Magico Q1 Loudspeakers (Hi-Fi+ 89)
June 19th, 2012 -- by Alan Sircom
Source: HiFi+
Source: HiFi+
The Magico Q1 is a standmount loudspeaker with an integrated stand (which is bolted to a recess in the underside of the speaker) and is shipped as standard with this mounted in place. It’s a two-way sealed box that sits on a single column pedestal. And that is inevitibly going to be twisted into “it’s not a real standmount” by rivals. Because “it’s not a real standmount” is going to be the excuse that will issue from those trying to justify their place in a post-Q1 loudspeaker world.
Their styling is bold... and none more black. The Q1s stand tall for a pair of floorstanders (the 25mm Beryllium dome tweeter is above ear height for most sofa-dwellers) and the squared off corners and thick black aluminium plates make the Q1s look like small monoliths from 2001 – A Space Odyssey. I left some Ligeti playing overnight to give them some running in and by the time I came down next day, my cats had started using primitive hand tools. Three days later, they were building a space station.
Joking aside, the Q1 are an uncompromising styling exercise for the home. Deliberately so; they make the big, bold physical statement because audio makes a big statement in its own right through these speakers. Music is an unapologetically stirring experience through these speakers and we need more things this uncompromisingly good and exciting if we are ever to reach out to a new audience.
Although you’ll never get to see inside the box (it’s a sealed box design, and they do mean sealed), it’s like a little city under the hood. The cabinet bolts to a complex cross-braced aluminium skeleton, with additional mounting plates at the front and rear of the cabinet, for the drivers and the crossover respectively. These massy plates also add stiffness to an already unfeasibly stiff cabinet. There’s constrained layer damping inside instead of anything soft and sticky, fluffy or foamy, because the cabinet is so thick and dense and non-resonant that a spot of BAF wadding or long-haired wool wouldn’t make a shred of difference to performance. This does.
The drive units could be seen as a sign of just how seriously Magico takes the whole process of speaker making. The 25mm beryllium dome tweeter and 177mm NeoTech (carbon fibre meets Rohacell sandwich) mid-bass unit have been seen before in the Q5. Except they haven’t; in the intervening time between the first and subsequent Q models, Magico has been performing a series of improvements to both drive units. Not significant enough to warrant Q5 owners returning their speakers for a new set of drivers, but specific improvements to the Q1 driver set to make the speaker all the more correct. But in a way, you can see the dedication that goes into the Q1 in every aspect of the speaker, even down to the little spike wrench the company supplies with the speaker.
The reason for the stand being an integral part of the design becomes clear if you scratch the surface (good luck with that by the way; you might want to try a diamond cutter, because that’s probably the only way you’ll get under that black coat). The stand is directly coupled to the speaker by being bolted to it. That acts as an effective damping mechanism, in precisely the opposite way most stand-mounts at the high-end tend to work; Magico feels the normal way of minimizing resonance in standmounts (adding mass to the stand and decoupling the loudspeaker) is fundamentally flawed.
The result of all this development was a long time coming. A two-way sealed standmount like this, with its single-wired crossover and slightly curved front baffle, shouldn’t have taken long to engineer, given the whole Magico way of things (everything, right down to the aluminium factory, is in house or made to order). But, given the whole Magico way of doing things (no retreat, no surrender, no compromise), it actually took a surprising amount of work bringing these speakers to market. There is a lot of computer modeling, prototyping, measuring, listening, re-working and going back to the computer CAD/CAM pen tablet type thing (it was so much simpler when it was ‘back to the drawing board’).
The result is a speaker of powerful appearance. It’s a simple, timeless design in the same way a Le Coubusier chair is timeless. Functional to the point of utility, engineered at a premium for those who have no knowledge of the meaning of the word ‘over-engineered’, well proportioned no-quarter stuff. It’s the kind of loudspeaker that you want to know how to field-strip it in less than 30 seconds flat with your eyes closed. It’s all very Y-chromosome stuff; like flight-recorder boxes, boxing stats and Tonka toys.
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Comments
This is ridiculous. I don't get why you are shilling for such an expensive two way box speaker. Mark Davis showed us many years ago that there are two main characteristics of a speaker that are audible, the frequency response and the radiation pattern. Beyond that there is no magic. I don't see how these little speakers could have the freq response of some much larger ones, and the radiation pattern is certainly no breakthrough with two drivers on the front and nothing anywhere else. What is your purpose in promoting this nonsense?
