Has anyone heard the Magico Mini?


I am very curious to hear the Magico Mini. It is getting great press in many areas and I am wandering if anyone has heard them. How do they compare to the Wilson Watt 8's or the Kharma's or the new Sonus Faber Guarneri's etc.
If I am not mistaken, they are priced about the same as the Watt/Pup 8's and more the Guarneri or Kharma 3.2.
128x128daveyf

Showing 4 responses by alexc

I owned the Guarneri's for ~ 5 years, and traded them for Kharma 3.2 CRMs. I also had the opportunity to hear the Magico Mini's for several hours perfectly set up with absolutely top notch cables and electronics in a small room. I do love the G's and was very happy with their sound for a long time. Depending on what you listen to, the G's can be the perfect speaker. They excel at jazz, vocals, chamber music, and so on...but they dont do justice to big bands, symphonic orchestras, and rock. Even using a pair of Tact subwoofers and cutting the G's off at 200 Hz, they could still choke when fed too much "stuff" (Ellington, Basie, Mahler, etc). The Kharma's, with the same associated equipment, seem to be better at imaging/soundstaging than the G's, are great at vocal/acoustic music (though not as seductive/lush as the G's), and they can handle the bigger stuff pretty well. The soundstage on big band and orchestral music is definitely better - wider, taller , deeper , and more realistic than the G's (though aals still nowhere ear close to the real thing!) The Mini's are different from the G's and the Kharmas. To my ears, they do the macro and micro dynamics thing better than either the G's or the K's and are more accurate/linear. I liked the, a lot, but then again they were paired with $ 20 K worth of subwoofers, and 2-3 X times that in cables alone in the system I heard...so hard to say. Based on personal experience, I would pick the Kharma's over the original G's ..and would love to take the Mini's home for a spin in my system to see how they fare vs the Kharma's. I think the Mini's woiud be better IF you have a absolutely the best components/cables feeding them,and a great pair of subs to hand the bottom octave, but the Kharma's might be easier to love in a more "reasonable" system (though they need subs as well)
Daveyf - My room now is 25'5" feet by 18'11". When I bought the G's, it was more like 16'X12' and yes, they sounded wonderful there. The Kharmas, crossed over to a pair of Tact subwoofers anywhere between 75 and 200 Hz can reach impressive SPL's in the new room (the Tact subs have a pair of very quick, large drivers each). Agree the treble can be overdone, especially if the speakers are toed in (Kharma recommends nil toe in). Associated equipment makes a differece as well. I use triode tube amps, and just moved to the Kubala Sosna Emotion speaker cable (I used AQ Dragon SE with the G's, and tried that as well as Valhalla with the Kharmas, but the Kubalas realy helped flesh out the sound)
Stereotaipei - I heard them with a pair of Wilson Benesch Torus. Amps were the Audio Research Ref 210 first, and then the Ref 610. They sounde great with the 210,and awesome with the 610 after they warmed up (took a couple of hours for those to get to peak performance). However...I'd love to listen to them with my Tact W210 subs, which are also extremely fast and a lot less $$ than the Torus...
I heard the Mini's without the Torus subs very briefly..most of the time the Toruis subs were hooked up, so I would not want to comment much on the difference, but I wold imagine that with the right music and in the right room the mini's by themselves would be just fine!