Reviews are an art, and I am not that kind of artist, so please take the following comments with a grain of salt. The demo consisted of the Spectral SDR-4000 Pro CD player, 30SS preamp, 360 S2 monoblocs, MIT wiring, and a music server feeding hi-rez Reference Recordings to a Pacific Microsonics Model 2 HDCD A/D and D/A - vaunted by many (including yours truly) as the best piece of digital gear produced so far (and if you happen to know of a seller, I am looking for one). Unfortunately, no analog, and the demo was for only about 1hr with unfamiliar material, not ideal conditions to form a good opinion.
First, from a technical perspective, Alon Wolf claimed he tames the Beryllium tweeter's break-up mode at 50kHz with a custom surround around the cone. He tames the 9" woofers' break-up mode around 2.5kHz by positioning the lower woofer at an angle (see Magico pics) with respect to the rest, in order to introduce a 180 degree phase cancellation at that exact frequency. He claimed that Rohacell (of which his drivers are made) is the stiffest material he knows of (contrast this with Vandersteen's claims in a recent review of his Model 7's in Stereophile). He claimed that there are no cons with aluminum enclosures if done right, and he makes certain that the stiffness and dampness are optimized - hence the speaker's weight of 400lbs each; he also pointed out that other aluminum-based speakers like the Krell are not damped. I believe he claimed there about 1000 parts in each speaker. It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into engineering this product. Moreover, having purchased the machining company he used before, enables him to now drop the cost of this speaker by half.
Alon also claimed that he doesn't "voice" his speakers and that he doesn't use tubes for development, only solid state (and apparently high powered SS). One of the comments he made is that a lot of power is required for realistic rendition for things like drums and a soprano's voice, perhaps over 1,000W, and it was characteristic, according to Mr. Wolf, that at a recent demo in Portugal with Dartzeel amps, the amps were peaking at 1,400W (per their power meters; the speakers are an easy load at a nominal 4ohms with a minimum of about 3.5 if I recall correctly). With respect to enclosures, he believes that wood- or resin-based enclosures still store some energy, and that the Q5, being aluminum-based, offers 26% more internal volume than his own M5 despite the smaller box. With respect to ported vs. acoustic suspension designs (of which his designs are), he pointed out there is no theoretical reason for ports, except for perhaps one - and I missed what that was. Overall, the impression that he is extremely technically competent easily comes across, as did the impression that he thinks his designs are the best - when questioned what were the design goals for this speaker, the response was to produce a speaker like a speaker should sound (this striked me as some of the comments a couple of very vocal pro-Magico commenters on audiogon would make). Finally, the speaker is unassuming in size, and would easily fit in most rooms.
Moving on to the sound, the initial impression is that Alon keeps raising the bar for himself and for the entire industry. The sweet spot is too narrow, but who cares. The speaker exhibited a stunning electrostatic-like coherence (was completely unable to tell one driver from the other), extreme low-level resolution, micro-dynamics (on par with electrostatics) and macro-dynamics, and truly excelled in rendering a lifelike-size image of the human voice with true you-are-there presence of small ensembles - the amps certainly helped in this respect. This is the stuff that makes a speaker a truly worthy high-end contender. The Q5 was also effortless with the one large scale orchestral piece played, too short an experience to be able to tell more. One area where the *system* severely lacked was rendition of the kickdrum, and I don't know where to attribute this (e.g. could be the recording). Piano, on the other hand, was sensationally reproduced. In the lower registers, I found the bass extremely fast, tight and full bodied, perhaps downright thrilling and certainly deep in the right spot. The box itself offered no colorations that I could detect.
At this point, I will also point out that I have not been a fan of smaller Magicos like the V2 or V3 with the large orchestral music that I play, and in fact when I went in to audition the V3's with these same amps, my conclusion was that my MartinLogans driven by a lesser Spectral amp back then sounded overall better (despite the fact the V3's edged them out in certain areas), and I ended up purchasing the amps instead. Yes, from this you can conclude that I now prefer my ML's even more over then V3's. On the other hand, I have been thoroughly impressed with more expensive offerings like the M5, so chances are that if and when I go back for a private audition of the Q5 with familiar material I will be thoroughly impressed as well. But I withhold such judgment until that day, and what I heard yesterday was certainly an overall excellent first impression.
