Do distortion 's affect enjoyment of speaker?

Bombaywalla, thanks for your comments. I think however you're jumping
conclusions based on one comment Magico made in isolation. Fyi, I
had earlier received this response from Magico - "The S5 are both
time and phase coherent." Maybe not perfectly time coherent, but I
think you're clutching at straws here. If you read any of the many reviews
on the S5's, including Martin Colloms review for Hifi Critic, there is no
suggestion the S5's are anything but the most coherent sounding of
speakers. And my own experience also reflects that. I've heard Avalon
Transcendent which sounds very coherent. I would say no more so
subjectively than S5. In saying that, it is doubtful any box speaker whether
Vandersteen, Avalon or Magico is going to sound quite as overall coherent
as a panel speaker like your Scintillas. Though no loudspeaker is perfect,
and the Scintilla's have their own demons.

@Melbguy1 ... actually, I think Bombaywalla is clutching something more than straws... its gonads. I put the question directly to Magico's US sales folks. Here is their response:

"[T]his really required a response from our CTO, Yair Tamman. See below response to your questions. You will have to excuse his expressions, being that he is from Tel Aviv, some things don't translate easily to English. That said, I've left his response in the raw form.

"'Phase coherence is one of the most discussed issue in our industry.

"I don't disagree with the fact our speaker can't be phase coherent.

"Yet, it was never prove (sic) in controlled listening test as audible (many tried - all didn't achieve the wanted result).

"Yet using high order crossover has proven advantages. Like low distortion, controled (Sic) directivity , drivers linearity and many many more proven advantages

"There is also a very big difference in the drivers you can use.'"

So there you have it. Here's an interesting experiment. Magico speakers corrected with DEQX.

Hopefully, next week, I'll be able to check out the DEQX on my Paradigm S8s.

Melbguy1, there are no step response measurements for the S5 to verify what you are saying. All their other speakers are not time-coherent so it's reasonable to assume to that the S series would not be. But, like you wrote, I could be wrong. Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you on this. Enjoy the speakers...

Bombaywalla, I acknowledge your fair comments. However on the one
hand Magico are telling me the S5's are time coherent, and on the other
you are telling me they are not. One might ask who do you believe? May I
pose this question to you, Is a speaker either time coherent or not? Or can
there be different degrees in between? And are (objective) measurements
more important than (subjective) listening in assessing the overall
coherency of a speaker?

Melbguy1 ... hey man I'm on your side. I think Magicos are industrial art -- not speakers. I think Magico does a heck of a job controlling a lot of speaker design variables that make other speakers mid-fi. But as part of design trade-offs which all designer have to make, Magico elected to use high order x-overs because of the design pluses that it sought to achieve. See Yair Tamman's response above.

But having said all that, and tipping my hat for the Magicos doesn't answer the Q of whether its speakers are time coherent. Phase coherent at the x-overs, .... no doubt. Time coherent. Highly unlikely. Take a look at John Atkinsons's time delay test of the Q5's in Fig. 4 here

http://www.stereophile.com/content/magico-q5-loudspeaker-measurements

Do you see how in the time domain the tweeter leads, followed by the mid drivers, and then the slow poke woofers. What this means is that when the sound output from each driver sums, the wave form MUST be distorted over some portions of the frequency spectrum. Roy Johnson's articles do a good job of explaining why this happens and what it means.

In short ... there is time coherence distortion that results in the summed waved form not being completely true to the electrical signal generated by the amp.

Does it sound bad?? Can we detect it? Very controversial issues. My DEQX audition might provide some enlightenment. And I'll report back.

Does this mean that one shouldn't touch Magicos or Revels or Wilsons. Absolutely NOT!! What it might mean is that some really great speakers just may need a little help.

I'll be back.

Cheers.

BIF

P.S. Just a tongue-in-cheek observation. IMO, Wilsons look like 1970s era Dr. Who Dileks. I'd be compelled to take a sonic screw driver to them. OTOH, better to look like a Dilek than a GMA Praying Mantis. LOL