Magico S1

I have heard several Magico speakers over the years and have always been impressed with the incredible sound. Even the monitors have always had great range and dynamics. They do require beefy current to get the best sound but they always seem to be in complete control over anything you could throw at it. The fit and finish has always been best in class.
My opinion is you are probably going to get a healthy dose of the magic at a reasonable price. I would think they will sell more than a few of these.

Recently I was in the market for new speakers. I auditioned the S1 and was very puzzled by what I heard. First, I tried them with an E.A.R. tube amp and found the sound very dark and hollow with vague imaging. It was disappointing to the point where I believe something was seriously wrong. Next I heard them with a Spectral solid state amp and it was just the opposite--very bright sounding, almost too bright for my taste. Based on this experience, I would guess the speakers are extremely sensitive to the driving electronics.

I have not yet heard the S1, but I have seen it at my local dealer. It is a lovely looking speaker. The salesman told me that it sounds very much like the much more expensive Q1 for a lot less money. I own the Magico Mini2, a now discontinued Magico two-way.

If the S1 sounds completely different with completely different amplifiers, I would suspect that it is a very transparent speaker, adding little of its own signature to the sound.

These are small enough that a home audition should be very possible.

I would like to see where the bass starts rolling off on these. While 13k is cheap for a Magico it is still a good chunk of money and there are a lot of good speakers out.

I can't see them loading a room with deep powerful bass that is needed for a lot of music. That 7" driver would have to travel pretty far and settle pretty quick to make it happen.


Anyway, I am not a Debbie downer on Magico and would love to hear them too. Maybe they will make an S3 that will fill the void between the S1 and S5 (out of my budget).

With 2 7" drivers?

One thing I should mention about my audition of the S1 is that the deep bass was phenomenal. I played some pipe organ recordings with pedal tones in the 30 Hz range and it was very impressive for a 7" driver. However, I will say that the woofer was flapping like crazy to put out that kind of bass. Of 7 or 8 speakers I auditioned in the price range of $8k to $16k, the S1 had the best deep bass of them all.

Raj,

Yeah something like that I guess. Their "budget" line consists of a speaker made for a large room S5 with two 10"drivers and a small speaker S1 made for much smaller rooms. Seems like there is a hole in the middle. Maybe and updated V2/V3 build to the "S" line specification will fill that void.

Regarding amplifier sensitivity, I see that the S1 has a nominal impedance of 4 ohms, and presumably its impedance goes lower than that at some frequencies. Unless the variation of its impedance as a function of frequency is particularly small, the sonic presentation of a speaker having low impedance will vary considerably more depending on what amplifier is driving it than it would if the speaker had a higher impedance. Especially if one of the amps being tried is solid state (presumably having near zero output impedance), and the other is a tube model (which can be presumed to have significant output impedance)

That doesn't say anything either good or bad about the sonic quality, transparency, and musical resolution the speaker can provide when used with the right amplifier. It's just a consequence of impedance interactions, and perhaps also the current capability of the amplifier, and it just means that amplifier selection becomes more critical.

Regards,
-- Al

Along with the amp I would imagine speaker cable selection would be critical as well?

Along with the amp I would imagine speaker cable selection would be critical as well?

Yes, that's true, Rja. Speaker cable effects will tend to increase as speaker impedance goes down. Atmasphere among others has made that point in some past threads.

Since it seems that speaker cable effects can't be entirely explained or predicted technically, at least in a manner that stands up when analyzed quantitatively, it's hard to give a complete explanation for that, however.

But among other factors that may be involved, resistance and inductance (or more precisely inductive reactance, the inductive form of impedance) assume greater significance in relation to speaker impedance as speaker impedance becomes lower. Which increases the consequences they may have as a result of the voltage divider effect.

Likewise for the rise in resistance that occurs at high frequencies as a result of skin effect, although whether that may be audibly significant under most reasonable circumstances is debatable. Also, although again its audible significance is debatable, lower speaker impedance is likely to worsen the mismatch between speaker impedance and the "characteristic impedance" of the cable, which will to some small degree affect inductive and capacitive energy storage in the cable, and waveform reflections and RFI pickup that may enter the feedback loop of the amplifier, if it has one.

There are probably other effects that are involved as well, but those are a few possibilities that come to mind.

Best regards,
-- Al

What are the speakers you compared with at 8-15k price range?

There are several speakers at that price range that beat
bigger magico in term of deep bass I think.

>> There are several speakers at that price range that beat
bigger magico in term of deep bass I think.

I think you mean “proportional” bass, not “deep” bass. It is about time audiophiles distinguish between boosted midbass and actual extension.

Give the fantastic JBL 1400 array a try. Lower grain, fabulous imaging, deeper bass, play louder. But, most importantly, music. Beautifully made. Gorgus

What are the speakers you compared with at 8-15k price range?

In addition to the Magico S1, I auditioned the Thiel CS3.7, B&W 802D, Verity Leonore, Sonus Faber Cremona M, Thiel CS2.7, and Aerial Acoustics 7T. I ended up buying the Sonus Faber (the CS3.7 was second choice) because I felt its midrange best captured the warmth and "feel" of live music (classical in particular).