Magico S5 vs KEF Blade 2 vs TAD Evo One vs YG Kipod II Sig w/pwr bass

@fsmithjack in my experience the secret to Magicos is inserting tubes somewhere in the system. With your Parasound and Pass I worry it will sound sterile as Magicos too often do when shown with big SS amps at shows. If you are inclined to adding a tube pre it may work very well. I match my Q3s with big VTL amps and an ARC 40th pre and often get comments along the lines of “these don’t sound like Magicos”. Btw. Magicos, esp Qs, love gobs of power but your 350.5s should be well up to the job

Thanks and I totally agree. I actually put a stop to the SS JC2 pre. One of the guys responded to me earlier saying a similar thing and I totally agree so I nixed the SS pre. 

He recommends the real warm Cary SLP-98 which is nice device or a CJ ET3. I have always been a fan of certain brands for certain things. I love Nelson's warm and transparent SS amps and been a fan of BAT preamps.

Been thinking my Pass Labs X350.5 might match up nice with the reasonably used priced BAT VK50SE which seems to go for around $3k used. I say this pre because I know it is a pretty dynamic and neutral pre for tubes but it's tubes. Think that might be a good match for the money?
Thanks 

As a dealer selling Blades as well as lots of other great gear, this post goes out to many of you who dis the Blades.

We did the 2012 New York Audio Show with the Blades in a system with Chord Reference electronics and an Esoteric D02 dac. This was an expensive system with $30k amps a $20k preamp a $22k Dac etc.
Total system cost around $100k

I went down the hall to listen to the GTT room, YG Sonja $107k Solution amps mono blocks $80 or $120k a pair, Solution preamp $40k Solution Phono stage $40k digital was also very very expensive figured the room was around $400k.

The reality of this demo was his system was good it wasn’t better then ours for 4 times the price, Blades were $32k vs YG Sonja $107k pretty steep difference.

The issue comes down to Audio Snobbery the concept that the dedicated tiny company always builds better products than the big guys it isnt true.

If you ever read the Kef Blade technical guide which details the lengths that the Kef engineers went to reduce or eliminate distortion and advanced driver research it would boggle your mind how many unique technologies that their engineers concocted in terms of desiging and implementing the Blades.

The Kef engineers also spent around $3 million dollars on this project. Wilson in their entirty has never spent $3 million on anything, nor does Rockport, YG, or Magico. They can’t these companies yearly sales are probably less than $10 million a year companies the size of Kef are around $100-300 million a year in global sales.

I have never liked Magico always too dry, never musical. TAD reminds me of Rahido impressive resolution but not musical enough, and a tad too bright.

So the idea that a Kef or a Paradigm can’t build a speaker system which can compete with the best in the world is bunk.

A properly setup pair of Blades can easily do battle with a pair of Wilson Maxx 3 and a pair of their $110k replacement.

Only one English reviewer had the balls to say that.

The American press is too cowed by the advertising dollar to call out this fact.

The sound in our room was awesome, deep tight room shaking bass, a huge three dimensional sound stage, and remarkably clarity.

As per the gentleman who was proposing a set of YG Carmels or Magico S1 get your acoustics straight.

The mans room seems small at 12 * 23 but when you factor in the Cathedral ceiling at 16 feet you are basically doubling the amount of air the speakers have to move, so acoustically in the bass the room appears quite large.

You guys are also missing the point that the Kef Blades behave as a point source radiator and works extremely well when and if you are sitting close to the speaker. The Blades sound like a gigantic mini monitor.

They have the pin point imaging of a tiny speaker with gigantic sound stage and thrilling deep and tight bass and there dynamics are ridiculous, crank up a pair with 300-400 watts and they just get loud without strain, or distortion.

Dave owner
Audio Doctor NJ

One thing to consider....I think running the Bricasti directly into your 350.5 is going to be superior to the level of pre-amp you are looking at.  Bricasti volume control is very, very good.  Consider putting your pre-amp money on the speakers for now.  

Sit tight a little while on the Magico MK II price....go take a nap and there will be MK III.

One other speaker to consider since you mentioned Revel would be the Salon 2.  Buying used, you're getting a whole lot for your money plus it would have excellent synergy with Pass and Bricasti.

I was thinking of writing exactly what tDimler wrote above. With your DAC I do not see the need for a preamp (at least in the short term).

I was going to suggest the Revel  Salon2  since you mentioned the Studio2 above. I had the Revel Salon 1 in a large room for many years. I enjoyed the heck out of back then, it had the best bass. The Studio2 is maybe too small for your room. However, I find that the KEF LS50 ($1.5k sort of similar on top to Blades) has better top end than my old Revel Salon1 ($20k speaker). The used prices on the Revels are pretty good. You can enjoy something like that until the next iteration of the Magico's come out and drop the price of the MKII's.

BTW - A speaker I really want to hear is the Yamaha NS 5000. It is supposedly the only speaker in the world that is using the same material for all 3 drivers. Check out what Doug Schneider said about them from the Tokyo show. He made a passing comparison about them and the Magico's. Yamaha is another big company that can put money into research.