Forget the equipment and hear the music: Magico Q5 loudspeaker
By Straight-Six, published on 12 October 2010
Turns out the planets were aligned this past weekend, as Brussels bathed in most inhabitual sunlight, the bad moods fizzled and all the audioholics descended on the city’s largest hi-fi show to date. It was a day when we could clear our mind and open our ears to most delicious music. Oh, and we got to wear a motorcycle helmet and jacket too…
Yeah, folks, that last part matters when you’re approaching middle age like a bullet train and grasping onto anything that even whiffs of youth, freedom and a total lack of responsibility!
Our good friend Igor surprised us by ditching his Renault Espace and farting over in his Honda Shadow 750. Sure, it’s not a Harley or an Indian or even a Triumph, but he wants it to fire up every time he rides it, which is less than 300km annually. You know: kids, work, no time for play and all that predictable stuff. No matter, we straddled the mini-hog and took a leisurely ride through Brussels out to the Courtyard Marriott near the airport where the New Music Belgium Hi-Fi show was taking place.
A bit of context first: Straight-Six has a long history with Belgium’s largest and most well-known hi-fi store, having bought a Beard P-35 tubed power amp from New Music as the heart of his first real audio set-up back when he was a mere 14 years of age. This set him on a ruinous and thoroughly delightful path of acquisition and obsession that saw him eventually apex with a €45,000 big-rig audio system (Basis, Unison Research, Focal JMLabs Utopia, C.E.C, Simaudio & Audiomat, for those who know and care).
And he enjoyed that for exactly 2 years before the stork smashed through the window and dropped a couple of young ‘uns on him. Bastard uncaring bird that he is. You can guess what happened next: the big-rig lay idle in the dark until that fateful, painful day when Straight-Six realized he had to sell it in order to invest in something the family could share together. A bloody home theatre system.
But all was not lost, and over the course of several months Straight-Six schemed ferociously to deliver something of quality where only expectations of banality and mediocrity existed. So it was that Mrs. Six watched in horror as the home theatre set-up was changed and upgraded not once, not twice but three times in six months. Revenge was sweet and a quantum of solace and pleasure Straight-Six now enjoys (Pioneer, Denon, Primare, Focal JMLabs Utopia & Dynaudio for those who know and care).
Back to the matter at hand. Hi-fi shows are notoriously unreliable indicators of anything at all – most obviously the quality and sound of the equipment begin demoed – given the crowds, god-awful acoustics of most hotel rooms/spaces and absolutely repugnant BO that most audio dweebs appear to slap on before they come out of their caves.
This said, two things can happen: the first is that a set-up is so well put together and communicative that it can cut through the noise and seduce you into actually parking your ass in a seat for more than the habitual 45 seconds. Secondly, the big-rigs actually manage to find a space that has decent and even pretty good acoustics allowing you to genuinely audition the equipment. And in some very rare cases, the two converge to give you a taste of something truly glorious and reference-establishing.
Just such a thing happened on Sunday, and we wanted to share it with you. It occurred in a large room off the main foyer on the first floor of the Marriott. With Solution Audio amps/digital front-end set-up and a VPI turntable delivering beguiling vinyl tunes, it was the black monolithic speakers that caught not only our attention but our hearts and minds too.
Magico is a relative newcomer to the hi-fi world, having been around for a decade, but the fact that it states it builds extreme audio speakers should tell you all you need to know. And no, it ain’t adverlingus for once, folks. Every speaker Magico has brought out have been a) frightfully expensive and b) life-changing for all those who listen to them. They have lead an onslaught on high-end speakers that actually makes those in the know consider them bargains considering their astounding ability to communicate nothing but the music.
What the hell are we talking about? After a single track was played through the all-new Magico Q5 speakers (€70,000), it dawned on us that most of us don’t know what our music sounds like. Why? We’re actually listening to the equipment we’re playing it on.
Let that simmer for a second, will you?
Because after several hours of scouring the entire show for something decent and musical and honest, we concluded that virtually every room harboured equipment it wanted you to hear. Not the music. And this pisses us off something fierce, being the opposite of what high-end audio is all about: fidelity to the recorded music itself.
Note that we talk about recorded, not live music, here as no system will ever sound like the real thing, much like driving simulators vs. the real thing. You can get close. Close enough to smell Diana Krall’s perfume, or Lady Gaga’s crotch. But this is a facsimile of music we’re listening to here, folks, not actual instruments and musicians.
It isn’t just the small brands that do this to wow you with sparks and bangs so typical of home theatre shitola. No, turns out the high-end brands employ similar techniques to reinforce the notion that high-fidelity is as much about taste and preference for one type of sound or another.
Magico turns this notion on its head by doing one thing better than anyone else: liberating the recorded music from the very component it’s being played through. Liberated is the key word here, folks. Cause when you hear music float free you’ll never be able to go back to the inherently coloured and flawed systems you’ll have genuinely enjoyed till then.
That the Magico line-up runs from €22,000 to one-quarter of a million euros is neither here nor there. This kind of transcendent experience is worth every penny. Truly breath-taking and truly Prodigal.
Forget the equipment and hear the music: Magico Q5 loudspeaker
Turns out the planets were aligned this past weekend, as Brussels bathed in most inhabitual sunlight, the bad moods fizzled and all the audioholics descended on the city’s largest hi-fi show to date. It was a day when we could clear our mind and open our ears to most delicious music. Oh, and we got [...]
7 Responses to “Forget the equipment and hear the music: Magico Q5 loudspeaker”
-
-
Straight-Six
12 October 2010
How could we forget those heady days of the Beard, George (when he was still pretending to be straight) and the sheer lunacy of keeping a tube-powered amplifier on all the time!
Made for a great radiator, though…:)
-
-
Great post thanks. Those speakers sound downright reasonably priced compared to high-end watches!
-
Straight-Six
12 October 2010
Thanks, Ian. I have to say that there are certain thresholds when it comes to objects and price-tags. We’re all different in this respect, but with €70k on hand, my vote goes with the Magicos or a second-hand GT3 or a brand-new Lotus Exige 240 PP or….
But, I’m always ready to be seduced into thinking otherwise!
-
Ian Skellern
13 October 2010
And dare I admit it? I’ve got the obligatory middle-age Harley!
-
Good Lord!
-
Straight-Six
14 October 2010
Now that you’ve admitted it, pray tell which model??
-
-
-
The Prodigal Fool
12 October 2010
You’ve outdone yourself! A superb post.
I still have fond memories of listening to George Michael’s Faith when it was first released on that Beard of yours. A warm, magical sound. I also remember the gentle crackle of the tubes as they warmed up and eventually cooled down after a session. Really something very special.
Oh…er….and I also remember how at first you insisted on leaving the Beard powered-up at all times in order to maintain the equipment at optimum listening temperatures, only to quickly discover that that meant that your tubes lasted no more than a coule of months before needeing to be – very expensively – replaced. The road to ruin started right about there I think…