Gary Eickmeier
I have always found it puzzling how any intelligent audiophile can be so opinionated - and so preposterously damning - without ever having heard the product. I heard the Q1s. Then I bought them. The reviewer is quite accurate in his assessment. What these speakers are capable of accomplishing cannot be believed without being heard. Magico has always been able to accomplish astonishing things with their products and this may be the most astonishing accomplishment yet. They sound more like live music than any speaker I have ever heard, and they sound way different than any speaker I have ever heard. They have significantly altered my listening experience.
I hear you @Trazom. May I ask if you also need to hook-up mega buck electronics for these pups? What is the rest of your system to give a better perspective of the synergy context of your listening experience. Congratulations on your F1 purchase btw.
I first heard the speakers with an LFD NCSE integrated, 70w/channel, and they sounded lovely. However I'm using them with an ASR Emitter integrated, I think its about 150w per side. I can't give you a definitive answer on power but my strong hunch is that these speakers probably need at least 100/w a side to achieve their full potential. And to answer your question more directly, I don't think these speakers are all that fussy about what drives them. The transducers at either end of a good system are always the most important element in the sound quality and the Q1s will probably sound better than any other speaker will sound driven by the same equipment. But what the hell do I know? :)
I visited the home of an elderly audiophile several years back who had a glorious marble mansion on the sea, with a nice imposing pair of B&W Matrix 800 speakers, who'se gold-dome tweeters were poked in by visiting kids. What a travesty! :) Couldn't listen.
Two lines in this Q series review gave me pause for reflection:
"It’s the kind of loudspeaker that you want to know how to field-strip it in less than 30 seconds flat with your eyes closed."
"Magico has been performing a series of improvements to both drive units... Not significant enough to warrant Q5 owners returning their speakers for a new set of drivers..."
And then it dawns on me - it's relatively improbably to replace the drivers!
Reading the intiial blurb, I thought more that it was written by a Magico PR rep than a audio review (Alon Sircom), based on the language and the discussion of the development process. Indeed, it seemed it was written to counter a point of value, rather than actually review a loudspeaker on how it functions in the reviewers system and home. It reminded me of marketing from the pre-bubble pop of the .com world, somehow: pushing a "product" via false-comparisons. Design wise, it reminds me of a kitchen hot plate, as I'm just coming from cooking, for context.
I'm imagining this in a system comprised of a WiFi Source PC/Mac, Devaliet D-Premier, and the Magico Q1 speakers - please, let's ignore cable. And wishing the Stax 009 headphones would also hook up to the said D-Premier, directly. :D
Just as a gun is disassembleable in the field, so too shouldn't a loudspeaker? To use the writers chromosome analogy, shouldn't: "Hi Fi be like Lego?"
Give the Q1 (and Q series) some field replaceable drivers, as part of the design: "all in all, it's just another brick in the wall."
Staxguy
No, the drivers shouldn't be difficult to replace. The box is bolted shut, not welded shut, and the replacement would likely involve taking the back off, and accessing the driver through the aluminium skeleton. As someone who once had to repair a set of Linn Kan loudspeakers (where the 'Linn tight' glued-in bolts and the use of glue around the basket, thereby needing to almost break the cabinet to remove the drivers), the Q1 doesn't look like a problem. It will probably be a dealer call-out, because of the cost of those custom drivers, but I can't see it being complex speaker surgery.
Yes, I did spend much of the introduction attempting to position the Q1 in its price point, simply because there seems to be much hostility toward all things Magico in the high-end community.
Alan Sircom
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus Magazine
London, England
editor [at] hifiplus [dot] com
Sorry, but there just isn't anything "magico" that you can do with drivers in a box to make them sound that much better than any other two way box speaker. All speakers sound the way they do because of their frequency response and radiation pattern. I see nothing special about these speakers to warrant the price. They will remain safe in the magazine world because of their stratospheric price, because few will get to hear them and even fewer to own them.
Gary Eickmeier
Gary, I'm no engineer, not even close, but as far as I know, the magic in Magico doesn't come from the drivers they use or the radiation pattern or frequency response. It has most to do with the rigidity of their cabinets. Everything after that has to do with very careful design and selection of components, including drivers, crossovers, etc. But the rigidity of the enclosures enables the drivers to more closely perform as designed without having some of their pistonic behavior altered by resonances from the cabinet.
