MM7's are here
- Thread starter Mike Lavigne
- Start date
last evening i was speaking to a friend who has a similar system as mine (same amps-458's, preamp, tt, tonearm, and digital).
he decided to order the Evolution Acoustics MM7's and i'm very happy for him. what is interesting is that you will see his Magico Q7's up for sale on Audiogon in the next week or so.
he decided to order the Evolution Acoustics MM7's and i'm very happy for him. what is interesting is that you will see his Magico Q7's up for sale on Audiogon in the next week or so.
i don't want to speak for the Q7 owner; but would assume he did read Harley's review. he did have a set of Evolution Micro One's there for comparison with the Q7's. another friend of mine was there (not an Evolution owner or associated with Evolution) too.
i've not heard the Q7's myself. i have heard the Q5's, which were not my cup of tea. this Q7 owner did also own Q5's previously.
If anyone is up for it, i would love to read a summary of the differences between the Magici Q series (which I've heard) and the Evolution MM (which I have not).
Hi
Never heard an Evo Acoustics speaker... Never heard the Q5 nor the Q7... The reports are uniformly good for both the MM3 and the Q series..I have heard the Q3 and came out mighty impressed .. I can live with those .. Happily for a very long time ...
I would say that I suspect the bass reproduction of the Q7 not to be as potent or maybe clean as that of the MM7 ... This said .. I believe in subwoofers, as in multiple subwoofers ... the MM7 system has 8... What would be the Q7 with a comparable array of subwoofers? .. Say since I am dreaming here ... with 4 Gotham subs or other serious subs ? Keeping the total system price in the range of the MM7? Of course this is for the bass only but bass reproduction tends to work its way in the way we perceive the upstairs frequencies ...so ...
Those who have heard both under optimum conditions can surely chime At thend the MM7 may be superior , I simply don't know ... but could not help speculating
my 'other friend' who was in the Q7 system a few days ago, was in my room last night (both systems have the same electronics and sources).....and will be here today again. unfortunately; he rarely posts stuff and i don't speak for him. when you visit my room i will be happy to have you speak to him.
---- Mike, do you have a small digital recorder; you know, the size of a pen? :b
* ...So that you can record your friend's comments.
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no; my recorder is the size of a washing machine.......my Studer A-820.
digital....baah humbug!
there has been a request for me to do a hirez i-phone 5 video of my system playing and the requester would edit it. which i may do.
I never heard the MM7 (and will try to visit again Mike Lavigne for an audition). But I know extensively the MM3, as I owned a pair for 5 years (until 2 mths ago): Dartzeel source (as 90% of MM3 owners), APL NWO-M source, all cables by Evolution acoustics, fully treated room. For the MM7 to be superior to the Q7, it would have to be VASTLY superior to the MM3, as right now, I find that the MM3 is even beaten is term of imaging, coherency, transparency and tone quality by my Q1, in the same room... (of course, the MM3 still have a much deeper bass....). For the record, I sold my MM3 to buy a pair of Q7, to arrive when my new dedicated room is completed (see pictures in Magico thread) . So I know pretty well the difference between both brands.
Don't get me wrong, the EA are very good speakers, otherwise I wouldn't have kept them for 5 years (I don't want to enter into a bitching exercise and talk about speakers I never owned, so I will not list the 30 speakers from famous names which don't sound as good), but to my ears, they are not in the same league as any of the speakers in the Q serie, by far. Here a few problems I have with the MM speakers:
1) ceramic coloration. At the beginning, it didn't shock me. But after a while, I found it more and more annoying. Every time I go to hear to other accuton speakers (Tidal, Marten, Estelon...), I find the same characteristic.
2) What I like with the MM3 bass is that it is sealed, like the Magico: not many brands which are still proposing sealed bass! So it is pretty clean and it goes low. But it is slower and less defined than the bass of the Q7, because the membrane is very big, and the motor is much smaller than on the Q7, so you are losing micro information. Membrane is also not very rigid... distortion is higher. Also, with the MM3, I had to set up the crossover of the woofer at 130Hz... which is high for such a big membrane. It doesn't integrate seamlessly with the ceramic driver... because of the difference of speed and type of membrane
3) Ribbon tweeter is sweet sounding... but its diffusion pattern is completely different from the D'Appolito configuration of the mid. And the D'Appolito configuration by definition generates combing effect.
