Magico M9

Mike Lavigne

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Apr 25, 2010
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..................though I can't help but wonder why they didn't figure out a way to have the binding posts down near the floor. I'm thinking, run a hidden umbilical accessible via a removable panel on the back of the mid/tweet module.

knowing Magico and their unabashed proclivity for expensive accessory baubles, i'm sure they have a game plan for that. opportunity knocks......and....
 
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cannata

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Jan 30, 2014
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I find the driver placement choices very interesting. With a cost-no-object design, and now that Alon is placing larger drivers above the midrange driver and the tweeter, he must have considered a full D'Appolito configuration (e.g., Rockport Arrakis, VSA Ultra 11) or at least an M-T-M configuration (e.g., Rockport Lyra, YG Sonja) but affirmatively rejected it. I wonder why?

"Above 600 Hz, there must only be one driver per bandpass. While two drivers can boost efficiency, using two or more drivers degrades coherency and muddies the imaging. Discontinuities in the polar responses due to the physical separation of the drivers will result in phase differences leading to destructive interference in the driver’s passband at various angles"

https://www.magicoaudio.com/news/magico-news-for-fall-2019

Read "Why We Do the Things We Do"
 

dan31

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Jul 22, 2010
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I’m interested in how the M9 gets amplified. 2 stereo CH M1.1’s would be interesting as the amps have some adjustments to fine tune. Not sure if the active crossover makes the amplifiers less or more determinate in the final sound. 4 monos. Imagine 4 Dartzeel 468’s or 4 Soulution monos. We could play a virtual game of different setups.

I’m more interested in how these are received when they start being used in private systems.
 

Folsom

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Oct 25, 2015
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Their engineering is always really cool, but as usual I fail to see how it’s going to translate to amazing sound.
 
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thomask

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Dec 9, 2018
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Place pre order before they run out of stock.

Even my house in rural area fetch more than 1 M$.

II I sell my house and buy this one, I will have enough cash to buy condo for elderly.

Can I play this small guy in condo?

Is there any elderly discount for M9?
 
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bonzo75

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Feb 26, 2014
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The announcement is already successful given that people think this is possibly a great sounding speaker, and it will do wonders for the models lower down the hierarchy, because soon someone will come up with a statement that the technology and learnings from the M9 (which almost no one will properly get to hear) have been trickled down to the 75000 dollar model
 
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cannata

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If I am not mistaken, some of the technologies are actually trickling-up here, isn't the A5 got the AHC diaphragms already?
 
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marty

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Apr 20, 2010
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I can't help but wonder why they didn't figure out a way to have the binding posts down near the floor. I'm thinking, run a hidden umbilical accessible via a removeable panel on the back of the mid/tweet module.

One of the first impressions I had as well! No better way to turn beautiful into ugly. But perhaps they did it becasue it appears to be a sectional stackable design?
 
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marty

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The announcement is already successful given that people think this is possibly a great sounding speaker

Totally agree. In the pharma industry, we call that "marketing"!! And they're damn good at it.

...it will do wonders for the models lower down the hierarchy, because soon someone will come up with a statement that the technology and learnings from the M9 (which almost no one will properly get to hear) have been trickled down to the 75000 dollar model

Personally, I would never buy those speakers. I will wait for the inevitable 1.5M M11 and then see if they trickle that technology down to the 750K M9 v2.
 

spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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Maybe before Lloyd picks up THAT pair of used Rockport Arrakis?
 
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spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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So, four customers walk into a dealership with four rooms, all of which have an identical maxxed out uber SS amp setups, maybe big DAgostinos, CH Precision, Gryphon, Boulder, Audionet, Dartzeel.

And in each room is Wilson Chronosonic/Master Subsonic, big YG four-tower w those 21" subs, Rockport Arrakis w REL stacks...and these Magicos M9 w their big subs.

Are those listeners gonna come out w totally different listening experiences and impressions and preferences? Or are the sessions gonna blur, w more similarities than differences?

And if so, what types of listeners are gonna prefer what uber spkrs?
 

bonzo75

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Feb 26, 2014
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Is this the equivalent of 4 audiophiles walk into a bar.
 

montesquieu

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Jan 27, 2019
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So, four customers walk into a dealership with four rooms, all of which have an identical maxxed out uber SS amp setups, maybe big DAgostinos, CH Precision, Gryphon, Boulder, Audionet, Dartzeel.

