Review Q Acoustics 5050 Slim but not unmuscular

With the 5000 series, Q Acoustics offers a lot of innovation from the more expensive Concept models at a lower price, with the familiar modern design. The speaker family was recently expanded with a larger floorstander, the 5050. Larger woofers promise stronger bass, but this Q Acoustics is still slim and slender. How does it play?

Q Acoustics

If you are talking about affordable speakers with a very modern, rounded design, then you are definitely talking about Q Acoustics. The British speaker manufacturer has been a hit in its own country (and abroad) for years by focusing on things such as a modern design that also appeals to non-traditional hi-fi buyers. Initially, the brand built a strong reputation with cheap speakers that offered great sound quality for a reasonable price. With the launch of the Concept 500, designed by well-known designer Karl-Heinz Fink, and later the Concept 300 with its cool tensegrity mode, things started to aim a little higher. Also the one introduced in 2022 Concept 30 and Concept 50 showed the ambitious side of Q Acoustics. These speakers built on the previous high-end models and added new features, such as a C³ – read: C-cubed – cone design and a nicer finish.

With the 5050 we drop one level in the range. This floorstander is brand new and complements the accessible 5000 series that we discovered at High End Munich last year. So it is an afterthought, in the form of a large floorstander next to the more compact 5040. Like the other 5000 speakers, it borrows a lot from the more expensive Concept line.

‘Large’ is very relative in this case, because if there is one thing that Q Acoustics knows how to do very well, it is making slim columns that fit very neatly into a contemporary interior. This is therefore one of the ‘smallest’ largest models in a speaker family that we have ever seen. Interesting, because the larger 6-inch woofers promise better bass performance, while the Q Acoustics 5050 itself will fit well in even medium-sized living rooms due to its design. Acoustically, but also when it comes to interior friendliness.

Triangular stability

Unpacking and setting up the 5050 is not exactly difficult. It is a slender appearance, just under 102 cm high and 33.6 cm wide. The strong rounded corners at the top and bottom make the speaker appear even more of a slim column than it really is. You might even have doubts about the stability, especially if you have children playing at home. Or a cat that likes to jump from furniture to furniture can also be a potential spoilsport.

However, Q Acoustics has done the necessary to avert any lawsuits. And that in a smart way. As with the Concept 50 and other Q Acoustics floorstanders, place two metal triangles with legs at the back of the base. Yes, that is also typical for the brand – a special foot construction. Here it is a lot simpler than the famous tensegrity mode of the Concept 300, the mode that you could have thought would collapse at any moment but was still magically very stable.

The triangles on the 5050 are hardly noticeable, especially not on the white version that we visited. They do provide the necessary stability, which is the most important thing. In the box you will also find spikes or caps that you screw into these ‘outriggers’ and at the front of the speakers, depending on the type of floor you have in your home.

Naked is more beautiful

The rounded cabinet is really a familiar design element of Q Acoustics, just like the MTM setup with a 1-inch tweeter in the middle and a 6-inch woofer above and below. The drivers are housed in their own panel that fits into the front in a very chic, seamless way. Screws are not involved. It is also good to know that the black baffle is in turn mechanically decoupled from the tweeter. It really hangs freely in the whole, so that the interaction between cabinet and tweeter is limited. Something that is derived from the Concept tweeter is that the entire tweeter of the 5050 is also housed in a hermetically sealed housing. This is to be less influenced by the pressure differences in the cabinet caused by the large C3 woofers.

In the black version of the 5050, the black baffle is of course less noticeable, but with the three other color versions there is always a great contrast between this dark driver section and the rest of the front. The brand’s Q logo shines neatly in the middle of the speaker, an unusual location for a brand mark. But it doesn’t bother you. You can only place the supplied magnetically attachable grille over the upper speaker section. We will now jump ahead in the test, but in this case we would rather advise against installing the grille. In our test room we found it suppressed some high detail. A matter of taste perhaps, but in our opinion the 5050 is more beautiful naked in any case.

Looking for the perfect shape

The 5050 is not the only floorstander in the 5000 series. This loudspeaker family was actually presented last year at the High End fair in Munich. There we were shown four models: the 5010 and 5020 bookshelf speakers, the 5090 center speaker and the 5040 floorstander. Surprisingly, this 5040 is not that much smaller than the 5050, at least in terms of height – only 5 cm less. However, the 5050 is somewhat wider, which results from the use of two woofers with a significantly larger diameter (6 instead of 5 inches). However, the tweeter is the same. It is mainly in terms of bass performance that this larger Q Acoustics aims to outdo its smaller brother.

In the 5050 (and the 5040) the C. is used for the woofers³design applied. This stands for Continuous Curved Cone, a technology that was already used in the new Concept models. You quickly notice that the company is very proud of this design, which they say required extensive R&D work. Often when new speakers are presented, they zoom in on some new material used for the cone, but that is not the case here. The researchers at Q Acoustics focused on the cone shape, looking for a shape that works like a real piston and avoids uncontrolled breakup movements at all volumes.