The bottom line is that, despite this short audition, I can't see how this speaker will fail to please the majority of potential buyers; however, from an absolute perspective, I am not yet convinced that this is exactly how a speaker should sound either (e.g. see kickdrum comment); I suspect if one were to put it next to an ML Statement e2 (at $60K retail), it would probably be unable to hold its own; and an interesting comparison will be against the ML CLX coupled with subwoofers. Finally, warm thanks to Goodwin's staff for their usual extreme professionalism - what a class act, and a well executed demo (but why no analog???).
First, from a technical perspective, Alon Wolf claimed he tames the Beryllium tweeter's break-up mode at 50kHz with a custom surround around the cone. He tames the 9" woofers' break-up mode around 2.5kHz by positioning the lower woofer at an angle (see Magico pics) with respect to the rest, in order to introduce a 180 degree phase cancellation at that exact frequency. He claimed that Rohacell (of which his drivers are made) is the stiffest material he knows of (contrast this with Vandersteen's claims in a recent review of his Model 7's in Stereophile). He claimed that there are no cons with aluminum enclosures if done right, and he makes certain that the stiffness and dampness are optimized - hence the speaker's weight of 400lbs each; he also pointed out that other aluminum-based speakers like the Krell are not damped. I believe he claimed there about 1000 parts in each speaker. It is clear that a lot of thought has gone into engineering this product. Moreover, having purchased the machining company he used before, enables him to now drop the cost of this speaker by half.
Alon also claimed that he doesn't "voice" his speakers and that he doesn't use tubes for development, only solid state (and apparently high powered SS). One of the comments he made is that a lot of power is required for realistic rendition for things like drums and a soprano's voice, perhaps over 1,000W, and it was characteristic, according to Mr. Wolf, that at a recent demo in Portugal with Dartzeel amps, the amps were peaking at 1,400W (per their power meters; the speakers are an easy load at a nominal 4ohms with a minimum of about 3.5 if I recall correctly). With respect to enclosures, he believes that wood- or resin-based enclosures still store some energy, and that the Q5, being aluminum-based, offers 26% more internal volume than his own M5 despite the smaller box. With respect to ported vs. acoustic suspension designs (of which his designs are), he pointed out there is no theoretical reason for ports, except for perhaps one - and I missed what that was. Overall, the impression that he is extremely technically competent easily comes across, as did the impression that he thinks his designs are the best - when questioned what were the design goals for this speaker, the response was to produce a speaker like a speaker should sound (this striked me as some of the comments a couple of very vocal pro-Magico commenters on audiogon would make). Finally, the speaker is unassuming in size, and would easily fit in most rooms.
Moving on to the sound, the initial impression is that Alon keeps raising the bar for himself and for the entire industry. The sweet spot is too narrow, but who cares. The speaker exhibited a stunning electrostatic-like coherence (was completely unable to tell one driver from the other), extreme low-level resolution, micro-dynamics (on par with electrostatics) and macro-dynamics, and truly excelled in rendering a lifelike-size image of the human voice with true you-are-there presence of small ensembles - the amps certainly helped in this respect. This is the stuff that makes a speaker a truly worthy high-end contender. The Q5 was also effortless with the one large scale orchestral piece played, too short an experience to be able to tell more. One area where the *system* severely lacked was rendition of the kickdrum, and I don't know where to attribute this (e.g. could be the recording). Piano, on the other hand, was sensationally reproduced. In the lower registers, I found the bass extremely fast, tight and full bodied, perhaps downright thrilling and certainly deep in the right spot. The box itself offered no colorations that I could detect.
At this point, I will also point out that I have not been a fan of smaller Magicos like the V2 or V3 with the large orchestral music that I play, and in fact when I went in to audition the V3's with these same amps, my conclusion was that my MartinLogans driven by a lesser Spectral amp back then sounded overall better (despite the fact the V3's edged them out in certain areas), and I ended up purchasing the amps instead. Yes, from this you can conclude that I now prefer my ML's even more over then V3's. On the other hand, I have been thoroughly impressed with more expensive offerings like the M5, so chances are that if and when I go back for a private audition of the Q5 with familiar material I will be thoroughly impressed as well. But I withhold such judgment until that day, and what I heard yesterday was certainly an overall excellent first impression.
The bottom line is that, despite this short audition, I can't see how this speaker will fail to please the majority of potential buyers; however, from an absolute perspective, I am not yet convinced that this is exactly how a speaker should sound either (e.g. see kickdrum comment); I suspect if one were to put it next to an ML Statement e2 (at $60K retail), it would probably be unable to hold its own; and an interesting comparison will be against the ML CLX coupled with subwoofers. Finally, warm thanks to Goodwin's staff for their usual extreme professionalism - what a class act, and a well executed demo (but why no analog???).