by Michael

High-end Audio Munich 2014 – JV and Magico Ultimate III speakers

Finally getting to the High-end Audio Munich 2014 show. Shows you how far behind we are. 🙂

We’re just catching up here after some health issues cascaded into the Newport Show cascading into our website having to be moved and updated into… well, here we are now. Whew!

Anyway, while reading [Jonathan Valin] JV’s High-end Audio Munich 2014 show report, and the responses to it, and the report about his subsequent visit to Magico to hear their Ultimate III horn-loaded loudspeaker, I felt…

“Hey! Let’s chime in”.

We’ve reviewed many of JV’s show reports in the past, where we have heard what he has heard, read what he has to say, and posted our own two-cents on the matter.

Based on several of these I think we know where JV is coming from, when we will likely agree with him and when he likely exaggerates, and what his overall sonic preferences are [very, I would say overly, neutral sounding, similar to, but not as extreme as, JA and Mike Fremer] .

 The Magico Ultimate III horn speaker at Munich

We’ll start off with the controversial Magico room.

JV says: “The Ultimate III had gross horn-like colorations in the room it was ensconced in at the MOC–to wit (and to repeat), cupped-hands coloration, aggressively projected midband, zero image focus, slightly discontinuous bass, and an overall P.A.-like presentation that made many acoustic instruments sound as if they’d been electronically reprocessed (particularly evident on piano and voice)”

I strongly believe this is JV’s honest opinion and it is very probable that we would have had the same opinions, but with the caveats and clarifications below.

If you’ve read a number of JV’s past reports, you know he isn’t very fond of horn speakers. They really have to ‘prove themselves’ to be ‘unhorn-like’ in all ways. I think he recently [this year or last] actually liked a horn speaker, but over the years, he has disliked horn speakers that we have found perfectly acceptable – that is their trade-off of increased, much more life-like dynamics in exchange for a little loss of resolution X and a little discontinuousness Y with the slower conventional bass drivers works just fine and stays within the bounds of ‘sounding like music’. At least to our brand of very picky ears they do, anyway..

As for ‘X’: One might expect the SYSTEM in the Magico room to be of less resolution than other rooms because the Pass Labs First Watt amp is very pure sounding, but a little low on resolution [I’m not familiar with the Pass Labs preamp here]. The source here, the EMM Labs TSDX and DAC2, we are of course glad to see these in this system, as it would be hard to find something better. Not sure what cables they used here.

As for ‘Y’, the Magico horns go down to 120Hz, where the conventional woofers kick in to provide the bass down to 20Hz, which is freaking low. Integration is still an issue, unfortunately, especially if one wants to avoid just going the route of just making the woofers have a lot of [often too much] punch to please the basslover in all of us, like several much beloved and very successful speakers do as they mate their bevy of different technologies to conventional bass drivers. Others try to go for the gold. Acapella, for instance, reduces the efficiency of their horns somewhat, and increase the efficiency of the conventional woofers somewhat, in order to make the two technologies sound all-of-a-piece. Not sure but I think Magico uses DSP to mate their horns to their conventional woofers, which should also work quite well it seems to me.

Anyway, JV’s comments, point by point:

* cupped-hands coloration: just know that this would have had to have been perfect, in this room, for JV to have given it a pass in this respect.

* aggressively projected midband: So this meant that there was not enough air, not enough mid-range resolution, and not enough bass. As for the bass, I saw that Alon was there in Fremer’s walk-through video, and I have observed over the years that he likes to play with the frequency response of his show systems to minimize bass overhang – often resulting in too little bass for many people [we actually agree with this approach, but our rooms at shows also get dinged for having a little less bass than what people hear in other rooms]. Not sure why there was a problem with the ‘air’ / high-frequencies – many cables roll off the highs to make most systems sound ‘not bright’ – but don’t know if that was the case here. The midrange resolution is going to be down a little bit due to the amp being the First Watt – especially at loud volumes which some people say was up to 100db. 

* zero image focus: again, a problem in the high frequencies, 5000hz and above most likely. Maybe those walls absorb high-frequencies? They look weird to my U.S.-centric eyes.

* slightly discontinuous bass: we talked a little bit about this [ ‘Y’ ] above. Hard to say much about this – rooms at shows? bass? Hardly ever a good match.