In any event, I'm sure you'd have to agree that unless you hear them you really aren't in a position to judge how successfully or poorly they perform. Manufacturing such things is really still an art, and measurements of frequency response and radiation pattern will never tell you how a speaker mates with an ear. Otherwise all speakers with the same frequency response and radiation pattern would sound exactly the same, and as far as I am aware, they don't. Its probably true as you say, you can't see anything about the Q1s to justify their price. But if you listened, perhaps you might hear something that justifies their price. BTW, I owned the Magico Mini IIs before I bought these. They were considerably more expensive than the Q1s and a wonderful speaker but the Q1s are clearly superior. So its not just atmospheric pricing here. This is a product that is considerably less expensive yet considerably better than the model it replaces.
Gary,
The lower point of frequency response of this loudspeaker is (I would say conservatively) listed at -3dB at 32Hz. I got a lot lower in room, but let's stick with the conservative measure. From a stand-mounted two-way loudspeaker perspective, I don't know of another similar design that can realistically deliver as much low frequency energy as the Q1. I'd be happy to recommend a stand-mounted two-way loudspeaker that can accurately reach down to 32Hz at -3dB. I'd be doubly happy to recommend the same at a more affordable level, because if it were more affordable, it might even be affordable for me. So, given that you see nothing special about achieving 32Hz from a two-way stand-mount loudspeaker, I wonder if you would be so kind as to recommend me a loudspeaker that achieves or betters this target.
The radiation pattern of the loudspeaker is similarly difficult to achieve in other stand-mount designs. Although the comparatively narrow front baffle inherent to a stand-mount bestows good dispersion characteristics, the limits to this are lobing effects between the treble and bass units. These effects can be countered by increasing the stiffness and shape of the front baffle and increasing the mass of the cabinet. But unfortunately, the practical constraint is the cost of shipping so high a mass design, and making such a design suitably 'dead', mitigate against the practical development of a design at what might be considered 'real world' levels. There are practical alternatives that achieve most of the dispersion characteristics of the Q1 in a stand-mount, but most would fall into 'good enough for government work' next to what the Q1 can achieve.
I don't subscribe to Mark Davis' reductionist view of loudspeaker design. Frequency response and dispersion are fundamental parameters in a loudspeaker's performance, but to set them as the only important parameters misses out on a wealth of aspects of a loudspeaker performance (phase, time alignment, distortion, coloration, etc, etc). Nevertheless, if you do subscribe to this kind of restricted-access view of what makes a loudspeaker, then the Q1 should be more - rather than less - in line with your rationale.
We should all support such devices because if someone makes even a small increase in performance for a large increase in price over the current best of breed, hopefully that someone (or someone else) will learn from that to do the same for less. This is precisely what has happened with the KEF Blade, the development of which has been instrumental in the R-Series and LS50 designs.
Alan Sircom
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus Magazine
London, England
editor [at] hifiplus [dot] com
Alan,
I am sorry to burst your bubble and I realize that your line of work requires you to keep the magic alive, but I am not speculating here. What Mark Davis has said is true, and he did the experiments to prove it. In an article "What's Really Important in Loudspeaker Performance" in Stereo Review, June 1978, he worked with Al Foster and a 30 band equalizer to make some AR-7s sound like the much more expensive AR LST. Other experiments were done as well, and in every case if you make the freq response and radiation patterns match, they sound identical. Acoustic power output is also important, but we assume speakers in this class can go loud without compressing or distorting. Your comment about "phase, time alignment, distortion" being important - I'm sorry, but all of those are inaudible.
Audiophile mythology is important in selling magazines and expensive components, but I say you owe it to your readers to listen to these speakers blind in comparison with a few much less expensive two way boxes and see if they stand out when you don't know the price.
As for my boldness in condemning the speaker without having heard them, I am relying on over 30 years of doing comparison listening and noting the designs to the extent that I can tell what something will sound like by looking at the speaker and the room situation. For example, you may agree that omnidirectional speakers sound more spacious and with greater depth, if pulled out from the walls and not too much absorption around them. Box speakers such as the Magicos sound more restricted, with the sound field gravitating more toward the boxes themselves and not doing the disappearing act as well.
For this kind of money, the burden should be on Magico to prove their superiority and on you to do some more elaborate, scientific testing against some really high-rep speakers, including perhaps MBL and Magneplanar.
Gary Eickmeier
You say you can tell what something will sound like by looking at the loudspeaker and the room situation. OK then, let's imagine a music lover living in Mayfair, London, or Manhattan's Upper East Side. In their $5m apartment they have allocated a dedicated listening room for their passion. The room, however, is 11'x14'x9', the front and left-hand wall made of brick, the rear and right-hand walls being of stud partition design. The floor is wooden, but still reasonably solid, despite a couple of creaking floorboards. They have an open-ended budget in making a system that works and are prepared to incorporate room treatment and correct chair positioning, but they want something both elegant and capable of delivering realistic bass.
