Magico A3 vs. Joseph Audio Perspective vs. Spendor D9

freesole,
I agree about the way the Magico speakers "disappear" as sound sources.  Very impressive.
FWIW, the Joseph Perspectives also have that quality.

@freesole

You’ll find detailed descriptions from my auditions of the Magico A3 and Joseph Audio Perspectives in my thread here (along with many other
speakers):

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/contemplating-devore-speakers-and-others-long-audition-report...

Yes, the JA speakers are notable for their "disappearing/soundstaging/imaging." It’s one of the things people remark on over and over when you see show reports, and it’s certainly the case - images just do that "floating as if no speaker is there" thing really well. And they sound much larger than they are (they are quite small floor standing speakers).

As for the bass, the JA speakers are surprisingly big, rich and punchy in the bass. They aren’t spec’d as low as the Magicos, but you don’t feel you are missing much. I actually love the bass quality of the Perspectives - it has this beautiful tone and texture to it, and they are fun speakers in terms of giving that "punch" to the sound. That said, they CAN sound a bit "porty" without careful set up or the right amp (that is, just a bit more puffiness in the lower bass). Then again, I didn’t find the bass of the Magico A3 impressed me too much with it’s tightness in the audition I had. It went low, but it didn’t really "groove" for me, like the Joseph speakers or the Devores. But, that’s just one guy’s audition of the Magico A3 (though I really put them through the wringer with tons of music).

Again, the main feature to my ears with the JA speakers is a lack of grain - they sound, as Fremer said in his review of the Pulsars - "unmechanical" in a way few other speakers sound. The purity of voices comes through, and instrumental timbre, like few other speakers I’ve experienced. They are a fascinating combination of "warmth" in the mids/lowermids/bass and "speed, transparency." Everything I hear on them makes me just want to keep listening.





As for the Spendors, I’m really not in a position to say much at all. I only remember hearing some jazz where the sax sounded alarmingly clear, present and natural. And some R&B where I noted the drums had nice punch, guitars very clear and crisp, and an overall very low sense of coloration. They just seemed more together, neutral and more "real" sounding in many ways that much of the other set ups at the same show didn’t quite match. As I have had plenty of listening time (though years ago) with the older classic Spendor models (and I own Spendor LS 3/5s) I was a bit surprised by the Spendors. They definitely sounded like a more modern take on the Spendor sound - the older sound being a bit more soft and comfy, the new sound being more forward with a more vivid sound and "alive" with transients (picking guitar, drums, etc).

FWIW....

I auditioned the Magico A3s,  have listened to the Perspectives numerous times including in my home, and have only heard the Spendors at an audio show (where they frankly shocked me how good they sounded).

They are certainly different sounding speakers.  Perhaps the Spendors sound more like the Magicos than the Joseph speakers.

The Magicos give a heck of a lot for the money. Probably the most "detailed/transparent" sounding, and almost full range! 


The Joseph speakers, for me, are about a magical tone - even more free of grain, more pure sounding overall, than the Magicos.  If you like that special thing the JA speakers do well, it's hard to forget it, and I much prefer the Perspectives over the Magicos.  The Perspectives have excellent, deep, quick bass for their size and do sound punchy.   But I'd be wary about driving them with a lower powered tube amp.  Though the impedance etc does supposedly make them tube amp friendly, I think they need some juice to make them get up and go.   Though in the crazy world of amps/speakers, it could be that your amp would work.

Sounds like maybe the Magicos are your ticket, though, especially since you heard and liked them.

LOL, again sciencecop? This didn’t go terribly well for you last time you tried hanging on to an indefensible claim against evidence to the contrary, concerning specific speakers with which you apparently had no experience. (Remember your trying to help defend that ludicrous claim that Harbeth’s only produced "50% resolution"?)

(I'm editing this because I just saw that sciencecop has said he DID hear the JA speakers.  Which I'm glad to hear...even though I admit to being a bit skeptical about his claims).



It turns out those WITH EXPERIENCE listening to the JA speakers can report back what they actually sound like, and your hypothesis that they won’t sound clean remains unvalidated. Subjective testing for the AUDIBLE nature of the design - User and Reviewer reports - provide evidence against your claim.


I’ve heard them. Your speculation about their sound is wrong.


