Hello Myles, nice to meet you yesterday and thanks for attending the Philadelphia Area Audio Group's monthly meeting held at Overture Audio in Wilmington DE. For the record, we are the Philadelphia Area Audio Group, not to be confused with my good friend Peter Brueninger's Philadelphia Audio Society. Our group is comprised of 80+members focusing exclusively on 2 channel audio. We've been in existence since 2003 and hold most of our monthly meetings in members homes, with an occasional meeting in one of the Philadelphia area audio stores. Since we meet in members homes, we have had to limit the number of members in the club in order to ensure a quality meeting experience. We do maintain a waiting list, and we are currently in process of adding several new members from the list. Anyone interested in learning more about our organization should go to our website, www.paagonline.org
Dennis Pitzer
President
Philadelphia Area Audio Group
And how did the system sound?
alexandre
And how did the system sound?
alexandre
Be careful what you ask for. You might just get it.
I was there. It wasn't pretty.
Overture AV were very gracious hosts for the demo and frankly I wish I could provide a more positive report.
The electronics were all Spectral. Cables were MIT. The real star of the show was the much acclaimed Magico Q7. Overture owner Terry Menacker led the demonstration. He mentioned straight away that the source would be the Spectral CD player. This was surprising since there was a beautiful Basis 2800 table and Light Harmonics DAC sitting there. So no analog and no hi-res digital. Terry was touting the attributes of the Spectral player and its ability to play back HDCD encoded Redbook. He stated that the resolution was so good that playback was essentially identical to Keith Johnson's master tapes. When an auditor asked which was better - HDCD or SACD, Terry said without hesitation HDCD. He stated that SACD was a dead format and it was mid-fi. Many eyebrows in the audience were arched. The thought that crossed my mind was "check please!"
Source material was very carefully selected. It focused on soloists or small scale ensembles. No orchestral music and the closest we came to rock was Lyle Lovett. All beautiful recordings that featured ambience. As I recall Reference Recordings was featured (but not exclusively).
On to the sound. In a word: disappointing. To my ears the Q7 is completely soul-less. Low frequency extension was excellent. I had no issues with bass. It was rock solid - deep and controlled. Midrange was a bit congested. For many, midrange is where the magic lies. In this regard there was no magic in the Magico. Upper frequency response was quite extended but I found it hard as nails. There was a pervasive glare that I heard through every CD. Furthermore I didn't hear any continuity. To my ears this was as analytical a speaker as I've ever heard. I felt like I was being assaulted with notes. The emotional component was completely lost. I was hearing Doug MacLeod but there was no connection. To be fair, the speaker did an exceptional job of ambience retrieval. This was a strong suit of every recording we heard. Its not to say that other speakers can't do this well but the Q7 excelled in this area.
Perhaps with different electronics I would have come away with a positive impression of the Q7s but this was the hand I was dealt so I can only comment on the speakers the way they were presented.
Previously I had heard the Q3 and Q5 and I often refer to them as the emperor's new clothes. I'm sad to say that the Q7 completes the trifecta.
Ken, I'm not afraid of different opinions, unlike this fellow who ran the demonstration Actually, this is sort of what I expected...
After hearing the Q7 with an all-Soulution setup, I got mostly the same impression. Impressive, but lacking something.
Then I asked to bring my music, and that's where I realised what was wrong: the eletronics. I brought in my darTZeel pre+power combo, and the sour turned to sweet. Better *everything*, even bass. With a 100W amp.
I came to realise that there's a whole contingency of folks that actually ENJOY this kind of "lacking something" sound. The Magico importer usually demonstrates with Soulution, and he sells a whole lot of them. For small scale stuff, the transparency is impressive.
Fortunately for me, the dealer here is not as ..erm... opinionated as this guy over there, and allowed me to test further. If I was to form my impression of Magico based on hearing through the Soulution gear, I'd file them as the "impressive, but not for me" category.
alexandre
Andre, exactly what offended you so much that you would call this man a charlatan? Seems a bit extreme.
Bruce in PA
Steve Williams Site Founder | Site Owner | Administrator | Ron Resnick Site Co-Owner | Administrator | Julian (The Fixer) Website Build | Marketing Managersing |