Auditioned Magico A3 - VERY DARK...

These are measurements taken at the anechoic chamber at the Harman research center that I believe floyd toole uses for his research/books.

Late to this interesting thread as I only just read it.

I am the owner of the Audia Flight Strumento No 1 pre and No 4 power amp, both MK2 versions with the Magico S5MK1.

Firstly, I am not normally in the business of defending my system on a public forum, especially when you have the faith in letting others listen to it and then read their opinion on how bad it sounded.

My system does suffer from a over dampened room. It is not cold, small and dull as stated. Dark I would agree with though.

I also own a Supratek Cabernet and think they are fantastic for the money and do portray a larger sound. Is it better then the Audia Flight Strumento, not for my ears. The AF is more linear in the sound and is very refined with a much lower noise floor. The Supratek adds colour and in doing so, provides a rich midrange (which I really like) and a nice big spacious sound that I have often heard with valves.

I like both preamps for different reasons but overall much prefer the Audia Flight Strumento No1 MK2. Just matches the amplifier better in terms of gain and is a more accurate conduit to the music, plus it has all the modern features like remote, HT bypass, gain offsets and a really nice volume control.

As to Magico’s being dark and soulless, cant accept the later as it will portray whatever you feed it and can be rich and warm or lean depending on the gear. Dark I can understand in that it doesn’t have an overly prominent top end, very balanced I would say. I’ve had speakers with the extra sizzle up top and whilst they can bring out a bit more micro detail, I find them fatiguing in the long run.

Yes, it may take 25 to 30k in gear to make a 10k speaker sing, The higher the resolution the more you will need to spend.I like dark sounding. Which my speakers are not and nowhere near the price of the magico's.

I know this is an old post but I heard the Magico A3 for the first time last week and I absolutely agree with the OP....very very dark tonally,...on an absolute basis way too much bass, although that bass was tuneful actually and articulate it was WAY to high in level, so much so that it pretty much obliterated what might be going on farther up the frequency spectrum. This was on classical music. And yes I attend 2-4 concerts monthly of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and even though they play in a relatively dead over damped hall that sound is NOTHING like the A3’s. Amplification was Constellation, pretty highly regarded. Pretty shocked at this actually because I had high hopes. Never was a speaker ruled out so quickly. My reference system at present is pass amplification, Aesthetix preamps, PS Audio Directstream DAC and I’m 61 and over the decades I’ve had ARC gear, Soundlabs(1) (the smallish "Pristines"), Magnepans, Acoustats, BAT amps, etc etc, which is all to say I’ve heard ALOT and this is just tonally DARK, waaaay so.  @haloman, the S5 is a different best altogether, especially the Mk I.  The S5 Mk I (which I havent' heard but I'm depending on the opinion of my dealer who showed me the A3) was the real home run of the S series in particular but at least according to my dealer they shelved down the tweeter level in the Mark II and now, while no where near as dark as the A3, its considerably darker than your Mk I's.  Of course that was in response to some feedback that the Mark I's were too hot on the top apparently.  So I'm well aware that there is a subjective element to all of this but occasionally you get into the realm of differences that are so profound they are beyond "preferences" and I would put this dark, bass heavy characteristic of the A3 on classical music in that category.