Maggie versus Magico

if you don't have the space for the maggies, and have a small to medium room, i would recommend looking at atc, bravo, proac, or even something like the nekton dynaco25 replicas for monitor style speakers....and yes they can be just as transparent as magicos without taking out a second mortgage. there are more as well.

Jaybo,

Can I assume you have actually heard the Magicos recently?

My impression from auditioning them is that they are very good indeed and hard to fault, but that there are other similar options out there, some of which I already own, that might match or possibly even exceed them in certain areas for significantly lower cost, however I was not able to do any direct a/b comparisons to be sure.

Also, I heard them on a high end tube system sourced from a $20,000 CD player that probably cost over $100000 total, so I cannot say how much of what I heard was attributable to the electronics and very high end Nordost cabling used versus the MAgico minis alone.

Still, the end result was very good indeed with some challenging symphonic music on CD, as one would expect at that price, but I'm not sure it was that much better if at all compared to some much less expensive setups that I'm familiar with.

The dealer I visited sells an impressively large assortment of high end lines. I got to hear one or two other very expensive systems that did not catch my ear in any particularly special way, but the system with the Magicos did.

yes..and like a lot of brands in audio, i can't reconcile the performance and the price. i tend to favor brands with a rich history and at least some tangible rationale for the price. i love maggies

The price for Magicos is way up there!

I think part of what I was hearing that I liked was the tube gear used. It provided (added?) a nice warmth to the strings, particularly viola, I believe, that help distinguish them from the violins.

I always listen to the "best" systems I can and then go back to what I own and see how I stand. I'm currently in process of this now.

I've reaffirmed some interesting differences I've observed over the years with various speaks between the SS preamp output versus the "tube simulation" pre-out on my Carver pre-amp based on listening to the tube/Magico system. I need to listen in detail some more and then I may update my system description to describe my findings having applied a few tweaks to my system's configuration based on the tube/Magico listening experience.