It's been almost 100 years since two General Electric researchers, Rice and Kellogg (no cereal jokes, please), patented the basic design from which sprang all subsequent direct-radiating moving-coil drive-unit designs. While the general electrical,…
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Show a time traveler from the 1920s an iPad and most likely he'd neither know what he was looking at nor what it might do. Show him a loudspeaker, even one as advanced as Magico's new Q5 ($59,950/pair), and he'd probably know exactly what it was and what it did, even if what it's made of might seem to have come from another planet.
Marrying the drivers' surrounds to the smoothly radiused openings machined into the massive baffle and clamping them to the baffle's back give the Q5's face an unusually clean and elegant look. However, with no grille cover, should Junior, Fido, or the housekeeper (never you, of course) poke or slice a driver or its surround, replacing it would be a big job. But according to Wolf, the benefits of having no screws or bolts to inevitably loosen over time far outweigh the hassles of replacing drivers or surrounds, which Magico's dealers are trained to do.
The four-way, sealed-box design…
Listening to the Q5s at ultralow SPLs was as involving and satisfying as when I cranked them up to fifth-row-center levels. And the speaker's microdynamic performance was equally transparent and detailed, even at diminished SPLs. Low-level information did not melt into a gray background. The startling blackness of the backgrounds and the manner in which recorded information launched itself from that blackness reminded me of the first time I heard Continuum Audio Labs' Caliburn turntable.
Well-recorded double bass sounded harmonically and texturally more convincing through the…
Currently on the turntable is Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman's Duets for Two Violins (LP, EMI ASD 3430), from 1978—admittedly after EMI's golden age, but the recording, produced in London's Temple Church, built in the late 12th century, demonstrated the Q5's exceptional tonal and textural purity, and its ability to reveal without overanalyzing. The Temple Church's warm, reverberant acoustic was allowed to bloom behind and around the violins, which don't sound particularly closely miked. Played at realistically moderate levels, the bodies of the instruments didn't get lost in the…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Four-way, sealed-box, floorstanding loudspeaker. Drive-units: 1" (25mm) beryllium-dome tweeter, 6" (152mm) Nano-Tec–cone midrange unit, 9" (228mm) Nano-Tec-cone midbass unit, two 9" Nano-Tec–cone woofers. Frequency response (in-room): 22Hz–50kHz, ±2dB. Sensitivity: 87dB/2.83V/m. Nominal impedance: 4 ohms. Recommended power: 50–1200Wpc.
Dimensions: 47" (1194mm) H by 11.75" (298mm) W by 21" (533mm) D. Weight: 387 lbs (176kg) each.
Finish: Black-anodized aluminum.
Serial Numbers Of Units Reviewed: 00009 & 00010.
Price: $59,950/pair.…
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog Sources: Continuum Audio Labs Caliburn, Cobra, Castellon turntable, tonearm, stand; Graham Engineering Phantom II tonearm; Audiostone Pythagoras turntable, HiFiction Thales AV tonearm; Ortofon A90, Lyra Titan i, Miyajima Premium BE (mono) cartridge.
Digital Sources: Playback Designs MPS-5 SACD/CD player–DAC, Camelot Roundtable Anagram Technologies DAC, Benchmark ADC1 A/D converter, BPT-modified Alesis Masterlink hard-disk recorder, Meridian-Sooloos music server.
Preamplification: Einstein The Tube Mk.II, darTZeel NHB-18NS preamplifiers;…
Sidebar 3: Measurements
I used DRA Labs' MLSSA system and a calibrated DPA 4006 microphone to measure the Magico's impedance and farfield frequency response, and an Earthworks QTC-40 for the nearfield and spatially averaged room responses. The sheer bulk of the Q5—it weighs almost 400 lbs—precluded my being able to place it on my Outline turntable for the acoustic measurements. I therefore performed the quasi-anechoic measurements with the speaker sitting on a dolly in Michael Fremer's driveway (scroll down the page). The inevitable reflection of the speaker's output from the ground…
"Is it live or is it recorded?"
I'm sure that each of us has experienced one of those moments. What, precisely, distinguishes live from recorded sound? It's a complex issue, but I'm pretty sure it has little to do with any of the measurable, quantifiable parameters objectivists obsess over. Fidelity must be a factor, but a lack of fidelity has never stopped any of my audio pals from hearing the difference between live and recorded music over the phone.
I remember one such incident from when I worked at Master Sound Astoria, a recording studio in Queens, New York. I was talking on…
Beethoven: Piano Concertos 1–5
Paul Lewis, piano; Jirí Belohlávek, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Harmonia Mundi 902053.55 (3 CDs). 2010. Martin Sauer, prod.; Philip Knop, eng. DDD. TT: 2:55:42
Performance *****
Sonics *****
Paul Lewis, piano; Jirí Belohlávek, BBC Symphony Orchestra
Harmonia Mundi 902053.55 (3 CDs). 2010. Martin Sauer, prod.; Philip Knop, eng. DDD. TT: 2:55:42
Performance *****
Sonics *****
British pianist Paul Lewis, 38 years old, has already made quite a name for himself in the music of Beethoven: he has recorded all of the sonatas in four sets of discs, and each set has garnered fine reviews and won awards. Here he undertakes the concertos and does himself proud; indeed, these performances are remarkable for clean, insightful playing, a…
Does spending more money on audio equipment get you better sound? Some audiophiles assume that anything that costs more must be better—and that if it's relatively inexpensive, then it can't be any good. Others hold the opposite view: expensive components can't possibly be worth their prices, and those who manufacture them—and audio journalists who report on them—must be charlatans.
My view, which I believe to be held by the majority, is that there is a sizable positive correlation between price and sound quality—by and large, more expensive equipment tends to sound better—but…