I heard today the Magico Model 6 loudspeakers about which the audio industry pimps of all calibers created so much stink lately. I did not have a chance to listen Magico extensively: a little guy who felt the he owed the room begun to jump in my eyes and try to prove to me that he is not a borings disposable dupe (a common, almost a Pavlovian Dog reaction from those people), so the listening session was aborted.

From the very short listening that I had I got a feeling about Magico. Perhaps it is not objective feeling as the system was very randomly and most likely brainlessly assembled, it was also not so good installed in my view in that listening room. Managed to hear juts two tracks – I had no my music and picked among the CDs that they have in there. It was some kind of Chesky’s demo CD with a track of Vivaldi 4 seasons (2nd winter if I am not mistaken) and the Carlos Kleiber’s B5 with Vienna Philharmonic. The Vivaldi was the original CD and Beethoven was SACD with CD layer. My experience show that the CD layer on contemporary SACD are notoriously horrible, so the famous Kleiber’s performance sounded semi-revolting but it was most likely not the Magico problem.

The Magico Model 6 did not strike as badly at it was with Magoco Mini. If Magoco Mini literary begged me to shut them down – they were amongst painful to listen them, then the Model 6 was more tolerable. The model Model 6 does have MF and were able to play a bit louder with less stress – not as good as some other speaker but not as horrible as Mini were.

Generals from auditions of Magico Model 6 there were 3 things that stoke me:

1)      Model 6 has very strange tonal quality. Not the global tone of the speaker but the quality of the tones, or something that I call the “absolute tone” (search and learn if you do not know what it is).  The Model 6’s tones were very simplistic and unsophisticated, the closer the tones were to the peripherals of the auditable range the worse it was. Somewhere in MF it was in face good but doing up and doe it was turning slowly to tonal nothingness.

2)      Model 6 has wrong HF. I know, I know, somebody see ribbons and they are driven immediately into multiple orgasms feeling that ribbons do the best HF. They perhaps do but ribbons have extremely poor tonal quality. I do not know where and how Magico Model 6 employs ribbons but something that they do they do wrong as Model 6’s has too non-specific HF and the HF sound identicaly to all HF tones. It might be because ribbons used too low, or because the Model 6’s MF driver is too tonal-impotent at upper knee or whatever other reasons… I also feel that the Model 6’s output has approximately 2dB more HF out then it shall be… but it is the idiotic “Absolute Sound” and “Stereophile” approved standard – a playback shall shoot HF teeth-twisting amount of HF to a listener face, otherwise the listener will not recognize the “industry quality”

3)      Model 6 has strange bass.  I do not know what is wrong with that bass but it is overly controlled and too contrived. Perhaps the speakers shall be driven with different amp as those that were use have in my view notoriously horrible bass (Boulder 2050 monoblocks that I know very well and heard with many speakers). The one thing that I do not like with Model 6 bass on specs is the fact that Model 6 used flat cones drivers. I have to admit that I NEVER ever hear any more or less interesting bass from bass drivers that use flat cones. Perhaps the Bud’s idea of ENABLing has to do something with it, I do not know.  Still, it was not the bass that I would call serious; it was too fast, tot condoled, too shallow and too atonal.

I write it as Magico’s products, being spun by the industry pimps, have not exposure to any more or less critical view. The marketing people who promote Magico by their duty are ether menacing criminals or deaf idiots. The people who sell Magico are typically-clueless pimps who just move boxes and there is very little what might be demanded from them. So, among the voices of drooling Morons and ignorant simpletons who talks about the Magico’s I feel shell be a voice of people who care about Sound of things and  not about the merchanting of a next cooked-up fashionable crap. I did not have a lot of time to listen Magico and there were just the first impressions that I got from that very short listing session. Usually it would more then necessary to say needed to be said about loudspeakers if they were used properly… 

I do not subscribe audio publication but sometimes when my level of venomous hate goes down to dangerously low level I buy one at newsstand. The last night I saw October TAS magazine in Borders with a big picture of Magico speaker on the cover I felt that it was it. Without opening the magazine I was predicting that it will be a drooling Magico review, another interview with the Magico “designer” Alon the Wolf, the Magico manufactures comments where Alon Wolf would suck back the reviewer’s dick and a fed big name dealers informing that Magico speakers are available for auditioning and sale. Was I right?

I did not read the magazine yet. I just scanned the Magico 5 review and the interview. The actors are all the very same   - the “estimable” Jonathan Valin, the Alon Wolf – a “designer” extraordinaire, a next model of  Magico, the absurd  writing and the “starving for knowledge” audio readers who need to be informed .

Again, it is very much not the article against Magico 5 loudspeaker. I am sure that it is exactly the sound that I am expecting as the Magico strategic view about sound was well portrayed in their initials Magico Mini model. At that time there was no public figure with integrity that would kill that “strategic view”. Quite in contrary - the seeds of Magico ugliness were planted into the worst the High-End Industry had.

Before, the Magico’s place was taken by Kharma.  It was almost 5 year as the industry made each audio-idiot to buy that crap and to make the people to consider the sonic garbage that Kharma outputs as “high-end result”. The Jonathan Valin’s idiotic brain was very instrumental in this possess but then the time changed - the dollar went to toilet and the Kharma distributor made his load of domestic crimes that shifted his interests. A new “audio Messiah” was invented: Jonathan Valin put the Kharma into the con.

