Напольная акустика — QLN Prestige Five

The Prestige Five is a 2.5-way floorstanding loudspeaker from the Swedish company Qln and the larger of the two towers in its Prestige series. It shares the brand's slanted front baffle and truncated pyramid top, and is offered in three finishes, which Qln names Walnut Piano, Walnut Matte and White Satin. American pricing was USD 17,500 in standard finishes and USD 20,000 in Piano Burl Walnut. Qln was founded in Sweden in 1977 by Nils Liljeroth and Lars Quicklund, and Mats Andersen joined in 1982.

Key specs that matter

Qln quotes -3 dB at 26 Hz for the low end, a sensitivity of 89 dB SPL for 1 W at 1 m and a nominal impedance of 4 ohm. Three drivers do the work. The top octaves go to a 25 mm soft dome with a broad surround and Air-Circ motor, a 184 mm Kevlar cone mid-woofer handles the midrange and bass, and a second 184 mm unit with a hard cone reinforces the lowest octaves. The cabinet alone is 1000 mm high, 210 mm wide and 600 mm deep, growing to 1054 x 315 x 650 mm with the feet fitted. Each speaker weighs 41.0 kg. The current production is the second generation, known as G2.

Engineering and use context

Both bass units use an under-hung magnet system, in which the voice coil stays within the magnet gap at all times, giving a linear motor. The Kevlar mid-woofer was developed together with the Danish driver maker Scan Speak. According to Qln, the large roll surround and textile diaphragm of the tweeter keep its response flat above 30 kHz. The inclined baffle aligns the drivers in time, and the sloping top reduces baffle effects. Cabinet walls use Qboard construction to suppress structural resonances, and the reflex port has a trumpet shape at both ends to reduce turbulence. The constant impedance crossover combines non-inductive capacitors with copper film bypasses in the tweeter section, flat foil inductors for the mid-woofer and precision metal film resistors chosen for temperature stability and low noise. The tower stands on solid feet fitted with cones and pucks made from hard, high-damping materials, isolating the tower from the surface below.

Pairing

The low nominal impedance favours amplification able to handle demanding loads. The single-wire terminals take one run of cable per speaker, which rules out bi-amping.

Alternatives

The Qln Prestige Three is the smaller two-way floorstander in the same series.