Suncoast Audio Magico M3 install today

sleepysurf said:
Wow! Very impressive room and setup! :congrats: Enjoy!

BTW, just realized you're in Tampa. You might want to check out our local Suncoast Audiophile Society (see link below) and/or the local Sarasota club. Ask Mike about us!
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They're all nuts. Avoid them. [emoji14]


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First Impressions

Finally got a few minutes to post on the M3's. First.... a huge thanks to Mike B at Suncoast Audio for the assistance he provided. :congrats: Changing speaker brands is as stressful as divorce and remarriage...maybe more so. Lending me his S1s for three months went above and beyond the call of duty. Having that experience made the exchange of massive amounts of coin of the realm for M3's much easier to endure. I developed faith in the brand and their marketing and grew excited to hear the M3's after the extremely positive experience with Magico's "entry level" model.

Packing. Each speaker comes in its own crate standing upright. One side of the crate converts to a ramp to permit the speaker, when it's restraints are removed, to be wheeled off the elevated platform. From there it is an easy trip to the music room where the wheels are removed and replaced with Mpods. This is a three person task. Two to tip and hold the speaker and the third to manipulate the wheels / Mpods. We managed to get this done without any medical or pharmaceutical assistance. Very cleverly thought out packaging. If they got this right, what about the speakers?

The S1Mk2s are a sealed design and were easy to place in my room. They threw a wide and deep soundstage once I got the wall treatments right. The trebles were rich, saturated and natural. Bass was tight and substantial for a single driver speaker. They amazed me. I went to the Magico plant and listened to the M3's in their room. They were impressive but there are so many variables you just never know until they are in your room with your front end and cables and your butt is in the sweet spot.

Right from the first track I could hear the improvements over the S1. The S1 trebles that I already loved were more relaxed and dense from the M3's. The percussion on several tracks was more lifelike (a feat believe me). One track from a Mapleshade Redbook file with a harmonica and "bones" was so startlingly realistic I got chills. My xylophone jazz tracks and solo piano defined "percussion" instrument. Bass heavy tracks produced more bass volume than the S1's but it was not intrusive or out of context with the rest of the presentation. I know the "correct" volume for my critical listening tracks and I had to crank it down for the M3's. Very efficient design.

Soundstage: Even wider (I didn't think that was possible) than the S1's. Where the S1's appeared to be wider than the speaker placement, the M3 stage appeared to me to be wider than the room boundaries. Fascinating as Mr. Spock would say. The individual images (voice or instrument) had more air around them and were larger within the soundstage than the S1 presentation. I heard that in Magico's room which was understandable in a room the size of a warehouse. I wasn't expecting it in my 14 X 19 foot room. Very nice.

Bottom line. Best speaker I've owned by a mile. They are fullly up to the task of handling my front end and amps. A lot of the credit for the rich sounding presentation goes to the D'Agostino amps. The speakers perform nicely by getting out of the way. There were times with my previous ported speakers where I was ready to give up the hobby forever I was so discouraged. Not any more my friends.

Cincy
 
Mike said:
Thanks. The client is very happy. He has a wonderful system.


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But something is wrong. I don't see a turntable or tape deck anywhere. :)
 
Glad you are happy with the M3s! BTW, great looking room! I bet it sounds sublime!
 
Re: First Impressions

Cincy2 said:
Finally got a few minutes to post on the M3's. First.... a huge thanks to Mike B at Suncoast Audio for the assistance he provided. :congrats: Changing speaker brands is as stressful as divorce and remarriage...maybe more so. Lending me his S1s for three months went above and beyond the call of duty. Having that experience made the exchange of massive amounts of coin of the realm for M3's much easier to endure. I developed faith in the brand and their marketing and grew excited to hear the M3's after the extremely positive experience with Magico's "entry level" model.

Packing. Each speaker comes in its own crate standing upright. One side of the crate converts to a ramp to permit the speaker, when it's restraints are removed, to be wheeled off the elevated platform. From there it is an easy trip to the music room where the wheels are removed and replaced with Mpods. This is a three person task. Two to tip and hold the speaker and the third to manipulate the wheels / Mpods. We managed to get this done without any medical or pharmaceutical assistance. Very cleverly thought out packaging. If they got this right, what about the speakers?

The S1Mk2s are a sealed design and were easy to place in my room. They threw a wide and deep soundstage once I got the wall treatments right. The trebles were rich, saturated and natural. Bass was tight and substantial for a single driver speaker. They amazed me. I went to the Magico plant and listened to the M3's in their room. They were impressive but there are so many variables you just never know until they are in your room with your front end and cables and your butt is in the sweet spot.

Right from the first track I could hear the improvements over the S1. The S1 trebles that I already loved were more relaxed and dense from the M3's. The percussion on several tracks was more lifelike (a feat believe me). One track from a Mapleshade Redbook file with a harmonica and "bones" was so startlingly realistic I got chills. My xylophone jazz tracks and solo piano defined "percussion" instrument. Bass heavy tracks produced more bass volume than the S1's but it was not intrusive or out of context with the rest of the presentation. I know the "correct" volume for my critical listening tracks and I had to crank it down for the M3's. Very efficient design.