And in each room is Wilson Chronosonic/Master Subsonic, big YG four-tower w those 21" subs, Rockport Arrakis w REL stacks...and these Magicos M9 w their big subs.

Are those listeners gonna come out w totally different listening experiences and impressions and preferences? Or are the sessions gonna blur, w more similarities than differences?

And if so, what types of listeners are gonna prefer what uber spkrs?

Sounds like a walk around Munich Hi-End.

The result of which is nearly always a bit of smugness about what you have back home. :)
 

spiritofmusic

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Jun 13, 2013
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Is this the equivalent of 4 audiophiles walk into a bar.
Yep, get pissed, and one then tells his wife when he gets home that he's bought a pair.
 

thomask

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Dec 9, 2018
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I had bought the ticket to Axpona 2020 but the cancelled ticket will be good for 2021 event.

Thus if I go ahead with Axpona 2021, then i will have a chance to listen to this speaker.

But it is unlikely that sincere audiophile will buy this speaker since they know well enough how hard it is to optimize this kind of monster speaker.

It will be more likely that some billionaire buy one to brag about it.

We will see the pair of speaker with price tag of 1M$ pretty soon.

Then it will be easier to brag about it.


Recently I had spent 4K$ on Nos 6sn7 tubes for shootout.

It was kind of wine tasting.

Now I had settled at Russion tubes called 1578 Melz and 6h9s which cost just 300$.

But after tube rolling, my system sounds much more dynamic with clean details, wider and deeper soundstage.

Thus it is unlikely that I will change my speaker in the near future.


If I upgrade my speaker, then I will go to Vintage Western horn system which cost around 300K$ (modest price tag compared with M9).

I shall have bought one Vintage western horn about 13 years ago when I have 1M$ of cash.
;)

But I had spent the 1M$ on stocks and lost half of the money 3 years later on Lehman crash.
 
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Lagonda

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Feb 3, 2014
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This speaker does have the shape as if YG had sex with Magico
Or a Magico that sat around and ate to much crap in Corona isolation, that thing is bottom heavy ;)
 

Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
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Ime one of the tradeoffs between MTM and TM (or in this case, MT) configurations is the two slightly different arrival times from the midrange drivers in the MTM configuration, if the listener is not at the correct height. Ime this can result in a slight loss of clarity relative to the TM or MT configurations.

As for the tweeter being below the 6" midrange, which in turn is below the dual 11" lower midrange drivers, imo that makes a lot of sense from a psychoacoustic standpoint. The ear tends to mistake high frequency sounds as coming from a greater height than they actually do, and tends to mistake lower frequency sounds as coming from lower than they actually do. If I recall correctly, the ear is pretty good at judging the height of sound sources from maybe 1.5 kHz to maybe 4 or 5 kHz. (Also the ear's ability to even get an impression of the height of a sound source diminishes rapidly at bass frequencies.)

So the ear is likely to "mistake" the highs as from coming from a little bit higher up than they really do, i.e. like about at the height of the midrange cone, and likely to mistake the lows (most of which presumably come from the twin 11" cones) as coming from a bit lower than they actually do... i.e. perhaps about the height of the midrange cone. My guess is that M9 sounds unusually coherent . . .

Fair enough. I am not familiar with the height perception differences.

But I feel empirically that doubling the driver surface in the all-important midrange is critical to increasing transparency resolution and overall realism.

When I compared the YG Haley 2 to the Sonja I felt the biggest sonic improvement with the Sonja -- accruing, I believe, from the doubling of the midrange driver surface area -- was greater transparency, resolution and overall realism.

With a cost-no-object speaker, and a size-no-object design brief, I just have in my head that I want more midrange driver surface area. With giant dynamic driver speakers I just don't like the idea that such a small part of the real estate of the speaker is being used to squirt out so much of the all-important middle frequency range.
 
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Ron Resnick

Site Co-Owner, Administrator
Jan 24, 2015
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"Above 600 Hz, there must only be one driver per bandpass. While two drivers can boost efficiency, using two or more drivers degrades coherency and muddies the imaging. Discontinuities in the polar responses due to the physical separation of the drivers will result in phase differences leading to destructive interference in the driver’s passband at various angles"

https://www.magicoaudio.com/news/magico-news-for-fall-2019

Read "Why We Do the Things We Do"

Very interesting. But is there no sonic benefit, in your opinion, to increasing the driver surface area reproducing the middle frequency range?
 
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