4) Quality of components
- I had to open my MM3 for 2 repairs. When you look inside, you see that there is not much money being spent on crossover components and quality of dampening material. And the cabinet itself is MDF.... so you cannot expect miracles, even if the stacking of layers is much better than using an MDF wall like lambda speakers
5) quality of fabrication: this is the big downside:
- I couldn't spike the speakers because they had screwed a cabinet wood screw in the thread of one of the spike! (where is the quality control?). I had to dismantle the woofer to try to remove the screw... which gave me an opportunity to see the inside of the MM3...
- one of my woofer amplifier died: EA handled it very professionally. So no complain here
- when I shipped by air the speaker to the new buyer, they started to delaminate, on both speakers, next to the bass amp. When I contacted EA, they never wanted to acknowledge any manufacturing problem, and explained that the speaker cabinets may have some stress fractures in the polyester clear coat, from the variation of temperature during air freight: "This is most likely due to expansion and/or contraction of the Birch plywood. Since wood has far more elasticity than polyester resin, extreme fluctuations in the environment, such as temperature, moisture, or pressure, can trigger very small micro movements in the wood. Since there are hundreds of layers of wood in each cabinet, these micro movements can build upon each other and the clear coat may not be able to keep up with these changes, causing stress, first delaminating and then cracking if pushed beyond elasticity". I had to threaten them for them to reluctantly accept to pay half of repair. I don't know, but when I spend such an amount on a pair of speaker, I don't expect the manufacturer to tell me it is normal and that I have to pay for a manufacturing problem - maybe they should put a warning on their website: "please don't transport by air or it may delaminate". I may have been unlucky, or EA has a time bomb at hand, and they will start to see massive problems of delamination, like TAD had a few years back.
When the EA teams learned that I am selling the MM3 for a pair of Q7, they tried to pitch me the MM7. I didn't give it a try, because as an engineer, I believe in technology and quality of fabrication... The Q7 uses better (more expensive) drivers, better cabinet design, better crossover technology. This translates to a transparency and dynamic response which is unmatched to my ears. I don't see the technology leadership on the MM7: same accuton drivers, same wood cabinet design, same cheap crossover, same D'Appolito configuration. The real big advantage vs. the MM3 is the addition of a mid bass driver, this will improve a lot integration between woofer and medium!
I hesitated to post the above in a forum section dedicated to EA. But I don't believe there are several people on this forum who have extensive experience with both MM and Q serie, so as a previous Evolution Acoustics customer, I just wanted to give my humble opinion. And as I mentioned at the beginning, I have not heard the MM7 yet, so my comment is based on living with the MM3.
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-- Fantastic post again stereo!
* I don't have a single second of live experience with neither brand of speakers, but I did read about them quite extensively. ...And the Q7 seems to be the golden boy.
No offence Mike.
* I don't have a single second of live experience with neither brand of speakers, but I did read about them quite extensively. ...And the Q7 seems to be the golden boy.
No offence Mike.
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Steve williams
Site Founder, Site Co-Owner, Administrator
I don't get your point Mike.
By the same token there's a pair of MM3s for sale here by Bruce who wants a pair of X-2's so what's the big deal.
By the same token there's a pair of MM3s for sale here by Bruce who wants a pair of X-2's so what's the big deal.
I am a complete novice to the ultra high end game, and cannot compare my EA MM3s with anything else in its price range sonically. However, I do agree for a speaker this expensive the quality of build is underwhelming. I make this comment because when I replaced a woofer, much to my dismay I found the woofers are screwed straight into the MDF cabinet, using MDF screws! This caused some problems positioning the woofer for assembly. I would have expected threaded inserts and bolts.
Of course, this does not impact sound quallity, so from a sound quality perspective this may still be a "cost no object" speaker, from a build quality perspective it is not. Lets hope I won't have any delamination issues down the road. Certainly won't be shipping air.
Meanwhile, I am still a very happy owner, and in the absence of $125K of discretionary funds to give the used Q7s a whirl, I will be for a long time.
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
A new pair of X-2's are "only" $70k ! Think of the money you'll be saving!
If you hang around this forum long enough buying speakers for less than $100K feels indeed like you saved money - scary. If I had $70K in the kitty I would try a pair of the TADs first though.
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