This is a review and detailed measurements of the MAG Theatron S6 home theater surround speaker. It was kindly drop shipped by a member and costs US $944 each.
This is a very compact speaker with super solid enclosure. So much so that the company ships it (and the M-12C I tested) come with no packing material! Speaker's normal configuration is with the tweeter below woofer and that is how I measured it (forgot to take its picture the same way). The waveguide is supposed to be asymmetrical, biased lower, to eliminate the need to tilt the speaker down (which would be inconvenient in in-wall applications). Connectors are commercial types with phoenix connectors and such.
Let's put it on our Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS) and see how it performs (in free standing form). FYI company provides measurements that correlate well with him.
MAG S-6 Surround Speaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our CTA-2034 anechoic series of speaker frequency response measurements:
Story kind of starts OK in bass but roughness ensues followed by very uneven response from 1 to 3 kHz, followed by a large droop above 6 kHz. You don't need my expensive measurement system to see these as simple near-field measurements quickly show the same things:
Sensitivity is one of the marquee features of this speaker brand and it delivers to the tune of 93 to 94 dBSPL (average for speakers tested is around 86 dBSPL). This should reduce the need for amplification power although once you apply EQ to flatten the response, some of this advantage will be reduced.
As noted on the graph, directivity has problems which we see in early window response and later, in specific plots:
Resulting in predicted in-room response which assuredly will be colored:
Beamwidth measurement shows clearly what we are facing as far as directivity:
One usually associates use of horn/waveguide as an attempt at controlled directivity but there is no hint of that here. What there is, above 5 kHz, is very narrow making it less of a fit for surround duty where the listener angle may be acute. Our heatmap tells the same story:
We see those whisps which tend to implicate diffraction issues due to many sharp corners around drivers and enclosure itself.
Vertical directivity is usually bad in 2-way speakers so we can't complain too much about this one:
I ran sweeps at a number of SPL levels and stopped when I could audibly hear the speaker complaining (101 dBSPL):
If distortion remained proportional to the SPL, the graphs would all be on top of each other. Non-linear nature of speaker distortion means that distortion rises faster than level as we get closer to its limits. This presentation is new so we need to build a library of them to have a reference. For now, I declare 91 dBSPL still good enough as the gap is small. It is bothersome to see the broad distortion across the full spectrum though. Here is a more detailed break down:
Be careful when interpreting absolute distortion levels as the frequency response is not flat:
Impedance is on the low side but not very problematic:
Waterfall shows a number of resonances:
Step response demonstrates one of the faults with this measurement as it is highly sensitive to high frequency energy which this speaker lacks:
I was originally going to listen to this speaker and create EQ. But then decided there is little point to that. We know that its response is poor and could highly benefit from being flattened. You don't need me to confirm that.
Conclusions
Two things rule in commercial sound: reliability and ability to play loud. Both are required for live events. Fidelity just needs to be good enough. MAG speakers completely fall inline with that, providing very high sensitivity and presumably good reliability. Refinement is not in the vocabulary of the design. While companies like JBL have done well in blending these two factors, such is not here at all, despite the brands' targeting of home theater. Seeing how these problems show up in company's own measurements, I am surprised they did not put more attention on fixing them. I mean what is the value of that treble shelf? Clearly a design flaw that wouldn't help anyone in any situation.
I should say I admire the company at least providing the measurements. Anyone schooled on my our speaker measurements, should be able to read them and realize that they are a poor choice for high fidelity applications.
EQ should help fix some of the issues here but not things like directivity. Company amplifiers have DSP and the manual provides a recording sheet to specify which is nice.
Overall, I can't recommend the MAG S-6 Surround Speaker. In our small spaces, we don't benefit much from high sensitivity. Nor is reliability that big of a factor as home theaters do not get many hours of use. We need a refined design where we put the finishing touches on with DSP. Not total redesign.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
This is a very compact speaker with super solid enclosure. So much so that the company ships it (and the M-12C I tested) come with no packing material! Speaker's normal configuration is with the tweeter below woofer and that is how I measured it (forgot to take its picture the same way). The waveguide is supposed to be asymmetrical, biased lower, to eliminate the need to tilt the speaker down (which would be inconvenient in in-wall applications). Connectors are commercial types with phoenix connectors and such.
Let's put it on our Klippel Near-field Scanner (NFS) and see how it performs (in free standing form). FYI company provides measurements that correlate well with him.
MAG S-6 Surround Speaker Measurements
As usual, we start with our CTA-2034 anechoic series of speaker frequency response measurements:
Story kind of starts OK in bass but roughness ensues followed by very uneven response from 1 to 3 kHz, followed by a large droop above 6 kHz. You don't need my expensive measurement system to see these as simple near-field measurements quickly show the same things:
Sensitivity is one of the marquee features of this speaker brand and it delivers to the tune of 93 to 94 dBSPL (average for speakers tested is around 86 dBSPL). This should reduce the need for amplification power although once you apply EQ to flatten the response, some of this advantage will be reduced.
As noted on the graph, directivity has problems which we see in early window response and later, in specific plots:
Resulting in predicted in-room response which assuredly will be colored:
Beamwidth measurement shows clearly what we are facing as far as directivity:
One usually associates use of horn/waveguide as an attempt at controlled directivity but there is no hint of that here. What there is, above 5 kHz, is very narrow making it less of a fit for surround duty where the listener angle may be acute. Our heatmap tells the same story:
We see those whisps which tend to implicate diffraction issues due to many sharp corners around drivers and enclosure itself.
Vertical directivity is usually bad in 2-way speakers so we can't complain too much about this one:
I ran sweeps at a number of SPL levels and stopped when I could audibly hear the speaker complaining (101 dBSPL):
If distortion remained proportional to the SPL, the graphs would all be on top of each other. Non-linear nature of speaker distortion means that distortion rises faster than level as we get closer to its limits. This presentation is new so we need to build a library of them to have a reference. For now, I declare 91 dBSPL still good enough as the gap is small. It is bothersome to see the broad distortion across the full spectrum though. Here is a more detailed break down:
Be careful when interpreting absolute distortion levels as the frequency response is not flat:
Impedance is on the low side but not very problematic:
Waterfall shows a number of resonances:
Step response demonstrates one of the faults with this measurement as it is highly sensitive to high frequency energy which this speaker lacks:
I was originally going to listen to this speaker and create EQ. But then decided there is little point to that. We know that its response is poor and could highly benefit from being flattened. You don't need me to confirm that.
Conclusions
Two things rule in commercial sound: reliability and ability to play loud. Both are required for live events. Fidelity just needs to be good enough. MAG speakers completely fall inline with that, providing very high sensitivity and presumably good reliability. Refinement is not in the vocabulary of the design. While companies like JBL have done well in blending these two factors, such is not here at all, despite the brands' targeting of home theater. Seeing how these problems show up in company's own measurements, I am surprised they did not put more attention on fixing them. I mean what is the value of that treble shelf? Clearly a design flaw that wouldn't help anyone in any situation.
I should say I admire the company at least providing the measurements. Anyone schooled on my our speaker measurements, should be able to read them and realize that they are a poor choice for high fidelity applications.
EQ should help fix some of the issues here but not things like directivity. Company amplifiers have DSP and the manual provides a recording sheet to specify which is nice.
Overall, I can't recommend the MAG S-6 Surround Speaker. In our small spaces, we don't benefit much from high sensitivity. Nor is reliability that big of a factor as home theaters do not get many hours of use. We need a refined design where we put the finishing touches on with DSP. Not total redesign.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Last edited by a moderator:
