Visited this room twice, the second time with Neli. Can’t ever play CDs here and the music they play is… often strikingly unfamiliar.

Or is it?

The bad news is that the music here was so disconnected from itself, so uneven, so discontinuous, just note here note there as if they came from different songs that even what should be a familiar musician was extremely hard to recognize [Neli said that a Mark Knopfler piece was played here, and we listen to Knopfler ALL the time, but I did not recognize it as being anything except for ‘reminiscent’ of Knopfler]. Harmonics were off, note duration was off. Argh.

The good news is that the speakers did all this effortlessly.

Why is this significant? Because from the old Magico Mini to the recent Q5, Magico speakers have sounded like they are always starved for power. That they are struggling to pump out each note. We’ve known Magico owners who swap out amp after amp trying to find something to get these puppies to loosen up, to open up, to breeeeathe.

But if the Q7 is different [it certainly is BIGGER. Whoa that is a lot of aluminum] then for people who require a BIG sound from their statement speakers – and most do – well then these do that. As for their ultimate ability to do micro-dynamics, to be controlled so that notes start and bloom and die correctly, to reproduce the emotions that most music is trying to communicate – well, that we hope to find out at the next show.

Haven’t read JV’s review of this room yet [presumably as Magico’s #1 guy he gets the inside scoop] but read enough of the comments while dealing with other business over there that Magico was playing hide-and-seek with the amps here, and apparently changing them once in a while.

I listened near 4-4:30pm on the 2nd day, Friday, and about 2 hours before closing on Sunday afternoon. Both the problems with the sound and the effortlessness of the speakers making the sound were similar on both occasions. So I am hoping that the effortlessness has much to do with the speakers and little or nothing to do with the amps [and this is a reasonable assumption too, based on the fact that, although we have heard many mega amps on Magico speakers, they have never opened up like this.]

The Magico Q7 / MIT room with the rack on the left

The Magico / MIT room equipment rack. Not sure what that component on the middle left shelf is. No photo. Certainly one can wonder why they chose these particular pieces. I did not get to hear the Nagra reel-to-reel.

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker from the rear

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker binding posts. Looks like they tri-wireable and are being tri-wired. Were they tri-amped? Don’t know.

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker from the side

The Magico ‘Q7’ loudspeaker feet. OK. Lousy photo. But see? No spikes. But there is some kind of special stuff in those feet though…

An Unknown Audio Component [thought they may be the amps the first time I was here]

Pacific Microsonics / Euphonix HDCD converter

A Nagra Kudelski reel-to-reel tape deck

Spectral Studio Reference Preamplifier

MIT ‘Oracle MA-X’ cables

This year the TAD room displayed their E1 speakers, along side their usual, larger Reference One speakers. 100% TAD electronics here, some on a HRS ‘MXR’ rack and some on another rack [which, although ubiquitous, their name escapes me. They say now that our vocabulary peaks in our 60s and 70s. But how is this going to be of any use at all to me if I can’t remember anything? And I have decades to go. Argh.].

The photos will be a little confusing because they have several different ‘islands’ of gear on static display, which is turned on and so looks like it is part of the system but which, in fact, it is not.

I sat and listened a little here. They announced they were going to put on a track from Supertramp that they had recorded off a tape that was a clone of the master tape. Cool. Turned out to be off the Crime Of The Century album. And as you see on the laptop at the bottom of this post, the cut was recorded in AIFF at 192x? at 9216 kbps. The cut was a familiar classic and what could be more fun – there is way too little classic rock-and-roll at these shows.

But, after the first few staccato notes, the sound became really confused and jumbled. Not like good old rock-and-roll confused and jumbled, but like one of my first systems with early digital confused, jumbled, weirdly compressed at places, notes running into each other, but not consistently, so the brain could not analyze, understand and at least be able to ‘tune out’ the errors [which the brain is excellent at doing]. Perhaps this is what the master tape sounds like? I have a bootleg Supertramp LP around here somewhere – curious – I should find it and see if we have a better version.

What I should have done is waited to see if they would play a CD. THEN we would know a lot more about what was going on here.

The smaller TAD E1 speakers next to the beefy Reference One speakers.

The TAD C2000 preamp on static display

The TAD C2000 preamp on static display

The TAD M600 monoblock amplifier

The TAD M600 monoblock amplifier

The TAD D600 CD player and remote control on static display

The TAD D600 CD player on static display

The TAD D600 CD player and power supply. I think one of these black box power supplies, which seem made of the same material that goes into their platforms, is supplied with each one of their components.

The TAD D600 CD player in the system

The TAD C600 preamp in the system

The TAD C2000 preamp being used in the system

The laptop that played the cut from Supertramp’s Crime of the Century album

Didn’t spend much time in the BSG Technologies room, which had the Vandersteen Quatro speakers, Audio Research electronics, PS Audio power conditioning, on a HRS ‘SXR’ equipment rack.

But maybe I should have spend more time: “bsg technologies has developed a method of retrieving sonic information from audio signals that provides a realistic and complete rendering of the original acoustic event”. Seems pretty cool.

Closer view of the system with Vandersteen Quatro speakers and BSG Technologies ‘Qol’