* made many acoustic instruments sound as if they’d been electronically reprocessed. Yikes. There are a lot of speakers out there that change the sound of instruments enough that it is hard to tell what they originally were. We probably all have a few on our ‘favorite speakers list’ [including JV.  And we won’t go down the list of speakers, or amps, that do this]. But it would not seem to be a inherent problem with the design of the Magico Ultimate III Horn to me.

JV hints that he thinks it is the DSP [digital signal processing] in the Magico horns. He may be right, but it is a newish technology and it is going to take the blame for a lot of sonic problems in the next decade or so, which it may or not be the cause of.

JV’s Visit to the Magico Factory to hear their Ultimate III horn speaker again. 

Here is the write-up: MAGICO ULTIMATE III HORN-LOADED LOUDSPEAKER

Makes sense that Magico would try and prove to JV that it was a show anomaly and not the speakers responsible for the problems he heard. Makes sense that JV would go when invited.

I do think JV was under some pressure to say nicer things about the speakers here. But we can still learn something from what he wrote.

Essentially, he still found it ‘digital sounding’ and still blamed the speaker’s DSP ‘crossover’.

First, all systems that use a digital source are ‘digital sounding’. Some more so. Some less. JV likes many of these systems, and is more forgiving of ‘digital sound’ than we are – so this must be REALLY annoyingly digital sounding.

Second, these speakers at 114dB sensitive are like a electron microscope on the upstream components [not so dissimilar to a diamond midrange].

It really matters what the rest of the stuff in the system is.

[I wish everybody paid more attention to this. Yeah, you can just search and replace ‘speaker’ with ‘system’ in your head while reading their stuff. But still….]

I like the design of the Magico system in Munich [but at a lower volume. Wouldn’t be as impressive, maybe, but I try and be kind to my ears. I like them. A lot.] – and hate the one in their factory showroom. We like the Magico speakers well enough, but for many of their demonstration systems, we wouldn’t want to hear them with any speaker.

So, what JV heard as ‘digital sounding’ could just be the usual garbage that a lot of gear puts in the signal that most systems cover up [often through overly-forgiving speakers or dull-sounding cable], and many people cannot hear or just think “That’s just the way that really high-resolution expensive gear sounds”.

What would we do?

1. Point the speakers straight ahead so no one is getting blasted by the full force of the center of the horn mouth. Many speakers, including box speakers with any kind of solid front baffle, generate a peak in mid range energy if you listen to them straight on. I know some disagree, but I do not like the ‘public address system’ effect very much at all.

2. Don’t play it so loud.

3. OK. Yes. One should put an excellent-sounding tube amp on these [you knew I was going here? Sure ya did ;-)]; along with cables that preserve the resolution, the bass, and the highs; and a decent source.

Disagree with Romy that the Lamm ML3’s 30 watts would be mostly wasted; the idea is that more watts are always better if one does not have to sacrifice quality to get them – the added bandwidth on transients IS audible and to be preferred. A little 2A3 amp might be nice as well.

Now… on to the media part of the presentation.

AVShowrooms has the best video of this room at Munich I have found, and they recorded the room during sections of several songs:

After listening to a lot of these show videos now – you CAN hear a lot about the sound. It is all about comparing with other show videos and what THEY sound like. Here you can hear the purity and the ability to keep up with small and large dynamic swings very, very well. You can also hear the slight lack of [artificial? But now commonplace] resolution and … well, I’ll have to listen to it some more.

HifiClube has a few videos as well: Magico Ultimate III at Munich 2014. Here you will hear that, yes, they did play disgustingly audiophile crap here at least some of the time. Can’t tell poop about the speakers with these kinds of songs, IMO.

MY-HIEND had the best photos we could find of this room [and many others :-)]: MY-HIEND High-end Audio Munich Show 2014

magico-and-pass-at-munich-2014-via-my-hiend-IMG_2608ss

Look how toed in these speakers are. Look how live the room is. Think maybe that is a lot of energy coming right at the listeners? Like maybe this poor guy in the back in the suit… he should move off to one side.

 

magico-and-pass-at-munich-2014-via-my-hiend-IMG_2606ss

The EMM Labs and Pass Labs front end. Looks they were using [Magico’s] digital source as well. Hmmmm….

 

magico-ultimate-iii-horn-loudspeaker-jv-factory-visit

The photo of JV’s visit to the Magico factory. Notice how much LESS toed in these speakers are. Much better, in our opinion [though probably would toed them out a little more]

So. Obviously a statement loudspeaker. Looking at how it is designed, and at setup, and at upstream components, and a couple of good reviews by a reviewer you understand, one can start to get a feel for what the speaker can do and not do.

