... Quantum proved perfectly tuned for my smaller  room. Whilst merely hinting at sub bass, its solid mid bass was ideally weighted to cause no room loading issues despite no down- but instead rear-firing port. In the mood for some Turkish Pop between two male vocals, I spun up Usta Çirak by Cengiz Kurtoglu & Hakan Altun. Right off the "Yorgun Yillarim" opener's spoken voice telegraphed legit chesty tonefulness for an immediate tip of the cap at SB's cellulose-based drivers. With a 250wpc DC-coupled amp of low output impedance, their dry warmth slotted in nicely controlled to short-circuit the sloppy timing that comes from energy-storage issues and poor damping whilst simultaneously producing great image density. Though I couldn't be sure until a direct downstairs A/B versus IQ, my initial impression was of the same upper-treble air but less fully stepped-out mid treble where I thought that IQ's Satori covering more upper range had the advantage on power and directness. I also thought that the spectacular aspects of IQ's staging related to its top-end speed and brilliance coupled to dipole effusiveness had stepped down some. I still had a wall-to-wall panorama of proper height and depth, just not the same aerated tangibility of spaciousness. Whether this was the room or IQ's broader dipole bandwidth I'd learn later. Right then Quantum struck me as a less dynamically charged not as lit-up-quick IQ version but one which was decisively ideal for a room which IQ would plainly overload acoustically and visually.

Still in an Anatolian mood, I cued up Mercan Dede's remix of Burak Malçok's "Gece Geçer" from the Hidden Breath | Sakli Nefes album. The end stops of the embedded downward sweeps sat a bit higher than they do with the sub engaged but other than the occasional subterranean excess, nothing was missing and the soaring ney's high tones had proper inner overtone fire. Ambient and techno that live on a solid bassment or otherwise die are well within Quantum's remit. Time for a personal guilty pleasure, 1984's Transfer Station Blue for the signature sound of Klaus Schulze's old-timey organic synths and Michael Shrieve's flashes of percussive lightning bursting from behind an undulating carpet of rapid micro beats in the opener "Communique: Approach Spiral". To me it's a masterpiece of early 'space' music that never gets old. Again Quantum showed that it could do peppery impulses with the necessary inter-note cleanliness from proper stoppage to cause no blurring whilst relying on no tonal bleaching or textural thinning for that effect. It rather maintained proper chewiness which metal-cone drivers can lack to instead front-load transients whilst easing off bloom.

For another guilty pleasure I had Turkey's Bülent Ersoy whose life began as a man before transitioning to a woman. Her style of old-fashioned arabesque vocalizing and classical quarter-note intonation is a taste I acquired early on whilst being keenly conscious that many have not. Yet no matter the cosmetic and sartorial excesses of Bülent's later career, how to deny that this lady has fiercely powerful pipes? Try the title track of Bir Ihtimal Daha Var to see whether you've got the stones for this stuff or run for the hills. At realistic levels, Quantum's tonal power and general centeredness created the kind of raising-the-dead intensity I groove to whilst knowing better than putting downstairs Ivette through more than one track. In our digs this style reserves for my headphone trips where anything goes. The point of this exercise was to – well, quantumfy the speaker's midrange weight. I'm pleased to say that it passed with flying colours. The latter term is picked in its best sense. This particular centeredness or gravitational attractiveness in the vocal range played antidote to any even subliminal nerviness and suited massed strings equally well.

Transitioning focus on Andalucia with more gender-fluid power vocals, I spun up Falete's "Enamorarse" from her Prefiero Ser Así album. From there it was leafing through just a few touch-screen shortcuts to arrive at "Ascent" which hosts Alireza Ghorbani's awesome Iranian vocals over Le Trio Joubran and powerful atmospherics which spill into a virile electrified groove with heavy drums. Making a new speaker acquaintance is very much like letting a host show us around an unfamiliar city. Will we end up in a museum or strip club, on a river cruise, at the opera, beach, local beer brewery or botanical garden?

If we let a visiting loudspeaker take us by the hand, we get to see what kind of scenic tour it takes us on through our very own music library. By observing what type of tracks we gravitate to, we quickly peg certain strengths. It's no conscious deliberation to see what will trip it up. It's a more emotional go-with-the-flow process where certain virtues become their own filter mechanism to attract more music which celebrates them. Looking over my pitstops, the message was clear. Quantum feasted on big vocals and rhythmic vigour.

Memo received. I could certainly do more of it. For a step change instead I initially stuck to special voices but picked more downtempo intimate cuts. First was the classic Persian singer Sagar Naghili with the title track of his Negar album. It's well recorded and his voice spans a rare chasm of constrained power and fragility. Staying in the troubled Middle East, I moved to Wael Jassar's Volume 1 of Fi Hadret At Mahboub and the song "Awel Sa'ah Fel Akherah". Unlike the prior cut, this is over-produced glossified stuff with excess layers of reverb injected. Not channeling my Susvara headphones, Quantum simply played no lock-jaw bloodhound on the trail of poor production values. I got to enjoy music I love for its feel, not any audiophile cred. In the precarious game for ever more resolution, it's key that we don't err on the side of overexposed explicitness or half—possibly well more than just half—our music library becomes like the abandoned harem that's no longer visited by an aged flaccidly disinterested pasha. Now what's the whole point? Grzegorz & Marek have clearly mastered the art of real-world tuning which knows where to stop.

If we look back over the last eight tracks, the six which contain vocals were all of still or former males. That too is a suggestive indicator. Quantum's tuning adored the lower vocal registers so likewise the cello or baritone saxophone. Perhaps that's the lower driver kicking in at 600Hz to parallel the upper one across its lower bands?