New Magico speakers arriving 04/2015!

LVB said:
+1

There is no comparison between Magico level of technology then just about any other company in the high-end today. The only one that comes close will be Vivid, but with a much inferior enclosure. It is a shame consumers don’t seem to have enough understanding of these products and their merits to really understand what is real development and what is just smoke screens. Machining cones out of aluminum, using silk dome tweeters is VERY low tech, BTW (no matter what kind of fancy name you give it).
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Uh, ok. Focal? Harman?


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Mike said:
Uh, ok. Focal? Harman?


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You could certainly add KEF and B&W. But the real point is the new technology available to and being used by the best speaker companies today and the improvements in sound that has resulted. But this technology doesn't come cheap and there are many roads that lead to Rome. In the past, I could count the number of speakers that I could own on one hand. That number has increased in the last couple of years.
 
I agree that it is almost impossible to find a dealer to audition Wilson Benesch in the US. If they pushed Wilson Benesch like Magico, you would see a lot more WB speakers in the US. Their marketing is non-existent compared to a brand like Magico. I am just bowled over by what they can do in such a compact form factor. This is not to say that Magico is not deserving of the praise it has been getting for their innovation and performance. I just cannot get excited by their looks. To me the all aluminum look is cold & unattractive.

tunes said:
As a former wilson benesch user (ACT and Torus), i agree that they are under the radar in NA and deserving of a listen if you can find a dealer - the biggest challenge. Looking at the m pro's is like looking a a fatter version of a benesch with carbon fibre integrated. Underneath, clearly there are tons of differences. Benesch use a monocoque design as opposed to the massive aluminum that magico are using. Diff drivers, yadda yadda.
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Mike said:
Uh, ok. Focal? Harman?
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Agree to a point. Most “mid-fi” companies like Ravel (Harman) and Paradigm have more technology in them then most high-end loudspeakers. However, since they are built to a very “controlled” price point, their execution leaves a lot to be desired (cheap materials and components, crapy cabinets, etc). The results can vary. Magico is the only company that I can think of that actually do have real engineering, real manufacturing and no, or minimal, price constrains. It is a unique proposition, and in my opinion the reason to their success.
 
LVB...I am sorry to say your claims are a bit of a stretch. I can list quite a few speaker companies that have serious engineering innovation in driver technology (not only designing their own drivers and having them built by the traditional cone manufacturers but who manufacture their own drivers in house, as well as developing novel enclosure materials and designs that rival Magico, including YG Acoustics, Raidho, Rockport, KEF, Vivid, Sonus Faber, Wilson Audio, and many others. I get that you are a big fan of Magico but to claim that they are the only company out there that does real engineering and innovation in the high-end speaker space is at best disingenuous and at worst well ludicrous.
 
LVB said:
Agree to a point. Most “mid-fi” companies like Ravel (Harman) and Paradigm have more technology in them then most high-end loudspeakers. However, since they are built to a very “controlled” price point, their execution leaves a lot to be desired (cheap materials and components, crapy cabinets, etc). The results can vary. Magico is the only company that I can think of that actually do have real engineering, real manufacturing and no, or minimal, price constrains. It is a unique proposition, and in my opinion the reason to their success.
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I don't think it's fair and accurate to refer to Harman as mid-fi. Levinson is not mid-fi. Revel neither.


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cmalak said:
LVB... I get that you are a big fan of Magico but to claim that they are the only company out there that does real engineering and innovation in the high-end speaker space is at best disingenuous and at worst well ludicrous.
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I don’t think so, like I said, most consumers are not very good about distinguishing between real technology and smoke screens. Since my factual explanations will surely be ignored, I will simply leave it at that (hack from your reply I can tell that you didn’t even bother to read my entire post).
 
I smell some money to be made here. I think we need to trademark the name "Fan Boy" and produce a line of Fan Boy tee shirts and polo shirts. We could have Magico Fan Boy shirts, Wilson Fan Boy shirts, Raidho Fan Boy shirts, Martin Logan Fan Boy shirts, CJ Fan Boy shirts, ARC Fan Boy shirts, etc., etc. The possibilities are wide open for making some money.
 
LVB said:
I don’t think so, like I said, most consumers are not very good about distinguishing between real technology and smoke screens. Since my factual explanations will surely be ignored, I will simply leave it at that (hack from your reply I can tell that you didn’t even bother to read my entire post).
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Are you from another country and English is your second language?
 
Revel is mid Fi?
I'm so glad you educated me to that fact. I guess Stereophile Class A rated speakers for 8 years running is mid fi
 
It's obvious to me that LVB has an agenda/viewpoint that is going to preclude having any type of meaningful and intelligent discussion about the quality of designs, parts, and the engineering that are going into today's high-end speakers.
 
LVB said:
I don’t think so, like I said, most consumers are not very good about distinguishing between real technology and smoke screens. Since my factual explanations will surely be ignored, I will simply leave it at that (hack from your reply I can tell that you didn’t even bother to read my entire post).
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First of all, I am not sure why your opinion is more credible than mine on this subject. What qualifies you as being able to determine what is real technology and what are smoke screens? Secondly, what "factual" explanation did I ignore. Thirdly, it's Revel and not Ravel. Fourthly, it's heck and not hack. Fifth, I only reacted to your statement that Magico is the only speaker company that does real engineering and innovation among speaker manufacturers, which is patently not true. Furthermore, your contention that other speaker companies all produce to a price point and hence have to compromise on materials, components and cabinets is not accurate because there are many speaker companies producing speakers at similar price points using top materials and cabinet enclosures, so not sure what you are talking about. Any by the way, from an engineering perspective, it is a lot easier to design a good-sounding speaker at a premium price point because you don't have to deal with as many compromises as you would when you are designing for a lower price point. So in fact, I am much more impressed when speaker designers and manufacturers develop great-sounding speakers at an affordable price point because that's where the excellence of a true engineering mind lies, when solving a problem with many constraints.

