MAGICO S7
Floorstanding loudspeakers
Consider that you have a lot of money and want to get closer to the real world sound experience - then Magico Q7 is a great option. Your home will become 270kg of aluminum and carbon fibers heavier and your ears will get such a treatment that the live performance will sound uninvolving afterwards. The S7 are the best speakers I have auditioned to date. Period.
Function and form
The 136kg-per-piece heavy Magico S7s would be a demon in any Italian craft speaker maker's dream. Their design is that of a space shuttle.
The all new speaker's cabinet of S7 is assembled from two pieces of aluminum extruded blocks (13mm thick on the body of the speakers) that are both glued and bolted together. The drivers have their dedicated compartments; the midrange unit operates in an isolated enclosure made of a proprietary polymer material to control the back wave pressure.
The S7 has three 25cm bass drivers with aluminum cones that are said to have 15mm linear movement and produce undistorted sound pressure levels up to 120dB @ 50Hz/1m. The use of three drivers, according to Magico, allows for spreading the driver bounce off the floor and provides for a better interaction with the room.The 15cm midrange driver is a new Magico design (a combination of carbon fibre and graphene that is claimed to be 20% lighter and 300% stiffer than any other cone designs). Tweeter dome features a diamond-coated beryllium diaphragm driven by a neodymium magnet assembly. A rather complex crossover is built around the finest Mundorf capacitors. 89dB sensitivity and 4-ohm impedance are the industry standard.
The speaker can be placed on adjustable spikes (protective underlays are a must due to the weight of the system). The speaker terminals does not support bi-wiring. The finish options are either the powder coating or high gloss paint, 6 colours each. The grille is hold magnetically.
Bass management
The Magico S7's bass in neither massive nor athletic. I would call it extremely informative, controlled, preciselly curved. On top of that it only appears when called to action. That is why S7's sound is organised, controlled and - when necessary - also deep. When pressurized air is sent to your body from Magico's woofers it is not unlike a frozen moment in time when everything stops for a while. And when the things start to move again you just swallow and know that this was the bass the Magicos are capable of.
Compared to my Wilson Audio Sasha W/P the Magico S7 were more accurate, cleaner and have richer textures. Sasha W/P gave a better sense of sound's density, on other hand - but this is dependant a lot on listening environment and difficult to judge without having both speakers side to side.
Clarity & delicacy
I do not consider the Magico S7 to be revealing speakers - they are über-revealing. The drivers are like beasts searching for tinniest fragments of sound to send them to the listener. The good thing is that despite this level of resolution there is no feeling that the detail tries to kill you in a listening seat, like with some ribbon tweeters. It is rather as if S7 remove dust from air and equip your ears with better "lenses". Thus it is not about the amount of detail - it is about its quality and availability. In this review set up, where Constellation Audio separates performed better than the integrated amplifier, my reference level has grown several grades up and my resident equipment has started to give me less pleasure than before. It took me few days to enjoy the sound at my home again.
Tonal accuracy
The S7 can handle the ambient cues and harmonic envelopes with aplomb. If it is due to the aluminum cases non-resonant behaviour or perfect time-coherency of all drivers is not clear - probably both contribute to the evel of control that the Magicos exhibit. Very few speakers I have auditioned are able to trace the faintest reflections of a recorded sound. Opus 3 records traditionally feature very rich ambience and with S7's it was possible to follow both direct and reflected sounds on the recordings, one independent of the other.
I missed a bit richer colours and more saturated timbre but then I had to question myself - was it really what I was used to hear in concert halls or just my wish? Perhaps it is a psychoacoustic impression of seeing the brass gleaming and woods glowing in red that we perceive the sound much more colourful than it really is?
Spatial resolution
Those who listen to large loudspeakers often do so because the big cabinets and drivers - unlike compact speakers - can better convey the sense of sale. A minimonitor would never give you the correct proportions of an orchestra; not that the speakers of the Magico S7's size would but they are pretty close. Of course, it depends a lot on the recording. Leonard Cohen remains to be just a head reciting into a microphone, though the head is accurately locked in the soundstage and one can easily track its lip movements. Habanera symphonic fantasia (K2HD sampler) is a different animal - the music expands to sides and into depth and the Magicos build a big soundstage for you.
However, despite that the S7 can recreate the scale of a performance, it is the transparency and the attention to detail which elevates the listening experience from extraordinary to amazing. The speakers are quite sizeable (137 x 39 x 45cm) yet they completely evaporated in the listening room and let the music flow. And this is the holy grail of high end, right?
Recommended resellers
DE: Audio Components GmBH, Hamburg
Manufacturer's website: http://www.magico.net
Associated components
- Source component: Constellation Audio Cygnus Digital Player / DAC
- Amplifiers: Constellation Audio Virgo III preamp, Centaur II Stereo Power Amp, 1.0 Integrated
- Interconnects and speaker cables: Nordost Valhalla V2, Chord Sarum
- Power cords: Shunyata Research
- Power conditioning: Shunyata Research Hydra 6
Gallery
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