Magico A5 spinorama (CEA2034)

[Pearljam5000]

^ If I ever become billionaireD) I'd probably have a pair of these in one of the rooms in my mansion. I'd also love to see the NFS CEA-2034 of these. I'm sure Magico already has it.

Or these

 

[Bamyasi]

Independent of how overpriced some of these “luxury” brand speakers may be, it’s a wonderful thing to see that some of them are sonically well-engineered, and at least are delivering good performance for the exorbitant prices they charge. That’s a much more respectable product than e.g. extremely expensive but also horribly underperforming snakeoil.

I’ve heard the Magico M2, and they sounded fantastic and look really beautiful too IMO, while I find Revel speakers relatively ugly in contrast. But while I don’t think they sonically outperform e.g. Revel or Genelec (which cost a fraction of the price), I think they at least come close to being on par. (Beyond that I can’t comment since I haven’t listened to them enough, and because we haven’t seen spin+distortion measurements for the M2 and others.)

But consider this: Some people with a lot of money to spend might buy a Rolex watch, other jewelry, expensive art, etc. For such a person who enjoys music, there are a lot of more popular expensive purchases that are far “worse” ways to spend that money, than buying Magico’s speakers.

After hearing Magico, while I personally would never buy one at their price (and don’t feel I am missing anything sonically with wonderful products from Revel, Genelec, Neumann), I completely understand and respect why someone would buy them who wants a nice blend of aesthetics, luxury, and solid (if not “best”) sonic performance.

M2's look exactly like a firewood burner water heater we used to have installed in the bathroom at our old country house 50 some years ago. I bet materials Magico used were different but they have done a great job of emulating the looks.

Would not call it exactly beautiful looking but same is true for every other floor standing pair of large speakers...

 

[chris1964]

Exactly. There's a hf rolloff there.



For starters, the difference is that the cea2034 listening window includes slight vertical off axis measurements as well as the 30def horizontal off axis. The stereophile listening window is 30 dega horizontal only.

Hi
I am very uneducated in measurement reading, I have been looking for a new pair of speaker and the Magico A5 is / was on my list.
although I can accept that I likely cannot hear much above 10/12K, I am surprised to see that the Magico A5 drops so much above 7K .

It is good engineering ?

Spending 25K in a pair of speaker entitle you to expect pretty good design, isn't it?

 

[fluid]

It is good engineering ?

It is done on purpose so Magico must think it is a good idea. Perhaps it is part of their house sound or in part due to the diffraction (peaks and dips) seen in the on axis response. Balancing the sound in a speaker with very different on to off axis responses can be tricky. The overall measurements show no real design disasters within the bounds of the form they chose.

For high end boutique speakers the engineering is above average for the market segment.

 

[preload]

Hi
I am very uneducated in measurement reading, I have been looking for a new pair of speaker and the Magico A5 is / was on my list.
although I can accept that I likely cannot hear much above 10/12K, I am surprised to see that the Magico A5 drops so much above 7K .

It is good engineering ?

Spending 25K in a pair of speaker entitle you to expect pretty good design, isn't it?

For that money, you should listen with your own ears and decide for yourself whether the "engineering" is good. Seriously.

 

[cavedriver]

I love how everyone just assumes "boutique", i.e. expensive, speakers will suck. Yes, there's a lot of bs, but come on, Magico is one of the more respected brands out there. As in expensive *and* good. I was actually hoping their "entry level" (lol) speakers would measure a little better than this, not that I was about to buy one. Note that Stereophile has reviews for both the M2 and the S5 Mk II, which are from the two product lines above the A series. All of these speakers appear to have that high treble roll-off so it must be intentional, and I agree it's probably to please their target audience. Perhaps they are aging and want to save their hearing while blasting their stereos? Makes me wonder about distortion at 95+ dB. It'd better be quite good.

Magico M2 loudspeaker Measurements

Sidebar 3: Measurements

www.stereophile.com

 

[Da cynics]

Early Reflection DI almost flat from 600hz to 4khz
Quite rare.

Easily compare loudspeakers measurements

www.spinorama.org

 

[fpitas]

I don't think I've ever seen Magico speakers used with an AVR

You have to economize on the amp to afford the speaker

 

[fpitas]

I love how everyone just assumes "boutique", i.e. expensive, speakers will suck. Yes, there's a lot of bs, but come on, Magico is one of the more respected brands out there.

Assuming is bad. But the assumption is very often correct. Magico just happens to deliver.

 

[Penelinfi]

I was wondering about the bass response -- in-room it looked much better than I was expecting from the plot.

I completely agree about the Genelec. But I am 100% sure that I would never be allowed to put the Genelec in my house, and I could easily get the Magico. Obviously, this is subjective. (Not that I could afford either.)

You could easily get some nice artistic cloth covered frames made up at those price points to hide the speakers eg like Gallo references

 

[cavedriver]

Assuming is bad. But the assumption is very often correct. Magico just happens to deliver.

you are making a generalization there, do you have the data to back it up? I don't think there are measurements of enough high-end speakers to form that generalization. If you draw the cut line low enough, say $10k, it includes a lot of speakers that measure very well that could be called "high end bargains", and if you draw the line at, say, $20k, there are very few measured speakers so there isn't enough data.

 

[fpitas]

you are making a generalization there, do you have the data to back it up? I don't think there are measurements of enough high-end speakers to form that generalization. If you draw the cut line low enough, say $10k, it includes a lot of speakers that measure very well that could be called "high end bargains", and if you draw the line at, say, $20k, there are very few measured speakers so there isn't enough data.

I've seen an awful lot of expensive lemons here and at Stereophile. Enough that I would inquire closely before I bought. It's an argument that could go on endlessly, and no, I don't intend to compile some list.

 

[Matias]

A shame Magico does not publish their spins as they even show the NFS in their marketing on the new S3 page...

S3 — Magico Loudspeakers

www.magicoaudio.com

 

[fpitas]

Magico is a little unique in that they are actually decent speakers, despite the high-end stigma.

 

[Purité Audio]

Quite shame they can’t go all out and make a state of the art active design, dealers probably wouldn’t buy it.
Also it would make all their ‘upgrade’ paths obsolete at a stroke.
Keith