I need to mention that Valin- Wolf and the rest of dirt was not an accidental mix. It is like Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels – those people really found each other in the right moment of history.  Who is Jonathan Valin?   Is it this guy?

http://www.romythecat.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=5093

But let do not pay attention to the internet BS but deal with the people who know him deeply and personally. I spoke with a great number of dealers, distributors and manufactures and ALL of them, each single person them told me that they have zero respect to this man.  Furthermore, over 50% of them told me that Jonathan Valin is a criminal and provided me with mid-blowing exemplas of what this dirt did. Yes, from what I was told many of his actions are prosecutable is anyone care about him. Furthermore, 100% of them gave to me examples of Valin’s actions that were so disgusting that if Valin would live in less legally-civilized country then he would be suffering a lot from a very justifiable physical retribution. Why this piece of ignorant, fraudulent and filthy dirt still is in “public service” no one know. No one knows besides me: Jonathan Valin is in serve to the ignorant, fraudulent and filthy industry.

I do not know Alon Wolf a lot. A few years ago when we have that only more or less specific conversation about audio he demonstrated himself as an absolutely dead person, in fact he asked me “what the time-aliment for drivers is all about”. Everyone knows that he is a successful businessman in other then audio fields; everyone knows that his absolutely dead in any subject of audio and that anything that happens in  Magico happens by the hands and head of guy that Wolf brought from Israel (I do not remember his name - he is not a public figure unfortunately). So, when the Valin’s does his “interviews” with Wolf, asking his adolescent questions , then it so much reminds me the interviews with Sarah Palin – juts a collection of mindful buzz words. It is like to interview Mark Levinson about sound - if you know what I mean.

Well, everyone learn and Alon Wolf, being an accidental person in audio might learn as well. However, I judge not the cheap internet words but the actions and the practical results. A few years back, when the craze with Magico started around the Magico Mini I was one of the very few voices who very actively did not like what Magico Mini demonstrated and was warring about the very bad direction Magico Mini took sound to.  Alon Wolf and Jonathan Valin very much together and very much in coordinated efforts battled my position. They did not engage my arguments and my very specific complain about Magico Mini’ sound but they were trying to discredit me accusing that I never heard the Magico Mini. There were many-many posts and long debates about it in TAS forum, now it is all gone but some still remember it. Well, sound reasonable – a manufactures and a reviewer defend the reputation own product from attacks of an ignorant internet yahoo, does it? Well, not really. My complains were very specific and I insisted that I heard Magico Mini multiple times and in very comfortable for myself environment. The Wolf and Valin informed that it never happens and instead that unless I disclosed in whose home it happen they will ban me from TAS for and delete all my negative comments about Magico Mini (it was very beginning of Magico and there were not a lot of Minis installation out there). I failed to name where I heard Magico, as a result I was banned and you will see no negative comments about Mini in TAS forums. One would not think that Wolf and Valin did anything wrong if do not know the actual facts. The facts were that Wolf and Valin knew very well where and how many times I heard Magico Mini and they knew that the condition of my listening was my agreement that I will not disclose the location. Those two sons of the bitches knew about it and they played the public opinion with this fact. Well, this way I ended up as BS-taking person and Magico Mini was sold to the homes of each person who has between ears not brain but a mechanism to suck Jonathan Valin’ s dick. The story I brought is to demonstrate what LEVEL of people the Wolf /Valin tandem is.

How about the Magico 5 loudspeaker? It is very much in the same “TAS house sound “  – I find it is too boring to talk about it. The unfortunate part that it is all not a progress in loudspeakers. Each new model of Magico is just a ways for the industry to extort new stack of cash from the idiots who would bite it. The whole strategic direction with Magico/TAS sound is so wrong that there is no need look at this with hope.

There is a quy somewhere in the hole between Boson and California. He runs Audiofederation site, sells audio gear, is trying to make waves and to catch in the waves a damn customer who would buy audio gear from him. He also use make good pictures from audio shows. Apparently there was a new audio show – sort of white trash concentration camp in Midwest and the Federated Mike published his observations. The one that I found worth reding:

http://audiofederation.com/blog/archives/714

I will leave aside the Federated Mike expertise, integrity and rational. I think that his expertise, integrity and rational all worth shit as Mike successfully sell him Kharma line and Marten Design line that deliver conceptually absolutely identical sound to Magico, the Magico that Mike declared as “not good”. Let leave the Federated Mike’s rational aside. Mike is an industry pimp and those people have any opinion ONLY if it is profitable foe them.  If Mike desired to open his month and to bitch about other brands then the busyness of selling Kharmas is truly on the red. What however is remarkable the fact the all those idiots who sing nowadays the odes to Magico are absolutely the same idiots who 7 years back experienced their primitive orgasm from the Kharma’s sound.

With all my hate of ether Kharma’s sound or Magico sound (I disgust Kharma’s sound and I disgust Magico’ sound AND people) I need to admit that there is a huge educational value in Kharma/Magico sound. Understanding how Kharma/Magico sound and what bathe of the companies stress as saleable point in their sound give a key for understanding the entire progress in Hi-Fi for the last 10 years. The Kharma/Magico sound is a template, a blueprint that is being sold by idiotic audio press to ignorant audio public as “good sound”. The damage is very aggressive in my view and not by the fact that people buy bad loudspeakers.  If people are idiots then they perfectly deserve to get idiotic sound that is made by idiots and for idiots. The damage is aggressive because the associative ingredients of the entire sound/music distribution chain target to this presold sound and THIS is very very bad.