Sorry, but moving to a bigger room turns a $5m apartment into a $10m apartment, and a $20m divorce, because the family loves the $5m apartment. MBLs? Sure... if you like listening in mono, with the speaker two foot in front of you. Maggies? You need to plant the listening chair in the next apartment, and the same would apply to many floor standers (especially models like Thiel - that require a far longer room for the correct placement of loudspeaker and listener relative to one another - or larger Wilsons or Avalons - that need more 'breathing space' than an 11' wide room could provide). Suddenly the options open to the Manhattan home owner become a great deal smaller. Which is perhaps kinda why on the first paragraph of the last page of this review I talk about the Big City Audiophile.
You say this should be set in context with other two-way boxes. I agree. In fact, another test in the same published issue (but not yet put up on this site) compares this loudspeaker with the PMC Twenty.21. You seem to think that tonal characteristics of loudspeakers are irrelevant, but frequency response is not. OK, then, the Q1 has almost 20Hz in the bass on the Twenty.21. Understandable, given the large price differential (in the UK, the price differential makes the Q1 about 20x more expensive than the Twenty.21). The Wilson Benesch Vertex brings the price differential lower (to only about 5.5x, in UK prices) and the Q1 has just over 10Hz in the bass on the Vertex. And it seems, the nearer you get to full-range reproduction from a two-way stand-mount, the money required to achieve each successive note deeper increases logarithmically in cost. It's been a long time since I reviewed the Wilson Audio Duette, for example, but I remember it's bottom end being nearer the Q1 than the Vertex, and it costs roughly 3x that of the Wilson Benesch design.
I am not convinced you can artificially tweak these responses using EQ, because you are coming up against some pretty steep roll-offs. To get the Twenty.21 to recreate around -3dB at 32Hz for example, you would be looking at something in the region of possibly as much as +20dB of boost. If it was at all possible; I'd imagine you'd exceed the f0 of the bass driver, which pretty much puts a lower limit on the ability to EQ a deeper sounding loudspeaker. So, under one of the prime parameters laid down by Davis and echoed by you... I don't see why this loudspeaker should be a concern. If you want sub-40Hz out of a stand-mount box (and not a stand mount box the size of a Harbeth Monitor 40.1 or larger), your options are limited even if you used EQ.
Yes, it's expensive. Unfortunately it seems getting those last few left hand piano notes out of a speaker this size is an expensive exercise.
-
For the record, I am not particularly happy with producing comparisons across prices, but not for the reasons you might expect. Having performed such tests for years on a rival title in the UK, the results tend not to be read as 'the one I can afford only gives up a little bit of bass... I'll take it!', but more 'the one I can afford lacks bass... I'll pass'. The audio market, it seems, is the only one where someone would feel justified for not buying a Mazda MX-5 because the Bugatti Veyron is better.
Alan Sircom
Editor, Hi-Fi Plus Magazine
London, England
editor [at] hifiplus [dot] com
Competition in high-end loudspeakers is fierce. Thus, it is quite understandable when a fairly new player that makes the kind of "waves" that Magico has to be met with hostile fire the moment it takes off. When so-called experts start demanding scientific proof that's when you know the competition is worried. I don't consider myself an expert. Just some happy-go-lucky guy content at knowing the audio world is flat until a fateful experience at an engineer-friend's house who happened to know otherwise changed all that. That was 24 years ago and I've been in and out of this high-end no-end quest ever since.
When a reviewer raves about a high-end loudspeaker I usually yawn (no discredit to Mr Alan's exceptional writing skills) but when an intelligent and credible owner such as @Trazom shares his own experience with the product including its predecessor whether it is positive or not, I sit up and listen. What he hears is what he hears, science may or may not be able to explain it, so what if science can't explain it? Should the owner care? Should it matter? Mr Alan eloquently put it when he said the Q1 "doesn’t try to bend the rules of physics. Instead, it shows us just how much more we can get out of the physics if we try really hard." For a so-called man of science to even say that phase, time-alignment, and distortion are inaudible is incredibly dumb.
May I just add that apart from dispersion being a beneficiary of added mass, let us not forget that another problem of stand-mount speakers that the Q1 has been able solve is resonant frequency. How did it lower Fs to the point of inaudibility? That is why its dedicated stands is bolted to the Q1s. In coupling/integrating the heavy stand to the cabinet it effectively lowered system Fs where it became irrelevant.