For example, no matter how expensive a speaker is, it will NOT ALWAYS sound great- it is still going to be sensitive to environment / room, setup, and the hi-fi system it finds itself in.

Then again, it is going to sound a heckuva lot better than just about everything else on the planet once you get it all setup optimally and happy happy.

 

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Show Reports 2 comments
 by Michael

Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note on Enjoy The Music.TV

This video has Peter Qvortrup of Audio Note being interviewed by Steve Rochlin of Enjoy The Music 2 months ago.

Interesting discussion about prices in high-end audio, using silver as a conductor, black gate capacitors and AN’s development of a successor capacitor, new metal foil resistors, the top-of-the-line AN TT3 turntable, and a new top-of-the-line DAC on the horizon

Recorded almost 2 months ago on June 23.

This video hits many of Audio Note U/K/’s core competencies.

a) Turnkey, 100% AN systems that sound decent with not at a lot of fuss and at all price points.

b) Truly high-end gear that sounds as good as it is expensive, with a multi-decade long hard-earned pedigree of producing state-of-the-art gear.

c) AN produces many of their own electrical components (like capacitors, resisters, transformers, etc.), giving them a competitive advantage over those who have to use off-the-shelf components

d) AN spends a good money performing advanced research into how to make better components, better designs, and better synergies between components

e) AN continues to try and achieve dominant footholds in all parts of the market by using innovative designs – in this case: turntables

f) AN champions newer better [now cheaper digital?] designs breaking new ground that few can follow [although AN has open designs, c) helps their implementation be always somewhat better, and always being a few steps ahead keeps them a few design leaps ahead of everybody else]

Let’s talk about a few of the points in the video. We invite you all to chime in.

1. Jeez, look how expensive some of this new gear coming out is!

No kidding. Ever wonder who is buying this stuff?

I have a theory. It is that a large percentage of the people left in high-end audio like to swap out gear a lot. They are not looking for the best sound they can get at their budget nor a system that will provide them enjoyment that lasts them many years.

Audiogon, and to some extent eBay, in their heyday, opened up the market. People could now buy new gear knowing that they could sell it for a fair price if and when they got tired of it, or just flat out didn’t like it. This allowed them to be more experimental with their gear buying.

But then this got pumped up another notch. The used market became saturated, and audiophiles realized they could, for not much money, try gear by buying it used, playing with it for awhile, and then selling it when they were done with it in what on average is what? A few months? And it cost them not much money at all to do this. This ‘Advanced Audio Nervosa’ has been very contagious and many many people have the disease. :-/

Well, of course it is not a disease.  It is quite fun.

It is just that at the current time, people with audio Nervosa account for a significant percentage of audiophiles. This diffuses the services that many manufactures and some dealers [like us] think they are providing for audiophiles. Some still do want the best sound, for their ears, that their money can buy. But others just want something fun and cool to play with for a bit.

[Co-commitment with this must be their feeling that they are going to live forever. For me, one more second of listening to some sound that is not As Good As It Can Be means one more of my last few seconds here on Earth wasted. Just fricking Ruined. ]

With the shrinkage of Audiogon, the pendulum may be swinging back towards the long-term audiophile buyer. Or maybe something will take Audiogon’s place and Advanced Audio Nervosa is here to stay.

People with a lot of money, and audio Nervosa, will buy $150,000 amps put out by a new company or one with no history of building amps of this caliber, because it scratches their itch to try something new. No matter that the thing really sucks at its purported job.

 2. Systems composed of gear from different manufacturers have little chance of sounding decent.

We do actually agree that 100% Audio Note U.K. systems do sound decent, no matter what the overall cost of the Audio Note gear is [and is one of the reasons we sell Audio Note]. However, most other manufacturers with 100% solutions are not as successful at the ‘sounding decent’ thing.

And, referring back to discussion point #1 above, for people with Audio Nervosa, a complete solution from just one manufacturer is so boring as to be like unto hell.

It is our approach, and practice, however, to mix and match gear from different manufacturers a lot of the time to tailor the sound to individual preferences. However, we spend a good deal of time thinking about what works with what. In particular, we think a lot about, and talk extensively here on the blog about, the importance of getting the amp – speaker combination right.

