Meet Your Maker
Meet Your Maker
Nigel Payne of Quiescent
Quiescent might not be a name that trips off the tongue just yet, but bear with us; the company took the original concepts of Vertex AQ and has developed them for the 2020s. We spoke to Nigel Payne of Quiescent about the science involved, R&D, and how to extract the most from any good audio system.
AS: Quiescent means ‘tranquillity at rest.’ Was the name deliberate or a Freudian slip?
NP: When we design systems, our fundamental principle is that all components are not at rest. Each active or passive device in a circuit, whether it is a transformer or speaker driver unit, output transistors, capacitors or even microprocessors, actively adds to the musical signal. Our goal is to ensure that the system is invisible to the listener, and our decision to name ourselves Quiescent was a deliberate consequence of that design philosophy.
You are a comparatively new company. What was the motivation for starting Quiescent?
Quiescent was founded in 2017, but our roots go back to the founding of Vertex AQ almost 21 years ago. We felt that Vertex AQ had run its course and opted to form a new company that leveraged our knowledge of electronics and mechanics combined with state-of-the-art computer-aided design and manufacturing techniques. In creating Quiescent, we have established a brand recognised for technology leadership, world-class products and an innovative
approach to radically improving the audio experience.
What are your scientific, technological or audiophile backgrounds?
I began my career studying particle physics and electronics at Leeds University back in the late-1980s. That led me to model noise and vibration, work on high-frequency systems, and program low-level code processors. I’ve taken this experience and applied much of what I’ve learned to my obsession with audio reproduction…
June 2021 HiFi+
Product Review
Alan Sircom reviews our Quiescent Peak power modules
Keen-eyed regular readers might be doing a bit of head-scratching here, as we reviewed both Apex and Peak from Quiescent back in Issue 197. And they’d be right… and wrong. Although the names – and the physical appearance – are the same, what’s in the boxes is geared toward a very different role in your audio system. Where the last round of Peak modules was geared toward being used with loudspeakers (they had speaker terminals and flying loudspeaker leads), these Peaks are all power-based.
There’s a lot to unpack here, figuratively and literally. Starting with the literal; four cartons, containing twelve boxes in total, making six individual devices, made up of eighteen separate components. That’s a lot of stuff to get through. What we ended up with was two sets of the single power feed Peak Mains Module, one dual-output Peak Mains Module, a single Peak Mains Shunt filter, four silver-plated copper Peak UK power cords and four silver-plated copper Peak Neutrik powerCON to IEC connector cables… and
two sets of three of the latest iteration of Quiescent’s Apex40 component couplers.
Figuratively speaking, you need to think of these products as energy control devices, irrespective of whether that energy is electromagnetic, radio-frequency or mechanical. What Quiescent does in every product it makes is to try to tame that wayward energy, using a common set of methodologies for consistency. All feature non-parallel boxes with an acoustically disruptive pattern milled into the heavy black case; an anodised aluminium case for the Peaks, a 3D-printed enclosure for the Apex modules.
Read the full article by Alan Sircom or check out more news about the audio industry at Hi-Fi+