Congratulations to all Magico owners and kudos to Magico engineers. Now, about mortgaging the house honey...
On the bass response: buy some less expensive satellites and get a subwoofer.
On the "For a so-called man of science to even say that phase, time-alignment, and distortion are inaudible is incredibly dumb," that is a well-known part of audio engineering knowledge. To not know that would be incredibly dumb.
On the problems of the small apartment acoustics, there is no loudspeaker solution to the small room problem. It will sound like a small room no matter what you put in it, and playing music recorded in a larger room will not and cannot make it sound like the larger room. Casting more sound directly toward the listener will accomplish nothing but collapsing the sound field to the area between the speakers.
In the general case, you can analyze the sound field by making an image model drawing of the horizontal speaker/room geometry, visualizing the size and spacial characteristics of the result. If the speakers are more directional, the reflected "image" speakers will have no high frequency content, and the field will collapse down toward the speaker boxes. If they are more omni, and there is less absorption on the walls around them, the total soundstage will expand outward and in depth, and the speakers may even disappear. The larger the room and therefore the image model, the larger the soundstage and more like the real thing. I suggest you learn to correlate all of these factors with what you hear in various speaker designs, and you will be able to tell a lot about speaker sound just by studying the radiation pattern, speaker positioning, and room acoustics. I call these "The Big Three" of speaker setup.
There - no more mysteries, and no claiming that exotic drivers or rigid boxes account for the effects we hear in loudspeakers - assuming, of course, that a competent design will have decent frequency response and no resonances and can play loud.
If the designers had placed some of those dome tweeters on each of the other faces of the boxes, and possibly designed-in a more sophisticated radiation pattern, there would be some genuine "Magico" in the design and they might merit the price. But I doubt they would be smart enough to do that.
Gary Eickmeier
Are you really serious? You are really saying that phase, time-alignment and distortion are inaudible? If yes then you best be on your way.
The only reason I don't say that I don't want to be beating a dead horse here is that I apparently do. Criticizing the performance and price of a loudspeaker solely from a review of its measurable parameters is like writing a restaurant review after reading the list of the food's ingredients. No one could possibly take such criticism seriously. I'll just repeat what I said before. After I listened to the Q1s, I bought them. They sound phenomenal, they enable my beloved chamber music to come alive in a way no other speaker ever has, and to me they were worth the money. They sound way different and far more articulate and life like than anything else I've ever heard in my more than forty years of listening to and owning lots of stuff. I use them in a small room dedicated to listening and they suit my needs and satisfy my desires damn near perfectly. The speakers are worth it to me and I'm lucky enough to be able to afford them. When it comes to evaluating such things, isn't that all that matters?
"The speakers are worth it to me and I'm lucky enough to be able to afford them." That sentence says it all: enjoy!
Congratulations on the Q1 Trazom. I'm particularly interested because you used to own the Mini II. I own them now and am curious about the actual differences between the Q1 and the Mini II. Most reviews simply say that the Q1 is much better and more extended in the bass. I have not had a chance to hear the Q1 and probably will not be able to audition it in my actual system for a direct comparison, so I'm hopeful you could more fully explain the differences between the speakers in your system. Could you also describe your room and the rest of your system? Thanks.
Peter, sure. Yes, there is a difference in bass performance but it isn't critical to me. I listen mostly to classical music and of that mostly chamber music. Deep powerful bass isn't as critical for that kind of listening as it is for rock or pop or other kinds of music. Nonetheless the bass performance of the Q1s seem to defy all we knew about the bass performance of small two way speakers. The bass sounds, how can i describe it, more honest than in the Mini IIs, but not as robust. Perhaps that means the Minis had a boost in that parameter or simply that the Minis were moving more air with their larger drivers. I only know what my ears tell me and they tell me the bass performance of the Q1s is extraordinary and pleasing. The biggest difference between the Minis and the Q1s though is in the way the sound is presented. Have you ever heard an electrostat or a single driver speaker? They have a seamless, cohesive, smooth sound that more traditional speakers don't usually have. Those kinds of speakers have never satisfied me though because they lack weight, authority, in the presentation. Electrostatic speakers always have sounded thin to me, smooth, but not realistic. The Q1s have this seamless, cohesive sound but also have the ooomph of a traditional multi-driver system. The sound from the Q1s is really different from other speakers in a way that is difficult to describe. I keep coming back to "articulate," "cohesive" and "clean." They make other speakers sound less real. The Mini IIs are fabulous, the Q1s are way better.