Am I impressed by Magico speakers and the engineering that goes into them? Yes. Do I like their sound? They are not my cup of tea but that is just personal preference/taste. But I find your statement that they are the only company that is truly engineering-driven and innovative and the only one that uses premium parts and cabinets flat out wrong and factually incorrect.

But you can tell yourself whatever it is you want to make yourself feel better about your purchase decision. That's fine.
 
LVB - if you want to have a calm, rational discussion about speaker design than I'm all for it. But, if you're simply going to believe the marketing BS, than there is no point.

First, when I look at Magico, I see a series of design compromises. Building a sealed cabinet speaker is not magic, it's a trade off. In sealing the cabinet, you DECREASE the speakers efficiency by a lot.

Second, I would like to better understand Magico's use of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is a very strong material (and looks great), but it's also very light and in speaker design you need strength and mass (weight). But I don't think this use of Carbon Fiber is exclusive in their designs.

Third, the use of diamond in a tweeter is not efficient because diamond weighs 5 times more than beryllium. And more weight, once again, leads to inefficiencies.

Why is efficiency important? For dynamics. Life like dynamics.

There are a lot of very innovative companies and designing a speaker is all about compromises. Magico doesn't have any secret sauce, they have a philosophy and that philosophy differs from MBL, Wilson, Sonus Faber and many other great, innovative companies, but it's not better - it's just a different approach.



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Mike said:
LVB - if you want to have a calm, rational discussion about speaker design than I'm all for it. But, if you're simply going to believe the marketing BS, than there is no point.

First, when I look at Magico, I see a series of design compromises. Building a sealed cabinet speaker is not magic, it's a trade off. In sealing the cabinet, you DECREASE the speakers efficiency by a lot.

Second, I would like to better understand Magico's use of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is a very strong material (and looks great), but it's also very light and in speaker design you need strength and mass (weight). But I don't think this use of Carbon Fiber is exclusive in their designs.

Third, the use of diamond in a tweeter is not efficient because diamond weighs 5 times more than beryllium. And more weight, once again, leads to inefficiencies.

Why is efficiency important? For dynamics. Life like dynamics.

There are a lot of very innovative companies and designing a speaker is all about compromises. Magico doesn't have any secret sauce, they have a philosophy and that philosophy differs from MBL, Wilson, Sonus Faber and many other great, innovative companies, but it's not better - it's just a different approach.

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Ok, I will give it a try.
A lot was written about the pros and cons of sealed vs, ported. The bottom line is that all things equal, the tradeoff of a sealed design can be mitigated (bigger amp for efficiency).
The trade off of a ported design cannot be mitigated (higher group delay, port noise, linearity). If all is equal, a sealed design will extend lower, will be more linear and most important, will have less group delay, but it will be less efficient (get a bigger amp).
Not sure what Magico is doing with CF on the enclosure, but if it is similar to what WB are doing, it is indeed a good way to build an enclosure. It is not just CF, it is a sandwich design that is extremely stiff, and well damped. CF skin, on some sort of high density foam. The Airbus A380 is built like that.

According to Magico, it is 5 micron diamond deposit on beryllium so weight is not an issue. It is not a pure diamond tweeter which will be very heavy.

I did not claim that Magico has the secret sauce, and I will not argue their sound merits, people like what they like (look at the different reports from Axpona on the same speakers - go figure). But when it comes to technology I think that they are ahead of the curve, surely not trailing anyone I know.
 
Mike said:
First, when I look at Magico, I see a series of design compromises. Building a sealed cabinet speaker is not magic, it's a trade off. In sealing the cabinet, you DECREASE the speakers efficiency by a lot.

Second, I would like to better understand Magico's use of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is a very strong material (and looks great), but it's also very light and in speaker design you need strength and mass (weight). But I don't think this use of Carbon Fiber is exclusive in their designs.

Third, the use of diamond in a tweeter is not efficient because diamond weighs 5 times more than beryllium. And more weight, once again, leads to inefficiencies.

Why is efficiency important? For dynamics. Life like dynamics.
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I would quality vs efficiency any day of the week. You can easily increase the efficiency by doubling the bass driver count (which is exactly what magico is doing). On the other hand, there is little you can do to improve the bass quality in bass reflex design.

As for the diamond, I'm not sure you understand how a dimond coated berilium tweeter is built. It is, well - diamond coated, and the diamond coat is only a few µm thick. I'm not sure you can even acurately measure how much weight it ads - probably in the 0,001g range. On top of that, you can more than offset the diamond weight by making the underlying diaphram lighter - as diamond coating makes it stronger, you may use thinner berilum diaphram to achieve same stiffness.
 
Edgar Villchur is the man who invented sealed speaker enclosures using the acoustic suspension method. AR brought their first sealed speaker to market in 1956 so this is a very old technology. The ironic thing is the acoustic suspension speaker was designed as a way to get deeper bass from a smaller enclosure compared to ported speakers. Now we have giant sealed enclosures.
 
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