Thanks to computer simulations, they arrived at a uniform shape that was then combined with a modified spider (the casing system) and surround (the outer edge of the cone). The end result is that a C³ woofer has a good appearance and a very balanced, controllable frequency response. This makes integration with the tweeter easier, the manufacturer notes.

The architecture of the C3 woofer also explains why the 5050 delivers a tighter, somewhat muted bass. No disadvantage, because electronic songs such as ‘Home’ by Orbital and ‘In Music I Trust’ by Ellen Alien conveyed a real sense of speed. We also find this control interesting because it reduces interaction with the room, even during large orchestral works, which makes placement in the living room just that little bit easier. We have not been able to test this, but we suspect that this also helps when correcting with a system such as Dirac or Roomperfect.

Welcome to the living room

For once we did not park the 5050s in our test room, but in the living room. Left and right of the TV, with a Marantz Stereo 70s as the engine. No other sources, except a Pro-Ject Automat A2 record player and an Apple TV that was connected to the stereo receiver via HDMI. At another time we exchanged the Marantz for our Lyngdorf TDAI-3400, a combination that also worked well. But that extra touch of warmth that the Stereo 70s provides made the 5050 come to life just a little more, to our taste. The Q Acoustics house sound is relatively flat, so using an amplification with some coloration is not bad. Although of course that remains largely a matter of taste. In this case we left out the ELAC Sub 2030 that usually plays a role.

Why the living room? Firstly for practical reasons – there were other devices playing in the test room. But the 5050s are also speakers that can easily be placed in the living room, which is often used by the extended family for films and gaming.

The British have always had an eye for use with a TV, which we were able to easily try out here. Both the Marantz and the Lyngdorf are equipped with HDMI-eARC, which makes the connection between music system and TV set child’s play.

Controlled and in control

It always takes some getting used to a Q Acoustics speaker set. Not because they are doing something crazy or wrong, but because the brand is less committed to highlighting something from the whole to stand out and excite (the buyer). It is a feature that they share with Dynaudio, for example, although the house sound of the two brands is somewhat different. In any case, they are not about standing out, but about creating music in a realistic and relaxed way. That is also what we experience with ‘Alive’ by Beth Orthon, including the atmospheric ‘Haunted Satellite’, which presents itself as an intense wall of sound in which lighter sounds sound in the distance and Orthon’s voice weaves through it very beautifully. It’s a whole immersive experience, there is a good immersion in these tracks that lean towards trip-hop but also often do their own thing.

The step to the new Khruangbin was made quickly. It’s another obsession among audiophiles, but not without reason. ‘Ali’, the collaboration with Vieux Farka Touré, was a nice excursion into Malian guitar blues, ‘A LA SALA’ again jerks the wheel towards the dreamy, psychedelic that we got to know from their first release on the Late label. Night Tales. It’s music that the 5050s bring well. Not enveloping, but like a thick soundscape that is spread widely across the soundstage. A song like ‘Ada Jean’ comes out of the speakers well, but the focus remains. One more, a CD rip of the rerelease of ‘Moon Safari’ by Air streamed via Roon: ‘Kelly Watch The Stars’. As mentioned, the Q Acoustics convey that fat beat in a tight and controlled manner, the synthesizer and vocal line then emerge sparkling in the mix. The pounding nature of this song really conveys the 5050’s intensity and fullness.

That is a quality that also turns out to be positive if you use the Q Acoustics for TV sound. It’s a bit of a home game for the brand, because we’ve always had the feeling that the British brand was very much into that – pardon the marketing speak – use case. It is no coincidence that the manufacturer is also keen to offer ready-made surround packages, including with 5000 series speakers.

Imaging and positioning around the 65-inch TV screen in the living room are good with ‘Shogun’ and ‘Fallout’, two series that convey a lot of atmosphere in a very different way. In the film adaptation of the well-known games, it is mainly the intense use of golden oldies to convey a 1950s ambience that works very well, even for those who are not exactly in front of the screen. With Shogun the soundtrack is a bit thinner, but they also handle that well. What is striking again is that the display still holds up well in those less ideal seating positions.

There is a sweet spot, but the 5050 radiates widely and rolls off gently when you move away from it – that makes them very living room-friendly, these slim columns.

Conclusion

The Q Acoustics 5050 do exactly what you expect from the British brand. They are stylishly packaged, with a level of finish that is unprecedented for this price. The speakers from Q Acoustics always looked fine, but in this generation the finish is even better than before.

And those positive words also apply to the performance. The good integration across the frequency range, the controlled bass, the beautiful midrange and the balanced sound make the 5050 a good choice for living rooms where both music and TV sound can be heard. They are great room fillers that also offer you a lot of pleasure outside the sweet spot.

Q Acoustics 5050
1,699 euros | www.qacoustics.com
Rating 4.5 out of 5