CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

They are debuting these speakers @ a local A/V shop next week. I'm going to check them out at the release party and i'll post a report.

JV of Absolute Sound called these... "The Best Sound JV Has Ever Heard at a Trade Show"

The Magico M5 floorstanding loudspeaker was undoubtedly the most anticipated debut at CES 2009 and it didn't disappoint. For those of you familiar with the great MartinLogan CLX its sound is easy to describe and uncanny to hear. If you can imagine a CLX with 20Hz bass, 60kHz treble extension, no large-scale dynamic-range limits, no soundstaging limits, and no lack of body and dimensionality, without any sacrifice of the see-through-to-the-source transparency, utter neutrality, single-driver coherence, standard-settingly low levels of harmonic distortion, lightning transient speed, nonpareil low-level resolution, sheer invisibility as a sound source, and breathtakingly lifeilike realism of the CLX then you have an idea of what the M5 sounds like. I have never heard a dynamic or planar or Radalstrahler speaker come this close to the electrostatic ideal without any audible sacrifice of what cone speakers bring to the table. This is quite simply a new standard in transduction, not just the best loudspeaker at this year's CES, but the best loudspeaker I've ever heard at a trade show and, quite possibly (the Magico M6 maybe excepted), the best loudspeaker any amount of money can buy And as you will see, when I post my show report, this was not a show that lacked for stiff competition. In several floors full of very, very, very good speakers, nothing eclipsed this new Magico, which not only takes its place in my little pantheon of great speakers but pushes out several other long-cherished greats of the past. As of CES 2009, the past is now inalterably past. We are in a new Golden Age of stereo, my friends. Not just hitting the same gong at the top of the post that we've been hitting, off and on, for the past two decades, but hitting a whole new level--a whole new height of stereophonic high fidelity and realism. Certainly the fabulous Soulution electronics played their part in this great Magico demo, as did Magico's own fabulous server and the Pacific Microsonics DAC. But the speakers themselves...you can't hear upstream unless what is downstream is every bit as clear and colorless and high in fidelity as what precedes it. And so the M5s are--to a degree I simply never heard before and didn't dream possible.

http://www.magico.net/?d=03_Products/04_M_5

ecrabb · Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 3:52 pm Post subject:

Wow, those are PURDY!

... and a bargain at only $89,000/pr. I wonder if I could get a good discount if I bought 6 of them... Buy 4 get 2 free, maybe?

SC

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

Well the front baffle and the base are carved out of solid Aircraft grade aluminum, then hard anodized. The body is 15 ply baltic birch laminate... it's pretty well made. Solid and heavy... i just wanna hear how they sound.

Even if i had the cash... its too rich for my blood. Embarassed

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 4:10 pm Post subject:

$89 000 per pair, yeah I'd like to just hear them too then come home to my Paradigms and see how they compare Smile

ecrabb · Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 6:14 pm Post subject:

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

ecrabb · Posted: Fri May 08, 2009 7:30 pm Post subject:

Ehhhhhhx-squeeze me? You don't have a pair of Wilson's, do you? I assume you mean you have a dealer nearby with a pair of both? That's awesome. The most expensive pair of speakers I've seen in Des Moines were a pair of $12,000 Dunlavy's. I'm sure there have been more expensive speakers - those were just the most expensive I've actually seen first-hand. I think they've had some Wilson Puppy's, too.

Thanks for the invite, man! No long trips for me at the moment... But, next time I have to go to DC for work, I'm going to try to schedule it around an east coast get-together so I can meet a few of you guys!

SC

emdawgz1 · Joined: 14 Mar 2006 Posts: 7949

**kal** · Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 2:49 am Post subject:

A good example of the law of diminishing returns. Not saying it's not worth the money (only the buyer can say that) but when you look at the weeks of labour that goes into each pair you start to understand why they cost so much.

And they're not even their most expensive set... Not sure how much their Ultimate II sets go for, but they do say it takes 4+ months of custom welding to make a pair of speakers. That's a lot of work! You're paying at least 10-20K just for part of the labour costs!

Kal