filter hinges at 400Hz and 2'200Hz, this midrange on such shallow slopes remains well audible to 100Hz and 5'000Hz. It's not complete single-driver action but still considerable bandwidth for one driver that must remain usefully linear well past where a 4th-order filter would take it. SB Acoustics' own response curve for their driver shows useful if raised response to 9kHz which Marek's lazy roll-off counters.

Mundorf's tall dipole air-motion transformer commands significantly more than SB Acoustics' top Satori Beryllium tweeter and sells for close to ScanSpeak's rarely seen Ellipticor, putting it in quite heady company. Again, IQ30 goes all out on sound-shaping hardware including the Gaia II interface. That concludes the genesis and tech talk. Right at this juncture I learnt of LampizatOr's new Aphrodite DAC. It usurps the throne previously occupied by their Horizon 360. It halves the number of signal-path stages but upgrades their parts including four custom EI transformers tripled in size. It uses pentode anode loads for its four output pentodes generating a fully balanced signal from a new digital engine. These outputs can roll from KT88 to KT170 to 6550. The obvious name of this game is overkill when those ingredients could build a 50wpc power amplifier but here outfit a D/A converter. It has all circuits and parts cruise at a fraction of their specs. That's very much the point of high-performance overkill. It builds in so much headroom that actual usage has a given device on relaxed holiday far removed from any stressful grind. Whilst IQ30's rated gains in LF bandwidth are a negligible few cycles, for a given SPL its woofer will have to move less than IQ's. Ditto for the other drivers. Lower excursions improve mechanical timing and reduce related distortion. It's how bigger needn't equate to louder. It can simply net more refinement because we work it less hard. It's the opposite of brute force whereby a small speaker like my office monitor aims at highest loudness and bass reach from extreme stroke. That's maximum effort vs chill pill, bruising vs cruising.

On cruising over actual tarmac, my FedEx cargo clocked six overland days from Poznan/Poland to hubs in Germany then the Netherlands before passing through the heavily trafficked Chunnel and its UK customs inspection before rolling into Kingsbury. Promised to ring my bell two days later, it then still had to take the 3½-hour Holyhead ferry to Dublin to re-enter the EU before crossing the breadth of Eire to my rural west-coast digs. Transporting bigger heavier goods by lorry takes time. For this stretch Google quoted 2'212 kilometres. I'd love to reduce my reviewing carbon footprint but except for Sennheiser's factory in Tullamore of County Offaly, don't know of any hifi manufacture in our republic. Before getting hands then ears on, the big IQ doubles our spend over the smaller IQ's basic version. Nobody with experience expects that at this level, twice the cash could buy twice the flash. That bite of reality can't fail to depress the value perception for which the small IQ was widely applauded. No matter its showing, IQ30 was predestined to create far less noise on the value meter. When most awards in our sector weigh performance against value, IQ30 could ace an audition yet not convince the accountant or trophy committee.