That goes for John Atkinson who, I’m betting has vastly more experience than you do in having extensive listening time with many different speaker designs, measuring them, and correlating measurements to their audible effects. He listened to them, measured them, and DID NOT hear the problems you claim. Rather, his subjective report supports my, and many other people’s, experience with the JA speakers sound.

In Stereophile, Atkinson pointed out that any cone break up modes were "well suppressed" by the crossover. He also wrote in the measurement section:

"The Perspective’s cumulative spectral-decay plot (fig.9) is superbly clean, with the first breakup mode of the woofers’ cones, indicated by the cursor position, well suppressed. "

When he wrote of the sound his descriptions included: (with the first amp) "very clean and articulate," (He emphasized VERY).

Also:

"The Joseph speakers’ midrange clarity and lack of coloration, along with their well-controlled dispersion, was very sympathetic to recordings of the human voice."

And this is echoed over and over in reviews (and show reports) of the Joseph Audio sound as particularly "quiet/clean." Anyone who has heard both the Perspectives and the JA Pulsars knows they have the same essential "house sound" with the Perspectives adding more base.But that JA achieves a midrange purity is a theme one finds over and over again by people WHO HAVE SPENT TIME listening to the brand.


As Steven Stone wrote in his JA Pulsar review in The Absolute Sound:

The first thing I noticed about the Pulsars was their midrange purity and lack of grain.

And:

Of all the Pulsar’s sonic attributes, the one that impressed me the most was the high level of discernability. What I mean by discernability is, how easy is it to listen into the mix and pick out exactly what parts you want to concentrate on? The higher the level of discernability, the easier it is to do this. The Pulsars made it easy to recognize the essential banjoness of a banjo on Paul Curreri’s “Once Up Upon a Rooftop” [California Tin Angel Records]. Even when a harmonica is added to the mix, it’s easy to tell where the banjo stops and the harmonica starts.

Michael Fremer wrote of the Pulsars:

"the picture was clear and clean from top to bottom of the audioband, producing a highly resolved, three-dimensional, pinpoint placement of images against a velvet-black backdrop."

And:

"The Pulsar’s high-frequency performance was sweet yet fast and airy, and minus even the slightest hint of edge, etch, or glare. In fact, the Pulsar was among the least mechanical-sounding speakers I’ve ever heard, regardless of price"

Herb Reichert of Stereophile also commented on these particular aspects of the JA sound.

As did the review in Soundstage.

And user and show reports declare over and over impressions of a clean, clear, timbrally convincing and gorgeous midrange from the JA Pulsar and Perspective speakers.


Now, either you recognize that people who have actually heard the design report they are clean and clear, or it seems you’ll have to resort to something like "Well, then, all those listeners had crappy hearing or perception!" Aside from being a mere bald assertion without evidence, that would be an obvious attempt at hanging on to a hypothesis (that X had subjectively detrimental effects) in SPITE of evidence to the contrary (where many discerning listeners did not find this problem audible, and no one has in fact reported otherwise).


And that wouldn’t be terribly reasonable, much less scientific, right?

sciencecop,

Best not to characterize a previous conversation that anyone here can look up. Remember, anyone can click that link and see how that conversation went ;-)

It’s funny you came in to the thread claiming I "keep feeding the forum misleading information" when, in that last thread, I was the one arguing against someone making a clearly misleading claim that the Harbeth SuperHL5 Plus are "low resolution" and only giving 50% resolution.And YOU were the one entering to SUPPORT that guy’s ludicrous claim. (And clearly failing to do so, given the evidence presented against it). And of course you could not point to one iota of actual misinformation in what I’d written.

or twist my words - did I say that JA sounds "awful"?

Uh...you wrote:

but I can definitely tell that a gross breakup at 5K will SOUND AWFUL. Of course I heard JA speakers, and sure enough, it is EXTREMELY AUDIBLE.

(my emphasis)

So... you heard in the JA speakers a break up that SOUNDED AWFUL, was "extremely audible," but it’s unreasonable that I infered that you found the JA sound "awful?"


Should I have inferred from the fact that upon hearing a speaker with an EXTREMELY AUDIBLE artifact that SOUNDED AWFUL...that you actually thought they sounded good, not awful?

