Magico Q5

James63, JV does sometimes publish the in room freq response of the speaker he reviews - he did it for the M5 which has been "on loan" to him for the past 2 years. IMO, Magico really needs to rely on a more credible reviewer than JV. He has cried wolf too many times in his reviews.

I also heard the Magico Model 6, a $130k+ speaker. I am sad to say it was one of the most unmusical megabuck speaker I have ever heard. After enduring 20 minutes of trying to like the speaker, I had to give up. Mainly, I could not stand the "hard" unnatural sound despite being driven by Spectral and Boulder electronics. In contrast, the Rockport Altair was the antithesis of the Model 6, very enjoyable and natural sounding to these ears. The Magico house sound so far is just not my cup of tea. Hopefully, this will change with the Q series.

I love the Altair(obviosly)! But the magico are a great speaker, just differant. At the time they were my second choice(still would be). I felt the rockport gave the bigger bang for the buck, literally. They are very amp dependent. They need lots and lots of power.

I believe that Michael Fremer will be reviewing the Q5 for Stereophile, so there should be measurements and someone other than JV of TAS with a mainstream review in print.

I own the Mini 2 and have heard the M5 and Q5 at dealerships. The Mini 2 sounded fine at two dealers and bad at another but it really became musical in my own system after a lot of fine tuning. The M5 sounded very good in a short demo and the Q5 sounded good with some material and not so good with other music. I find it very difficult to form any real opinion in short dealer demos. Impressions yes, but impressions are just that and often subject to change .

The best dealer demo I have ever heard was of the Magico V2 with SME and Spectral and MIT. Everything was extremely well dialed in and well matched. Very memorable indeed.

Just read MF's review of the Q5.
Very good review. MF uses 'the best' several times as well. But I am really surprised that he said he didn't 'churn' and complain that the bass doesn't hit his stomach... maybe his time with the Maxx3 has 'ruined' him! haha =)
I have listened to the Q5 twice at HK's dealer, with FM Acoustics and Spectral. IMHO, the Q5 are certainly the best Magico's yet. Probably the most neutral & full range... not easy to get these two qualities in the same sentence.

Wslam,
Were did you read MF's review of the Q5? Is it online already? Thanks.