I had the very good fortune this past week to listen for a 72-hour period to the new Magico S3 (2023) speakers in my home, courtesy of my local Magico dealer. I concluded that the S3 is a remarkable speaker, particularly noteworthy in its ability to project extraordinary clarity despite the reproduced music's complexity. If this speaker has a deficiency, it is in its inability to reach into the realms of deeper bass. For example, when I played Hey Now (London Grammar), there was silence instead of the two lowest tones. Of course, this is not a problem if one owns a quite good subwoofer or two.
I currently own a pair of Revel Studios, which are more than 20 years old but were the result, back in its day, of superb engineering and the utilization of components developed by Harman specifically for its Ultima product line. Immediately after the S3s were "repossessed" by the dealer's excellent installer team, I played the same select group of tracks that I had used to evaluate the S3s critically. There was little question that, in a few instances, the S3s exhibited a very modest improvement in clarity. In terms of bass reproduction, they were essentially equal.
Between the two speakers, nonetheless, I discovered one meaningful difference. The clarity of the S3s, in comparison with the Studios, seemed to result in an indescribable absence of a touch of the musicality that the Studios deliver.
At the end, taking into account both this trade-off between musicality on the one hand and clarity on the other as well as the fact that my Studios are now "free" whereas the S3s would cost me several tens of thousands of dollars (despite being offered to me as a fair competitive price), I am keeping the Studios. This is, though, a very personal evaluation. I am sure that many others would be enamored by the incredible ability of the S3 to reproduce everything (except the low bass) available from the vinyl, shiny disc, or stream.