I’ll let others decide if I have been "twisting" your words.

As for "misinformation," I had simply been describing my subjective impression of the JA sound - of being clean and clear - and noting that the speakers produce that subjective impression among a great many listeners, including experienced listeners.

YOU are the one who came in and implied that "nasty break up" discredits the subjective evaluations. And yet, virtually all the subjective evaluations one can find...including people adding more comments here...point to the opposite conclusion: that the measured artifact you point do DOES NOT produce a grainy sound, and in fact the speakers sound subjectively clean and clear to most listeners.

If you have a hypothesis that "X" artifact sound grainy or obviously awful....and there is plenty of subjective evaluations pointing to the opposite conclusion, then you need to (if you are at all fair-minded or rational), dial back your claim to fit reality. If that artifact DOES NOT produce the impression of grain or sound "awful" to most listeners, your emphasis of that artifact is OVERBLOWN in terms of it’s audibility to most people.
MOST listeners (if not all I’ve ever seen but you), find the JA sound clean and clear, and THAT tells us more about the audible significance of your claim, as it relates to most listeners, than you are willing to admit.

And I'm sorry, but not knowing anything at all about your experience, I'll take people like JA's information over yours in terms of correlating objective measurements with his subjective reports.  (And, no, lame conspiracy-think won't due to simply dismiss JA as credible; he very often DOES correlate objective artifacts in explaining what he heard in a speaker, as he does in the Perspectives review, both good and bad).

This is not your high-school debate team.
I will just caution people to take your advice with a grain of salt. They are mainly a fiction of your imagination.

Those hollow jabs couldn’t stick the first few times you tried it. I suggest you try induction: learn from experience. ;-)

freesole,

I'm just offering insight on the JA Perspectives mostly because it's hard to find people with much experience listening to them aside from hearing them at shows.  And since you (and others) have heard the Magicos, I don't think giving my own long impression here would be add much.


I don't own the Perspectives. I was taken by them when I auditioned them over a year ago and wondered if they might replace my big Thiel 3.7 speakers, so I had a couple day home audition. They blew me away, but so did my Thiels. I decided I couldn't give up the Thiels and instead I'd just add the Perspectives to my "collection." Saved up for a long time for the Perspectives. Once I just about had enough I figured I'd survey the speaker landscape of other choices to make sure I'd be making the right choice on the Perspectives. Hence my long speaker audition thread.

But that also had me re-auditioning the Perspectives again to compare with all those other speakers. So I have a lot of "audition time" with them. (I don't own them simply because a financial requirement arose suddenly that made my purchase impossible for the time being).

Anyway....

As for lower powered tube amps, I've heard them sound excellent on 100W tubed Mcintosh amps.  People raved about the Perspectives in a recent show, powered by the Doshi tube amps, 65W.

I never got around to testing them on my older Eico HF81 tube integrated (14 side), only on my CJ tube amps, 140W.

As for warmth in the sound:  the JA speakers have a "warmth" in the mids/lower mids/upper bass but it's not necessarily in the sense of "big, round, lush."   It's not that kind of emphasized lower mids warmth, or the Big Fat Midrange sound you get with many wider-baffle speakers like Harbeth, or especially Devore "O" series speakers.   The Devore speakers, for example, give the midrange Big Fat Weighty sound.

The JA speakers sound more linear, and do have something of that "narrow profile speaker" sound, so bigger speakers will present a sax that sounds bigger.  But they nonetheless have a richness right were it needs to be in the warmth area, and a particularly "human timbre" richness where male voices have that richness you want, and female voices sound particularly superb.


The main difference in character I think you'll find in essentially neutral speakers like the Magico, Spendor and Joseph are, to my ears, that smoothness inherent in the Joseph speakers, the lack of grain.  This allows them to have extended highs, crisp transients, like you might expect (to use cliche) from metal drivers (even though they use a soft dome tweeter).  Cymbals sound really "metallic" and with great individual character, rather than bursts of white noise.  But the lack of grain to the sound makes it unfatiguing to listen.  (In fact, the lack of grain/hash can sometimes lead the JA speakers to sort of sound a bit "darker" than some other speakers, even though they are pretty linear and extended through the high frequencies.  Though they can of course sound too bright in the wrong situation too).  It's a subtle difference, but if it grabs you, it grabs you, and it's why I preferred the JA speakers even over the Magicos.

