Naim Audio Mu-so Qb

Bentley among wireless speakers

Naim is not a company that appeared on Kickstarter yesterday, but rather an old and well-known brand that, among other things, produced acoustics for Bentley cars. This fact immediately sets the right perception of the new model: it is an elite, stylish, powerful, fancy and damn technically complicated speaker.

The cubic speaker design looks strict and concise. If it is boring, then the standard black grill can be replaced with another colour. The 20% glass-filled polymer shell provides strength, rigidity and excellent damping. The speaker is controlled by a large aluminium "twist" on the top. It was made cunningly: turning the ring is responsible for the volume, and on top of the ring there is a touch panel with the main controls. Using it is a pleasure. If you are too lazy to constantly approach the speaker, then you can control it using a proprietary smartphone application. The application here matches the speakers, it helps to install and configure the system, connect to anything, set the timer, adjust the equalizer and do a dozen more things.

Sophisticated audio system creates three-dimensional sound

If most wireless speakers are made according to the scheme of 2 speakers plus a phase inverter or a passive radiator, then in Mu-so Qb we are dealing with something in the spirit of the Egyptian pyramid — cool, and the devil understand how they did it. If you remove the protective grille, you will see a system of five acoustic emitters (2 tweeters, 2 midrange, one woofer), which are located at different angles to evenly distribute the sound around the room. A separate high-end amplifier is used for each band, and the total system power is an impressive 300 watts. At the same time, the system weighs 5.6 kg, which is not much more than the conventional Harman Kardon Onyx Studio.

Thoroughbred Hi-Fi sound

Talking about the sound quality here is something difficult — this is the level of cool Hi-Fi acoustics, and it's better to hear it yourself. The speaker plays assertively, but softly, loudly, but does not put pressure on the ears. That's such an oxymoron. The sound is crystal clear at any volume, and the detail is fantastic. Mu-so Qb's sophisticated speaker layout achieves wide omnidirectional sound and wide stereo panning. If you hide Qb somewhere in the room and turn on the music louder, the guests are at a loss as to what it is playing so great and where it is. By the way, the design of the Mu-so Qb used a 32-bit digital signal processor, similar to the one that Naim used to create Bentley acoustics.

Total versatility

In terms of connection, we have total versatility: Bluetooth with support for uncompressed audio, Wi-Fi, LAN, USB, 3.5 minijack and optics. You can broadcast almost any audio format known to man, from OGG and AIFF to FLAC, MP3 and WAV. On the software side, there is AirPlay support and integration with most popular streaming services.

Earn every penny

Putting it all together, the $900 price tag doesn't seem like much. She has no weaknesses, and the list of advantages is very long. This is really the level of Bentley, against which even seemingly cool BMWs and Mercedes fade. Plus, Naim is very zealous about the reliability of its equipment: even the cables used inside the system are tested using a cunning technology, so you will serve the “cube” for decades.