A Long Time Coming: A Sneak Preview of Magico’s Magnificent M9

As this magazine has reported in issue after issue, for a remarkable 48 years now, high-end audio has been driven by (mostly) guys—dreamers and tinkerers of various backgrounds and disciplines, with a restless yearning to create something better than, if not always fundamentally different from, that which currently exists.

To say that Magico CEO Alon Wolf follows this path is both true and wildly understated. Over the 15 or so years since founding his company, Wolf has created an ongoing series of loudspeakers that are arguably better than, as well as quite different from, any others over this time span.

Unsurprisingly, Wolf’s benchmark is his own. “I’ve never been interested in just making a few tweaks and upgrades and calling it a new model,” he told me during a recent visit to Magico’s headquarters in Hayward, CA. “Today’s technology is so much better than it was fifteen, or even five years ago, and it allows us to make speakers that are both measurably and audibly superior.”

Although the purpose of my visit was to listen to and report on the company’s latest flagship, the $750,000 per pair M9, I arrived unprepared for what else I would encounter at Magico’s exceptionally impressive, 30,000 square-foot design-and-manufacturing facility.

As it happens, although we both live in the San Francisco Bay Area, it had been some 14 or 15 years since I visited Magico’s original digs, back when the company was ostensibly a one-man show with Wolf himself still doing the assembly, packing, and shipping of his Mini.

Today, Magico has some thirty employees. And while touring the Magico campus—from the “museum” that displays Magico’s product history, to its state-of-the-art testing and measuring rooms, to its assembly and finishing areas, to its packing and shipping department—it dawned on me that, as gulp-inducingly expensive as the company’s speakers are, the massive investment poured into Magico’s technology and R&D, and the attention paid to every facet of design and finishing, makes its products, however spendy, absolutely worthy of their price tags.

“I’ll never become a millionaire doing this,” Wolf said. “All the profit we make gets rolled back into the company.”

After touring the entire facility, it was time for the main event. As Wolf invited me into his custom-built listening area, a “room within a room” structure measuring 22′ x 13′ x 33′, with isolated 5″ thick walls, he told me I was just the “third civilian” to audition the M9.

Standing seven-feet tall and weighing a thousand pounds per side, the M9 is both physically impressive and initially a bit imposing. Yet, it’s also both a remarkable feat of engineering and striking industrial design.

For further details I refer you to Magico’s website, from which I gleaned this capsule description: “A summation of our no-holds-barred assault on the limits of dynamic loudspeaker design…This four-way, six-driver floorstanding system features the world’s first loudspeaker enclosure to combine inner and outer skins of carbon fiber with a revolutionary aluminum honeycomb core. Included with the M9 is a state-of-the-art, analog, outboard active crossover, the MXO. Designed in-house, this carefully crafted unit handles bass/midbass frequency separation. In addition, the M9 benefits from our latest generation of Nano-Tec speaker cones, featuring aluminum-honeycomb cores.”

Racked between the speakers was an impressive array of electronics from MSB, CH Precision, two pairs of Pilium amps to drive the M9s, plus Magico’s MXO crossover.

I settled into the main listening chair while Wolf played a variety of high-res digital files ranging from Holly Cole (“I Don’t Want to Grow Up”) to Shostakovich’s Symphony No 15.

As Alon told me before our meeting, it doesn’t take long to hear what the M9 is capable of. Indeed. And though it may seem odd to put it this way, a large part of what makes the M9 so remarkable is what it doesn’t do—especially for such a massive design.

I can’t recall any other speaker in my experience so lacking its own signature, one so breathtakingly pure and uncolored, so free of smear, hangover, driver and cabinet noise and coloration, one so stunningly coherent across such a complete frequency range—this, mind you, while sporting pairs of 15″ woofers.

What’s more, as you might easily guess, the M9 can effortlessly play at concert hall levels and convincingly recreate the size of concert venues; yet, it can also whisper, ever so softly, while sounding surprisingly delicate and scaled-down when the music calls for it. And though its extraordinary resolution clearly vaults the M9 to a special plane, the speaker doesn’t come across as sounding like impressive hi-fi; instead, it just disappears. After the first few tracks my shoulders simply relaxed, my mental checklist turned off, and I was fully immersed in the M9’s musical magic.

Those lucky enough to audition the M9 will immediately hear what I’m talking about. And for those fortunate enough to afford a pair, as well, of course, as the room required to house them, I must admit to a twinge of envy at the many years of musical pleasure and discovery that await them.

Another lasting impression of my visit was something Wolf said regarding Magico’s current three-series lineup: “It’s like Porsche. If you can afford one, you’ll go for the 911, but if the Cayman fits your budget, you’ll never feel like you settled for a lesser car. That’s how I want Magico owners to feel.”

Given that much of the M9’s technology can be found downstream, with, one can imagine, more to come, that’s heartening news for the rest of us.

MAGICO

3170 Corporate Place
Hayward, California 94545
(510) 649-9700
magicoaudio.com