British audio specialist, Q Acoustics, has announced its first active loudspeakers: the Q Active 200 bookshelf speakers and Q Active 400 floorstanding speakers.
The result of the company’s 14-year heritage and expertise in designing and engineering loudspeakers, the Q Active range has been designed from the ground up, with the express intent of delivering an uncompromised, versatile high-resolution system that can play music from any source – TV, network music streamer, smartphone, laptop, and even a turntable.
A compact central Control Hub configured either for Google “Chromecast built-in” or Amazon “Works with Alexa” is supplied with each pair of speakers, which allows users to connect to a variety of wired and wireless sources. The Hub can be connected to your home network using ethernet or wi-fi.
You can connect to wireless sources using Bluetooth, Apple AirPlay 2, Roon and Spotify Connect. The Q Actives support all popular music streaming services such as Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal – and users can play and control their music directly from each platform’s native app, keeping the Q Active experience reliable and fuss-free without the need to download any additional apps.
The speakers can also operate as a UPnP media player capable of streaming your digital audio library from a computer or NAS drive.
For wired sources, the Control Hub offers an HDMI ARC input, an optical digital input, an analogue line level input and a subwoofer output. You can also plug your turntable into the Hub – it features a built-in moving magnet phono stage.
The Control Hub links to the Q Active speakers via a wireless connection where all incoming audio (Max Source Resolution 32bit/192kHZ) is converted to 24-bit/96kHz hi-res audio, making for a beautifully simple system free from the tangle of speaker cables. The wireless design means the Control Hub can be placed out of sight if desired: behind a TV, in a cupboard or on a rack. A remote control is also included with each Hub.
