Emma
Member
What Hi-Fi has finally got the Q Acoustics 3050c 5.1 package into its test room and the verdict lands where these packages nearly always land. Agile, energetic, impressive bass, and then a centre channel described as middling, with a noted lack of consistency across the front three.
That last point is worth pulling out because it is structural rather than a Q Acoustics failing. A horizontal centre with drivers sitting either side of a tweeter has an off-axis lobing problem that a vertical floorstander does not, and the moment the centre stops matching the fronts, every pan across the screen has a seam in it. Dialogue is where you live for ninety percent of a film, so the cheapest speaker in the box ends up carrying the most important channel. Same story with nearly every branded 5.1 bundle I have heard.
The other thing to read twice: the system reviewed is not the system on sale. What Hi-Fi was supplied 3050c floorstanders, 3010c surrounds, the 3090c centre and a Q SUB100, quoted at 3,506 dollars combined, and notes Q Acoustics does not sell that as a set. The pre-bundled pack of the same name ships the 3060S subwoofer instead, at 1626 pounds in the UK. A sub swap is not cosmetic. Half the character in that verdict is bass.
If it were my money I would take the fronts, skip the bundled centre and put the difference towards a proper matching one. Laying a third floorstander on its side is not the answer either, before anyone suggests it.
Has anyone here replaced only the centre in a package like this? Did it fix the front stage or just move the mismatch somewhere else?
That last point is worth pulling out because it is structural rather than a Q Acoustics failing. A horizontal centre with drivers sitting either side of a tweeter has an off-axis lobing problem that a vertical floorstander does not, and the moment the centre stops matching the fronts, every pan across the screen has a seam in it. Dialogue is where you live for ninety percent of a film, so the cheapest speaker in the box ends up carrying the most important channel. Same story with nearly every branded 5.1 bundle I have heard.
The other thing to read twice: the system reviewed is not the system on sale. What Hi-Fi was supplied 3050c floorstanders, 3010c surrounds, the 3090c centre and a Q SUB100, quoted at 3,506 dollars combined, and notes Q Acoustics does not sell that as a set. The pre-bundled pack of the same name ships the 3060S subwoofer instead, at 1626 pounds in the UK. A sub swap is not cosmetic. Half the character in that verdict is bass.
If it were my money I would take the fronts, skip the bundled centre and put the difference towards a proper matching one. Laying a third floorstander on its side is not the answer either, before anyone suggests it.
Has anyone here replaced only the centre in a package like this? Did it fix the front stage or just move the mismatch somewhere else?
