What is your experience with Magico A3 or A5 speakers and the company as a whole?

Why? Oh why? Let’s see, 130k for a pair of speakers (Alexx V), but, he will buy a 100 dollar driver from scanspeak and pop it in there. I suppose it’s worth a 130k to you still, but, not to me...

It costs a lot of money to do all the R&D, tooling, process refinement, etc for driver fab. It could make the price justifiable with some ’high end’ manufacturers. 

Kudos to Magico/Alon, Rockport, etc...at the least, they make their own drivers (whether ya like the sound or not is a different story).

For example, you can catch a glimpse of what all goes in to driver fab at Pioneer/TAD. It’s a lot more involved than buying a 50 dollar driver from peerless, throwing it in a box and come with a price tag of 130k (oh, so deserving!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe7jgXK-cbQ

On the same note, i own a company that designs --> full production chain of precision electronics for the aerospace/defense/etc industry. I would wager the non-engineers and guys who’ve never owned a business in life would never understand how things really work...or when they’ve been had....

But, i’m sure the sales guys and paid forum pied pipers will start with their trash statements (like the guy a few comments above) if someone simply said he doesn’t like a speaker and a brand’s ethos and/or foolery. Apparently, i’m  not supposed to dislike some mind numbing box he owns.

If you have the courage, get on facebook...all holes barred truth that’s useful to genuine hifi enthusiasts (and not the paid pawns working for the brands) may only show up on that platform.

P.S. I could buy anything "high end" n all....and throw it down the drain if i felt like it....no standing ovation from me because some guy said his brand is "high end" or something... standing ovations for a price tag is something the clueless peons do.

@devinplombier wrote

Wilson is not worth a discussion...its for guys who heard brand name Wilson gave them some high end street cred or whatever...

Clearly. 

To add to that...they don’t make their drivers in-house, a.k.a instant disqualification from discussion...

Why? 

@deep_333 

I don't disagree with the gist of your post, but nothing in it proves that proprietary drivers necessarily outperform those from specialized brands like Accuton or Morel who do this all day.

Chances are, a large part of developing proprietary drivers is the manufacturer's desire to control the supply chain.

As an owner, everything else being equal, I would rather my speakers were equipped with off the shelf drivers; the odds of finding a drop-in replacement 20 years down the road are that much higher.

Speaker design is more about the enclosure than the drivers anyway. As an example, the acclaimed Kii Three ($15K) rock basic Peerless woofer and midrange (the latter you can get off Digikey for $14) and SEAS tweeters. But the enclosure and DSP are extraordinarily evolved.

We were on our way to listen to a Magico speaker but stopped along the way to hear the Yamaha NS-5000. Bought the Yamaha’s. 

I auditioned the A3 with ML gear, very good electronics. I had some issue with the coherence of the sound from the A3. I felt like the bass was not nicely integrated with the rest of the sound. Not really a big deal but not perfect.

I then went to demo the NS5000, and that demo was the worst in my life because the room was a nightmare. However, I listened to the speakers like headphones and came way, thinking this maybe a lot better. As I was driving home with fatigued and burning ears, I kept thinking this could be a great speaker. I eventually bought it and my intuition was correct.

BTW - the drivers on the Yamaha are likely the most advanced, better than Beryllium. Same specs as Beryllium but without the negatives. The 12-inch woofer is made of the same material as the tweeter and mid-range. Ultimate in coherence.

Clearly Deep_133 suffers from Wilson Derangement Syndrome.