Magico didn’t provide prices for most products, but the company’s Peter Mackay (pictured) estimated the system's cost at over $2 million. Center stage stood the 1000lb Magico M9s ($750,000/pair), powered by D’Agostino Relentless 800 monoblocks ($195,000/pair) for the woofers and Relentless Epic 1600 monoblocks ($349,500/pair) for the mids and highs. The scale of…
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Among the many systems at AXPONA 2025, Magico’s claimed the triple crown: most expensive, most imposing, and most sonically impressive. Entering the hushed, curtained-off, two-story Club Room felt like crossing into sacred space.
I’d heard Lithuania’s Silent Pound speakers paired with New Zealand’s Perreaux amplification at several audio shows in Warsaw. This year at AXPONA, the two companies brought that same transcontinental partnership to Illinois. It was my first encounter with Silent Pound’s flagship Challenger II floorstanders ($32,500–$36,150/pair, depending on finish), and they didn’t disappoint. The system also included Perreaux’s 300iX integrated amplifier ($9995), fronted by an Aurender A15 server/streamer/DAC ($8400). Cabling from Life Audio and Titan Audio, plus a Solid Tech Radius Solo 3 rack, completed…
The Innuos ZENith Next-Gen ($20,700 as equipped) does what streamer-servers do: store music files, read them into memory, and send them on to a D/A converter to make music. In Innuos's complex (yet logical) lineup of streamers and streamer-servers, the ZENith Next-Gen sits just below the flagship Statement and above the ZENith Mk.3 (footnote 1). The ZENith Mk.3 remains in the Innuos lineup for now but will be replaced at AXPONA shortly after this issue hits mailboxes and newsstands.
Though similar in many respects, with a very similar appearance, these two products—the ZENith Next-Gen and…
I have several terabytes of music stored on a Synology NAS. Connecting to my NAS proved trivial—simpler than with Roon. With Roon, you have to get the path exactly right, and every time I enter it, I find I've forgotten how. Sense guides you through the process, helping to locate your NAS. It works.
You can use the ZENith Next-Gen as a standalone device with the Sense app managing your library and playing your music. Or the ZENith can serve as an endpoint—which is to say, as a streamer controlled by another device; you could then use a separate Roon server, for example, while…
Sidebar 1: Maintaining a Music Library
It has long been apparent that for some music consumers—those who lack at least modest proficiency with computers—maintaining a digital music library can be a daunting chore. If your library consists only of paid commercial downloads, you may not have a problem, because usually paid downloads have their metadata well-sorted: They should work fine in any system, with tracks collected together in an album and album art displayed. (If they don't, complain to the download service, though they'll probably blame it on the record label.)
But if,…
Sidebar 2: Specifications
Description: Single-chassis server/streamer with 2TB "pSLC" SSD,1 Intel i7 processor with eight physical cores, 16GB DDR4 "industrial grade" RAM; "NGaN" gallium nitride–regulated power supply. Outputs: 3 USB 3.2 Gen2 capable of PCM up to 32/768, DSD up to DSD 256 by DoP, DSD 512 native. Optional output modules: PhoenixUSB Lite, PhoenixI2S Lite, S/PDIF (plus AES3, TosLink). Two RJ45 (Ethernet) inputs/outputs (one for LAN connection, the other for connection to a streamer or streaming DAC). USB output can also be used to connect a CD ripper, which rips to WAV or…
Sidebar 3: Associated Equipment
Digital sources: CH Precision C10 D/A converter and D1.5 transport; Innuos Statement streamer-server, Roon Nucleus One server.
Preamplification: Line: Pass Laboratories XP-32. Phono: Pass Labs XP-27, Sutherland Big Loco.
Power amplifiers: Pass Laboratories XA60.8 monoblocks.
Loudspeakers: Wilson Audio Specialties Alexx V.
Cables: Digital: AudioQuest Carbon USB; CAD USB; Wireworld Platinum Starlight 8 Ethernet. Interconnect: AudioQuest ThunderBird (XLR and RCA), Nordost Valhalla 2 XLR. Speaker: AudioQuest ThunderBird ZERO. Power: AudioQuest…
It was good to catch up with Eelco Grimm and John-Paul Lizars before sitting down to hear the Grimm Audio LS1c two-way active speaker system with SB1 motion-feedback subwoofer ($38,000–$44,150/pair, depending on finish and tariffs).
In the April issue of Stereophile, Rogier van Bakel praised these actives as among the least boxy speakers he’d had in his listening room. He noted their excellent off-axis response and transparency, and wrote that “there’s not a genre the Grimms couldn’t do justice to with their panache and lack of coloration . . . the whole painting is…
For the past decade or so, I haven't been using a preamplifier. The D/A processors I have been using all have volume controls, so I have been feeding their outputs directly to the power amplifiers. It would seem logical that having nothing in the signal path would have less of a degrading effect than a preamp's input and output sockets, switches, volume control, printed circuit-board traces, and active and passive parts, not to mention an additional pair of interconnects. However, with some of the preamplifiers I have auditioned in my system, there was no doubt that the sound quality improved…
The balance was also a touch warmer, but more significantly, there was an improved sense of what the late Art Dudley used to call "force." For example, on "Vamp Till Ready," the first movement of Sasha Matson's Symphony No.3 for Jazz Orchestra from the album Molto Molto (24/96 WAV file, Stereophile STPH-023), the presentation with the MBL driving the Parasound amplifiers directly was, for want of a better phrase, polite. With the KX-8 in the chain, at the same volume level, the kickdrum and double bass were more effective at driving the music along. Similarly, Christopher O'Riley's…