I use the Q1s in a small room dedicated to listening. I use a ASR Emitter integrated amp with a Lindemann CD/SACD player. I am a vinyl junkie but don't have a turntable in use at the present time with this system. The speakers are about seven feet apart and slightly toed in with the equipment on a rack between them. My cables are all Crystal Cables, as are the various power cords. Its astonishing to me how much difference in sound quality there is with these Crystal power cords. Can't explain it.
That's pretty much it. I wish I could explain to you all the scientific ways in which these components interact, like others can, but I can't. All I can tell you is that its was a great sounding system with the Minis and is even better with the Q1s.
Thanks Trazom. Your response is very interesting because the way you describe the qualities of the Q1, namely, the "seamless, cohesive, smooth" sound, is exactly the way I would describe my Mini IIs. I would add that they are extremely detailed with accurate timbre and they are quite transparent. They did sound like you describe your old Mini but then I hired Jim Smith (Get Better Sound) to voice my system and recently did a complete upgrade to my front end (SME 30/12, V-12 arm, Air Tight Supreme) and those two changes transformed my Mini to how you describe your Q1. I thought the Q1 mid/woofer is 7" while the Mini is 6", but that may be wrong. I used to listen mostly to chamber because the tone and scale and disappearing act of the Mini were so good. But since Jim Smith's voicing and the new turntable, I listen to full scale classical and more Jazz and pop as the extension and weight improved dramatically. As did the micro dynamics and low level detail.
I am interested in increasing extension, both high and low and lowering cabinet resonances even further, so I plan to listen to the Q1 at some point. I also read that the Q1 can be aimed directly at the listener and not off axis slightly like the Mini. I use Pass XA160.5 for power because the Mini is a difficult load. I did hear them with your ASR at Singer once. Thank you again for your response.
Just wondering whether anyone has compared the Magico Q1 to the Raidho C1.1 in the same system?
See my virtual system at http://www.audioenz.co.nz/forums/showthread.php/11492-Music-from-a-farther-room
My Guess is that when the review of the Magico Q1 appears it will be the best small speaker on the planet and crush the Raidho C1.1. This could be happening next month. Stay tuned.
Sam, do you think that TAS will be reviewing the Q1? I seem to remember that there was basically a reprint of JV's impressions from his AVGuide Blog published in TAS a few months back describing his visit to the Magico listening room to hear the Q1 and Mini II. I think I read that another TAS reviewer will be reporting on the Q3 in an upcoming issue. A direct comparison of the Q1 to the C1.1 would make for a very interesting read.
na
Having listened to the Q1, there is no doubt in my mind that that it is a fine loudspeaker.
JV's review of the Raidho C-1.1 informs us that the resolution of that device betters anything else he has heard, including the Q5.
See my virtual system at http://www.audioenz.co.nz/forums/showthread.php/11492-Music-from-a-farther-room
Ask Geickmei. He can tell you without listening to either one.
Hi, has anyone compared the Q1 with the Martin Logan CLX?
Although very differently composed and sized (loud)speakers, I imagine somehow they would appeal to a similar audience and demographic: mature audiophiles or music lovers, with a taste for finer things in life, and willing to make compromises elsewhere in pursuit of art-like performance.
Can anyone comment who has auditioned both side by side? Or perhaps owns both?
It would be wonderful to fund an audiophile "Library of Congress" to collect relevant examples of top equipment for the basis of review (comparison): frequently reviewers have already passed on their gear by the time a telling comparison is interesting to the public.
Is anyone aware of any private or public audiophile "museums?"
Fabio's basement might qualify to some extent, and it would be wonderful to have a repository for SOTA and/or audiophile landmark gear for future comparision and reflection.
I'm quite interested in the Q1 / ML CLX comparison, as they're simiarly priced, although the Q1 does go more than 20 Hz deeper in the bass register - remarkable!
Cheers.
Staxguy
Based on JV's latest review of the Raidho C1.1, that speaker should also be under consideration. I reads like he even prefers it to the Q1, though I can't tell for sure.
JV can never prefer any speaker over a MAGICO SPEAKER. It's a matter of time before the best speaker in the world ever "MAGICO" beats Raidho and others leaving them behind In dust. When is the next product of the year or golden ear issues coming? Stay tuned. I'm only guessing I wonder what will happen for sure?
Sam, we have the exact sentiments about JV and his Magico proclivity. No discredit whatsoever to Magico's products because I personally feel their price is justified but you have to fit an extremely exclusive profile to buy any of their speakers.