By Robert Harley
The best sound for the least money had to be the system from Sjöfn HiFi.

Sjöfn imports and distributes Swedish-made products such as Guru Pro Audio loudspeakers, Supra cables, and Holographic Audio electronics.

The complete system I heard cost less than $3000 for a CD player and integrated amplifier (from Holographic Audio), matched with Guru loudspeakers—and included interconnects and speaker cables from Supra.

The bass and dynamics from the tiny Guru speakers were amazing.

By Chris Martens
Perhaps every great hi-fi show has at least one product that generates tremendous buzz because it seems to do, well, the impossible. At RMAF 2007 one such product was the Swedish Guru QM10 (QM for “Quality Manager) monitor loudspeaker, priced at $2500/pair, from Sjöfn (pronounced “SHEU-fn”) HiFi.

The QM10s are compact, two-way, monitors designed to be placed on or near damped walls, about two feet above the floor.

When so positioned, the tiny QM10s can do extraordinary things. For starters, they produce deeper and more dynamically authoritative bass—bass that goes right down into the 30 Hz region—than anything else their size that we’ve heard.

(In truth, guest listeners in the Sjöfn room kept hunting for hypothetical subwoofers that weren’t there—and weren’t needed). But there’s more to these speakers than potent bass, because they also serve up a good measure of clarity and soundstages that offer a pleasing degree of depth.

To prove the point that the QM10s are easy to drive, Sjöfn arranged one demonstration room where the speakers were driven exclusively by an inexpensive, Chinese-made integrated amp/CD player combo.

In principle, that combo plus the QM10s could be purchased for a tick under $3k, complete. This, however, left us eager to find out how the QM10s might sound if driven by even better gear—an experiment we’d certainly like to try in the future.

 Read more from Rocky Mountain Audiofest 2007.

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