Esoteric MG-10 Loudspeaker (TAS 203)

The audiophile vernacular can be frustratingly limited. Although it’s useful and even necessary—especially from this side of the keyboard—as a means to describe the sound of components as we hear them, as it is with wine tasting notes our lexicon remains cliché-prone and lacking when it comes to describing what something as complex as our senses actually experience.

This inescapable reality hit me hard as I was jotting down note after note about Esoteric’s outstanding loudspeaker, the two-way, stand-mounted, superbly crafted, all magnesium driver MG-10 ($2800, plus $1800 for dedicated stands.)

Rather curiously, the challenge is not because the MG-10 is difficult to “get” and describe—in fact it is one of the most immediately excellent speakers I’ve encountered—but because to describe the MG-10 while doing it justice requires more than the usual litany of terms. As Samuel Beckett wrote, “I can’t go on, I’ll go on.”

My colleague Dick Olsher did a fine job nailing what Esoteric accomplished with the MG-10’s larger sibling, the $8200 MG-20, when he wrote in Issue 177, “I have to respect a speaker that does not impose its personality on the music.”

My few happy months with the MG-10 have confirmed that Olsher was right about these Esoteric designs, which are the first loudspeakers from Teac’s high-end division, and also said to be the first loudspeakers to employ all magnesium drivers. This speaker does impart little of itself on the music played through it. It is, I believe, as neutral as anything I’ve heard, a speaker that really does channel all that comes before it. That said, no speaker is entirely neutral. So what exactly does the MG-10 sound like?

In some ways, like no other speaker system I’ve heard. It’s very pure but in no way sterile. It’s fast, but not obviously so, as in, “Wow, that’s one fast speaker,” but rather in a way that equals high-resolution and transparency to the source while offering insights into both a recording’s quality and the musical performance. Searching for an analogy my mind leapt to thoughts of white Burgundy, wines, which, at their best combine the almost spiritual with the hedonistic, wines of intense purity and precision, yet also wines of generosity.

The MG-10’s attributes no doubt begin with those magnesium drive units. And while they possess the qualities noted above, these super-low-mass drivers also manage not to possess the unnatural-sounding metallic overtones that have left many of us wary of other metal-driver designs. In the MG-10 the driver complement comprises a 6.5** low-frequency unit that, at 1.9kHz, crosses over to a mere half-inch-diameter dome tweeter (the floorstanding MG-20 also uses a pair of LF drivers).

Driver development and manufacturing is the result of a three-way partnership between Esoteric, which might be called the visionary behind the project, Britain’s Tannoy, which plays a large part in both the design and manufacturing processes at its Scottish facility, and Japan’s Nippon Kinzoku, the metal-manufacturing firm that helped create the drivers, and which developed the thin proprietary coatings, one of which is ceramic, that aid in damping resonance (the woofer also uses a corrugated cone to aid in resonance control).

I’ve gone on record before as a major fan of two-way designs, and while the MG-10 has the sort of top-to-bottom coherence one expects from a fine two-way, there seems little doubt that it’s truly exceptional seamless, in large part because its drivers are cut, if you will, from the same cloth (see what I mean about hard-to-avoid clichés?).

Reference Recordings’ latest, Britten Orchestra (reviewed in Issue 201), is an excellent disc for a speaker review due to its very extended frequency range. From the shimmering opening strains of “Dawn,” from Four Sea Interludes, to the earthquake-like rumbles of the percussion, and the throaty brass of the “Storm” passage, the MG-10 delivered the music with a rare tonal as well as dynamic uniformity. Indeed, this degree of coherence is something more akin to what I’m used to hearing from planar speakers such as Quads, the quasi-ribbon models from Magnepan, or my recently departed long-term reference, the premium-priced Kharma Mini Exquisite, than from most other dynamic-driver box design. Reaching back to that wine analogy, think of the MG-10 as delivering purity, precision, and generosity.

It must be said that achieving such a neutral yet expressive voice also requires a fine crossover network. Without divulging much, Esoteric’s information sheet boasts of “ultra-high-grade components,” such as “ICW ‘ClarityCAP’ film capacitors”—whatever they are—for HF network and “large and low-loss laminated silicone and steel core inductors.” I suppose it goes without saying that a company that put so much effort into developing such outstanding drivers has wired them to excellent crossover components. But perhaps the most telling bit of information Esoteric reveals is that the crossover is hard-wired by hand (no printed circuit boards) with silver-coated van den Hul connecting cables. Rear-panel connections allow for bi-wiring, and also feature an unusual fifth binding post for grounding the speaker, which is said to an effective aid against RF (I confess that I never used, or needed to use it).