When I listened to the Magico speakers, I heard tons of detail and sonic information, that really made instruments sound individual and holographically rendered.  But they just didn't do for me what I get as soon as I play anything through the JA speakers.  There's almost a hair-raising-on-the-arms sensation of "wow, that is what a piano, a voice etc" actually sounds like!   It's not so much "sonic detail that allows me to differentiate everything" in a sort of intellectual way, but more like the fact that different materials, metal cymbals, horns, wood instruments,  steel strings, gut strings actually SOUND like they are made of those materials, and less like a homogenized timbre.  


I'm a bit of a tonal/timbre nut, so that's why the JA speakers really grab me. 


But...we all tend to focus on different things, and in that way "hear" differently when we are shopping for speakers.  So you could feel different than I do in comparing the three brands.  (Though, I would say, that my own impressions of the JA sound line up with what seems like a constant theme from users and show reports - usually the remarks center on their timbral precision, soundstaging, and dynamics).

Though, again, even though the Perspectives punch well above their small size, I would think if you want an even more authoritative sound, in terms of frequency extension and presentation, the Magicos would likely do that more.  (And maybe the Spendor 9s, though I haven't heard them in a while).





 

@soix

You might want to take a gander at this thread to see get a taste of the way sciencecop argues, won't back down from an obviously rash claim, and ignores contrary evidence:

https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/best-loudspeakers-for-rich-timbre?page=4

That should put his claims here in to "Perspective."

;-)

So sciencecop claims the JA speakers sounded "awful" and not clean. 


Virtually every other discerning listener has found the opposite.

Including Atkinson who I'm sure is far more experienced measuring speakers/correlating them to audible artifacts.

That suggests sciencop's claims should be treated as the anomoly they are.

And, sciencecop, if in fact your own claims are pitted against opposing subjective reports great many more experienced listeners, it *could be* that you are a particularly discerning golden ear.  But even IF you are a Golden Ear anomoly,  the fact that the overwhelming majority of sonic reports on the speakers do not report the "problem" to be audible and that they perceive very clean sound, suggests that your claim is highly exaggerated.  If we are talking about the audibility of an artifact, sorry, we don't just take a sample of "one," that is, you.  It appears the artifacts are not nearly as audible as you claim.

@freesole

I do find the Perspectives to be somewhat polarizing though which is funny. People who enjoy the Perspective’s, love them. Those that do not feel strongly against them as they did not perform the way that they expected them to. Very little middle ground.

That’s interesting to hear.

Like many of us here, I go all OCD when researching a speaker I’m very interested in buying. For the last year I’ve scoured the web for show reports, user reports, forum comments, reviews etc on the JA speakers, especially the Perspective, and I have a huge number of bookmarked links to these.

From what I’ve seen, the remarks have been pretty much universally positive on the Perspectives (with the exception of one person in a forum who remarked that they sounded incredible in the store, but had a harder time dialing them in for the same sound at home.)

I’m curious where you are seeing the hate for the Perspectives?

otinkyad

I auditioned lower tier revel.  3 Models, I think.  The Performa3 F208 twice.  The first time at one store the Performa3 F208 did not impress at all.  Second store (might have been the next model up, but it might have been the Revel Performa3 F208 again), was a much better audition where they sounded rich, even, full, accurate.  I don't remember any fatiguing nature at all in the second audition.


I only heard the Salon 2 very briefly at a show and it was very impressive, some big band and some jazz vocal crooner stuff that sounded very large and vivid, but I didn't have time to see if they had an "it" factor for me.

So, sorry, no experience with the models you mentioned.

@skyscraper

The concept of warmth is lost on me. I’ve been many live performances and concerts and none of them had any sound I’d describe or understand as being warm, so I don’t understand what that means in terms of sound reproduction.

That's fascinating.

For me, "warmth" is one of the central characteristics of live acoustic instruments and voices.  It's what is generally lacking in reproduced sound.

I'll try to explain what I mean.