For the average Mary and Joe, this system configuration can indeed be problematic. And 99% of dealers could care less.

3. Black Gate capacitors are dead. Long live Black Gate capacitors.

Many people, including AN, have found that these are really good sounding capacitors for high-end audio gear.

When Black Gate decided to close their doors [figuratively speaking] AN bought up all the remaining Black Gates they could find. But even these are starting to run out.

So AN has been working to be able to restart production of Black Gate capacitors again. This is a good thing for AN to talk about, as it reemphasizes that they actually manufacture a lot of their own components – and do not just limit themselves to off-the-shelf parts that are widely available like the vast majority of other high-end audio manufacturers.

4. The new much-cheaper but even better DAC

Although we have heard snippets about this new DAC, AN has been very secretive about this Manhattan-like project … until now. Kind of wish, from a dealer’s standpoint, that this came out in a different way, but it was going to be a bombshell, regardless.

It sounds like this discrete DAC is similar to the same(?) approach EMM Labs cum Playback Designs cum P.S. Audio etc. are taking. Where instead of using cheap [sounding], ubiquitous and marginally functional off-the-shelf DAC chips, they encode their own DSP algorithms in some high-speed chip of one kind or another.

Previously, AN was able to wrap exceedingly well-performing supporting electronics around these cheap chips, and came up with, to our ears and many others, the best sounding DACs in the world.

What they will be able to do with their own great sounding chip, kind of afraid to find out. And to announce that it will be significantly cheaper… hmmmm…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

in Audio Note 1 comments
 by Michael

High-end audio cables myth Trolls need to be booted off the island

High-end audio cables myth trolls need to be booted off the island. Now. And preferably with a BIG honking boot.

Why?

Because they are not audiophiles and all of us treating them as if they were is hurting the hobby.

Trolls, not Audiophiles

People who antagonize real audiophiles, insisting that running a signal through different kinds of wire does not affect the sound differently [violating the first or second laws of thermodynamics by the way], are just trolls.

Sometimes this is easier to see just how ridiculous our acceptance of these trolls are if we think of this happening in a more well-known hobby, like autos.

Saying that different cables all sound the same is like someone saying that different tires make no noticeable difference when driving a car.

Typically [continuing our analogy] these kinds of people would own a basic commuter car [modest stereo cobbled together from good, bad and terrible gear, typically wildly unbalanced sonically]. They put on some modestly nice Michelin V-rated tires [cheap cables one step above Monster] on it, and noticed no difference when using their car [stereo] the way they usually do – just plunking around [playing 3- and 4-piece jazz]  .

 

These are people with minimal experience, minimal qualifications, minimal equipment, minimal skills at listening, and tragic inability to understand science.

 

So what is the problem? The problem is that they then go on the forums and loudly bash real audiophiles, shouting that in their ‘expert opinion’, cables have no affect on any stereo and it is all just hokum

These people declare themselves ‘experts’ though they do not ever think about [going back to our tire analogy]  WHY they do or do not like the handling, about how it responds in emergency and under hostile weather conditions; how it could be better, worse or different; how it performs in the extremes of acceleration; and what parts of the design contributes to this or that behavior and subjective enjoyment or lack thereof. Etc.

These people are just trying to rile others and get attention by acting extraordinarily stupid. 

Let’s not give it to them. In fact, let’s take ALL our attention away from them.

Hurting the Hobby

This is serious.

‘High-end audio cables myth’ is one of the first suggestions Google gives when typing in ‘high-end audio cables’.

When noobs visit one of the forums, and they see people accepting as valid another’s opinion that cables have no affect on the sound, that it is just our imagination, they draw the reasonable conclusion that ALL improvements in sound may also just be the wild imaginings of us audiophools.

To a lesser degree there are also those who believe all solid-state amps sound the same, that all CD players sound the same, and that all computer DACs sound the same. These people are also trolls.

We have become a playground for trolls. People who get off on being a**holes and jerks.

I’m Against the Death Penalty in this Case

I’ve thought about it but…. no.

So, not proposing anything too radical here 🙂

I just think we need to censure and, if necessary, kick these people off the reputable forums. If these forums are for Audiophiles, then let’s keep out the Audiophile-haters.

Face it, they hate us and yet they infest our forums.

Why are we putting up with this?

 

 

[Featured photo of big boot from Freshness Magazine]

in High-end Audio HiFi and Stereo / Sounding Off 8 comments