Magicos are chesty

I heard just a tiny bit of this on the Magico A3.  I have a few tracks that bring it out - some Johnny Cash and even some Julie London tracks.

It wasn't nearly as bad as a number of other speakers, but it was there.

Personally, the best I've ever heard in terms of lack of that type of coloration has been my (now departed) Thiel 3.7 speakers.  It just didn't matter what range a singer was in, low, high, everything in between, there was never a hint of unnatural bloating or mechanical intrusions - just pure, rich, natural and utterly free of any boxy sensation. 


Another torture test is some Russian Orthodox Choir music (e.g. Ancient Echoes is an amazing CD!), with Basso Profondo voices.  These guys go so low you'd think the church organ had kicked in.  Once they hit those low notes you really start feeling the bass in your system and unless a system has really neutral, controlled sound it can sound more like "speaker bass" than human voices, or take on some speakerly quality.(Again, the Thiels just nailed this without breaking a sweat.  Others I've tried, not so much...)


(My current 2.7s are very good, but not quite as "perfect" to my ears in that regard).

The McIntosh speakers I've listened to are to my ears perhaps the worst "high end" speakers I've encountered. 

erik,

Though I believe I know the coloration you are talking about with "chesty," there’s also the case FOR voices sounding "chesty."

That is: many systems produce a sort of hologram of a human voice that sounds like a voice without a body. It’s all "mouth noise" and maybe a bit of throat. It sounds disembodied. Whereas a human voice, especially male closer up, does combined with a chest sound giving the voice that sense of "body" behind it.

I actually find a system that can produce some of that "chest/body" sound to be more natural and convincing. So long as it is not via an obvious speaker-like artificial coloration.

erik,

I’ve always appreciated your contributions as a DIY speaker builder, without anything to sell. I’m sure you would have a good ear for various speaker colorations. Though, I’m curious: how certain do you feel about attributing the chesty coloration you heard to the Magico speakers?

In my case, when I’m auditioning a speaker (especially in a room I don’t know) I listen from various distances, from close to further, to get an idea of what the more direct sound is like vs in-the-room. If I hear a chesty coloration I’ll investigate by moving around, trying different distances and angles of listening from the speaker to get a sense whether I happen to be experiencing sitting in a room node, or whether I can detect the speaker’s contribution at all to the artifact.

I did this for the Magico A3, but never quite got rid of the mild coloration I mentioned.

Still, I did find the A3 an extremely impressive speaker in terms of disappearing, low coloration over all, and detail. I just couldn’t get it to "boogie" at all.

What took sciencecop so long to show up and browbeat anyone dissing Magico?