Ever since blogging about the Magico V3 loudspeaker a few years back, and then interviewing
Magico's Alon Wolf for a
Stereophile feature, I've been eager to hear every sonic and technological advance that Alon and his team have come up with. Thus I made my way to the huge Magico suite on the Venetian's 35th floor—whose exquisite lighting and overall aesthetic were on another plane from most of the exhibits below it—where Magico was unveiling the much-anticipated Magico Q5 ($54,000/pair), which has a heroically constructed all-aluminum enclosure.
With Alon playing tracks sourced from Paul Stubblebine's Tape Project through a custom-built, state-of-the-art Matan server and Pacific Microsonics DAC; Japanese-made Technical Brain TBP-Zero monoblocks (price not set, and not yet available in the US); and MIT Oracle MAX cabling (speaker cables $34,500 for an 8' pair, interconnects $10,900 for 1.5 meter pair, and Z-cord III power cables $1100 each), the midrange was to die for. To die for. It truly was the kind of midrange you'd want to accompany you on your way to heaven. Perhaps due to room interactions, however, there was also too much of it, which on classical recordings made for too great a contrast with the top octave. I look forward to hearing the Q5 in another setting and system configuration. And JA tells me that Mikey Fremer is scheduled to review the Q5 for
Stereophile