Soundstage: Even wider (I didn't think that was possible) than the S1's. Where the S1's appeared to be wider than the speaker placement, the M3 stage appeared to me to be wider than the room boundaries. Fascinating as Mr. Spock would say. The individual images (voice or instrument) had more air around them and were larger within the soundstage than the S1 presentation. I heard that in Magico's room which was understandable in a room the size of a warehouse. I wasn't expecting it in my 14 X 19 foot room. Very nice.

Bottom line. Best speaker I've owned by a mile. They are fullly up to the task of handling my front end and amps. A lot of the credit for the rich sounding presentation goes to the D'Agostino amps. The speakers perform nicely by getting out of the way. There were times with my previous ported speakers where I was ready to give up the hobby forever I was so discouraged. Not any more my friends.

Cincy
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing and congrats for the beautiful room. Guess you'll stick with the hobby for a while now :).


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Re: First Impressions

I’ve just had the very pleasurable experience of having Jim Smith of “Get Better Sound” voice my room with my new Magico M3’s. It was a long day! The first question to answer is why hire someone else to do this. The answer is simple for me. I consider my music to be a very personal hobby. I don’t go to audio shows. I don’t have audio buddies. I have one chair in my room. Therefore the only reference I have for what constitutes good sound is whatever system I had before I upgraded. Without a knowledgeable outside party to evaluate the total room/system performance in absolute vs relative terms, I would never know if my current system and setup had achieved its full potential.

Enter Jim Smith. Career audio subject matter expert and great guy. I’m not knowledgeable enough to describe everything he does and the logic/technology behind it. He has done that elsewhere himself on this audio forum and in his books/DVD’s. What I can do is recap his basic process in layman’s terms.

1. Evaluate the starting system / room for an hour or so using Jim’s sound files
2. The next day, utilize a portable Real Time Analyzer and pink noise track to graph the room response and find the peaks and nulls with emphasis on the bass.
3. Adjust the listening chair fore and aft to maximize flatness across the band particularly in the bass register. (Compromises had to be made. More on that later). Evaluate with music tracks. Adjust and repeat as necessary
4. Breakout the lasers. Find room center. Move the speakers to roughly Jim’s desired position based on his experience and the listening we had done the previous night. Likewise adjust the speaker toe in. Play music. Adjust. Repeat (many times). Measurements are made to the 32[SUP]nd[/SUP] of an inch!
5. Tweak the room treatments for diffusion / absorption and position to take care of sidewall reflections and related issues. Test with music again. Adjust. Repeat.
6. Check all measurements one more time to insure nothing has changed.

When the process above was completed we had made the following changes to my set up: The speakers were moved almost two feet further into the room (19’ L x 14’ W x 10” H). My chair went back about a foot and a half towards the rear wall. We made multiple minor adjustments to the speaker distance from room center and speaker toe in until we had a fairly flat response between 40Hz and 20KHz. The very bottom end would not give up a 20-25dB suckout between 20 and 40 Hz no matter what we did. Jim optimized the rest of the spectrum and left the low, low end problem to be solved by me with a set of subwoofers at a later date.

At the end of the session, Jim let me listen to some of his evaluation tracks from the sweet spot. All I can say is that after starting this process with sound I thought was the best I had ever experienced, I heard things I didn’t think possible from two channel stereo. Deep, deep, did I say DEEP soundstage. Black Hole kind of dense mid-range for instruments and voices. Hubble Space Telescope type precise images for percussion and voice. Quark size, subtle dynamic changes. On one jaw dropping track of his, I heard sounds positioned a few feet on either side of my shoulders. How is that even possible???

Bottom Line: I’m a happy camper. I can confirm the consensus that a session with Jim is the best value in audio today. Anyone can move speakers and chairs. Jim uses his data and his years of experience to determine how much and when to stop. And that has made all the difference.

Eric
 
Eric.......This is such a wonderful event to read about. Jim Smith's reputation speaks for itself so no reason to elaborate. What I find exciting is your elevated emotions as the performance limits of your system were raised to a level you had no idea existed. That is something to shout about. It is clear from reading your post that Jim's wealth of knowledge and experience applied to your system was will worth the investment. I can sense your happiness and enthusiasm. I am very pleased for you.
 
Re: First Impressions

Cincy2 said:
When the process above was completed we had made the following changes to my set up: The speakers were moved almost two feet further into the room (19’ L x 14’ W x 10” H). My chair went back about a foot and a half towards the rear wall. We made multiple minor adjustments to the speaker distance from room center and speaker toe in until we had a fairly flat response between 40Hz and 20KHz. The very bottom end would not give up a 20-25dB suckout between 20 and 40 Hz no matter what we did. Jim optimized the rest of the spectrum and left the low, low end problem to be solved by me with a set of subwoofers at a later date. Eric
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Eric,

Congrats on your new speakers.

After the two foot move, how far are the front of the speakers from the rear wall?
 
Eric , Congrats on the new speakers, i agree the best money spent on Audio is having Jim Smith come out to the house with his wealth of knowledge and golden ears
he can take any system and make is sound better. I listen more to my gear now than ever before.
 
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