Magico S1

Recently I was in the market for new speakers. I auditioned the S1 and was very puzzled by what I heard. First, I tried them with an E.A.R. tube amp and found the sound very dark and hollow with vague imaging. It was disappointing to the point where I believe something was seriously wrong. Next I heard them with a Spectral solid state amp and it was just the opposite--very bright sounding, almost too bright for my taste. Based on this experience, I would guess the speakers are extremely sensitive to the driving electronics.

I have not yet heard the S1, but I have seen it at my local dealer. It is a lovely looking speaker. The salesman told me that it sounds very much like the much more expensive Q1 for a lot less money. I own the Magico Mini2, a now discontinued Magico two-way.

If the S1 sounds completely different with completely different amplifiers, I would suspect that it is a very transparent speaker, adding little of its own signature to the sound.

These are small enough that a home audition should be very possible.

I would like to see where the bass starts rolling off on these. While 13k is cheap for a Magico it is still a good chunk of money and there are a lot of good speakers out.

I can't see them loading a room with deep powerful bass that is needed for a lot of music. That 7" driver would have to travel pretty far and settle pretty quick to make it happen.


Anyway, I am not a Debbie downer on Magico and would love to hear them too. Maybe they will make an S3 that will fill the void between the S1 and S5 (out of my budget).

With 2 7" drivers?

Raj,

Yeah something like that I guess. Their "budget" line consists of a speaker made for a large room S5 with two 10"drivers and a small speaker S1 made for much smaller rooms. Seems like there is a hole in the middle. Maybe and updated V2/V3 build to the "S" line specification will fill that void.