What exam? I drive a small two-door Volvo automatic with manual override. The 230hp 5-cylinder 2.5-litre turbo engine is a big boy. Its chassis is a compact hatchback called C30. In Germany earlier this year, our taxi between Hamburg and Kiel did up to 180km/hr on the Autobahn. Our ride was a classic ivory-coloured big-bore Merc. I only knew its speed by tracking the needle. Being a far heavier car with probably a V8 engine, a clearly quieter cab and plusher suspension, our speed didn't telegraph as it does in my lighter smaller car. Same measured performance, different experience. That too was my first IQ30 take. It felt less sporty, more settled and smooth. My mental calculator crunched some numbers of driver diameter gains. IQ30's tweeter doubles over IQ, its woofer increases x 1.27, its midrange x 1.16. Armchair predictions could associate related response gains. In sequence they'd be busiest with the tweeter followed by the woofer. With midrange gains smallest, that core bandwidth could be slightly depressed. That's if kindergarten math applied. It didn't. There was no smiley-face curve whose tweeter end lifted up a bit more. What telegraphed instead was greater suavity with more energetic mellowness. There was less adrenaline—microdynamic fast-twitch muscle—and more easeful stateliness. Like our quick-moving taxi hid the mechanical aspects of its speed from its isolated cabin, so did IQ30 seem to hide mechanical subtext of effort expended. The bigger fellow was more mellow. The next thing of note was returning from typing some copy in the office whilst music played on across the hallway. During happy-hour calypso with my fave pan man Andy Narell, I'd primed the pump in the blue seat. Emerging from the office's lesser loudness back into that seat, the SPL now struck me as unreasonably high. This repeated the taxi effect. Playing louder than usual hadn't registered. IQ30 had stopped subliminal stress notices whereby I unconsciously gauge SPL. Hence those had slowly crept beyond my usual comfort zone. Broader comfort zone. Less apparent effort. Forget cramming. Just show up. Test. Aced. What exam?

By the way, I'm not endorsing crass SPL. Far from! My top seal of Good Hifi Housekeeping Approval is to remain compelling at low SPL. If we must crank for satisfaction, something's awry. But IQ30 didn't force me to go louder. I simply could, noticed and lived to tell the tale. As to describing the full-on IQ30 experience after having lived with IQ for 2½ years, I'm badly handicapped. I've fully adapted to its hybrid dipole presentation. It's virtually 2nd-tiered all else. I've fine-tuned this setup for best IQ effect. What once was novelty to reset personal speaker expectations has become my new normal. Reconfirming it now in scaled-up form can't reignite the enthusiasm of a fresh discovery when I first came off years' worth of box-speaker reinforcements. We're a virgin only once. But something foundational will hit should you mint your own conversion by juxtaposing direct radiators with a properly set-up IQ30 for the first time. I obviously can't guarantee conversion. If the dipole gestalt were categorically superior, box speakers wouldn't dominate so massively. Yet they do. The majority must prefer them. How many of them might opt out if exposed to an alternative? That remains pure conjecture. Compared to the endless legions of box speakers, dynamic dipoles are rarities one must seek out. As explained, full-range dipoles need beaucoup woofer acreage. That can quickly turn domestic no-go. Now one must focus on hybrid dipoles. Those further shrink options to brands like Nola, Qualio and von Langa. Whilst I will attempt to retrace my steps and substitute my original IQ encounter with the present IQ30, it's bound to be a mock-up. Retelling an old tale won't recapture the original novelty frisson. Hello memories. They don't revive things as they were. Each time we revisit a memory, there's an overwrite of the previous version. It inserts extra emotional distance and distorts details. We deal with memories of memories. That won't be IQ30's fault. That fault rests entirely with IQ having popped this particular cherry of mine by December 2022.

On the score of cherries and whipped cream, IQ30 dresses its maximally short open-baffle wiring still tidier. Even the most virulently anti-tech householders—"just hide all of 'em nasty bits in the box"—could forgive this show on the odd occasion of seeing the speaker from behind. No hairy bum crack here. From the front, it's as clean as could be. A big terry cloth to keep the acrylic glass dust-free is included. Onto temporal dust cleaning. How does removal of ubiquitous box talk change playback's feel? One aspect of box talk is a punchy hardness. When a driver's rear stroke is as free as its front stroke, this bare-knuckle punchiness lets go. Call it less smack, more swing. One is more aggressive, the other more fluid. A certain compression lifts. Another aspect of box talk is tonal dryness. Unlike its omni bass section, dispersion narrows with rising frequencies. That involves ever less room to cause a radiation discontinuity. Flood light becomes flash light then spot light. In dipole mode, the usually more directional bandwidth is made more similar to the lower bandwidth. This 'textural linearization' exhibits more elasticity and richness. Another box-talk effect can be subtle image-focus blur particularly in the depth domain. That's from midrange frequencies being ghosted by internal cabinet reflections leaking through their cone. When that stops, focus improves inside the looser textures. It's how greater transient precision can coexist with structural give. Leading edges needn't pierce or cut to telegraph on time. It's how premium dipoles can exhibit higher more organic than metronomic resolution. Here IQ30 is softer than IQ. In the absence of contrary proof, let's single out the new tweeter waveguide for which Marek claimed better integration. The presence region is smoother. It's perhaps also due to restricting widebanderish acrobatics of this Satori cone by an octave and using it like a conventional midrange.

Back on transient timing, a forté of this speaker moves to the fore with rhythmically peppery multi-layered fare. We get to appreciate obvious reflexes and imperturbability without smear whilst a percussive melee won't turn into hail on a tin roof or nails on chalkboard. It's a very particular serving of two often mutually exclusive qualities: in-the-pocket adroit timing which arises easefully so neither hyper-charged nor robotically hard as I've heard from 'heroically' dense sealed speakers and their deadened cabs. Perhaps due to more cone surface and concomitant stroke reduction, IQ30 edged that quality still deeper into relaxation than IQ. This made the smaller speaker subjectively tauter, springier and quick, the bigger one more nonchalant and in repose as though asking, what's the rush?