For me there sort of two notions of warmth.  There's a richness in terms of a filled out, round tone, vs a thin, squeezed, hard tone.  And there is warmth in the sense of timbre.  Woody resonances sound 'warm.'  The resonating body of my acoustic guitar is "warm."  One of the things that a speaker has to do is make materials sound like the materials they are, so wood sounds like wood, not like some electronic or plastic recreation.

Human voices are "warm" because they are come from human flesh vs plastic or metal.   But in many sound systems, singers sound to me as if made of non-human timbre - there is an electronic, artificial timbre, not "real human flesh and blood warmth."

There's also warmth in terms of harmonic complexity.

I was streaming an internet radio station devoted to acoustic guitar pieces through my iMac 5K computer yesterday.  The iMac speakers are suprisingly decent given what the design enforces on them.  But though one could identify all the types of guitars being played - acoustic steel string there, classical here, 12 string there - none actually sounded as guitar sound timbrally.  All were blanched of tonal character, stripped of complexity, like little plastic toy guitars.

I picked up my own acoustic guitar and played along.  The difference in sonic richness was really something.  A single string played in my real guitar sound richer and more complex than an entire guitar through my iMac speakers.   Even a steel string had a feeling of "warmth" compared to the crappy reproduction, insofar as it sounded of such a rainbow of tone, so round.   When I play my real guitar, my mind sees warm colors of wood, golden string harmonics mixed with silver.  Most guitar recordings played through speaker systems sound detailed, but tonally grayed out.  (As was the case when I listened to some super transparent, pricey speakers at a pal's place recently).

So "warmth" to me is that organic, real richness, harmonic complexity - the real person vs robot thing.

Finally, going back to the first version of warmth:  the size of the sound.I find a common aspect of reproduced sound to be a diminution of the richness and size of an instrument.  Everything sounds squeezed, stripped, compressed.  If you hear a real sax played in front of you, or trombone or trumpet, it stunning how the sound is so BIG and blooms and fills the room.   By comparison, most recorded instruments sound like you are watching them from the event horizon of a black hole, as they are being squeezed tiny.   A single acoustic guitar string pluck, a single bowed string on a violin or cello, is so much thicker, has so much more body and roundness, than in most reproduced sound.

And that's a sense of warmth that I like as well.  (Warmth being in that case a sense of feeling the sound, of the instrument moving air).

So some rare speakers for me manage to convey the sparkling harmonics and woody body of an acoustic guitar similar to what I hear in real life.  Some portray a particularly rich, physical sense of body (e.g. Devore "O" series speakers being a nice example).

Given warmth is such a feature of real sound to me, it's something I've strived for my system to display, or impart.  I have some Thiel 2.7 speakers (if anyone things all Thiels are bright, or thin, these would dispel that in a moment), and I've used Conrad Johnson Premier 12 tube amps for decades, as they impart an organic richness and roundness to the speakers. And of course paying attention to speaker positioning and room acoustics has helped me avoid artifacts I find artificial, and dial in that timbral warmth.


When I was at my friend's house listening to some super clear and detailed speakers he has at the moment (will leave them unnamed for now), I was unmoved as NOTHING sounded organic and warm.  I'd compare the sound of the vocalist on the recording to the real voices of people speaking in the room, and the difference was stark:  even 'natural jazz vocal recordings' sounded electronic, processed, steely around the edges, hard, made of the wrong stuff, compared to the wet, damped, fleshy timbre of real speaking voices.

But...at home when I replayed some of the same vocal tracks, as well as some of the same trumpet, sax pieces, THERE was that organic warmth I was missing at my friend's place!  Big, rich, round, not hard, with the right tonal color, not dark, not bright...just naturally warm.   I compared it to my wife's voice as she spoke and, unlike the other system, the sound from the speakers was beautifully continuous with the sound of a real voice.  It sounded warm and organic.  It was tremendously satisfying.

Sorry for blabbing on, but this whole "warmth" and "tone" thing is something I'm a bit obsessed with, so there ya go.

BTW, as I must have mentioned, I auditioned the Magico A3s.At least in my audition, they didn't quite do that warmth thing I crave.Though they were stupendous in many respects - that clarity and resolution, without brightness, and a super sophistication in rendering the distinctive details between instruments.   I wondered what I'd think of them if I put them on my CJ amps, and tweaked them at home.