MAGICO S5 SPEAKERS LAUNCH EVENT

Janine Elliot heads off to London Town to give you her first thoughts on the latest iteration of Magico’s S5 loudspeakers at KJ West One.

There are two things that I have lots of opinions on! One is F1 motorsport (about to kick-off again for 2025) and the other is infinite baffle speakers. Both will become very apparent shortly. My aged LS3/5a and Audiomaster Image 2 speakers from my youth are both infinite baffle (IB) speakers – one without a port or transmission line to colour the sound –  and this can make them efficient, have low distortion, and produce exceptional bass. Air is sealed inside the box so it doesn’t interfere with the sound produced outside.

Magico is an American company, based in Hayward with a factory in San Francisco Bay, California, priding themselves on, as they put it; “Music. Revealed”. This statement can be seen as being largely down to their speakers allowing the listener to enjoy the music as it is; pure, not coloured. These are infinite baffle. Some might say their speakers can sound a bit too transparent *can this even be a thing), so I wanted to hear for myself the latest generation of the S5 floor-stander loudspeaker, the “S5 2024” with CEO Alon Wolf flying in across the pond with the first speakers in Blighty to tell me all about it at KJ West One in London, courtesy of Absolute Sounds, on 30th January 2025. Whilst these speakers were shown off at Munich in 2024, they are only now available for sale in Europe. Coming in at between £90,000-100,000 depending on the finish, they are designed for the serious music listener who wants to get the best from the music, and not afraid to pay for it either. 

UNDER THE HOOD

This is the third iteration of the model, replacing the S5 and the original dating from 2023. The S series began with the smaller S3, and all deploy their recognizable curved aluminium cabinet (designed using 3D modelling to minimise resonance, plus maximise stiffness), so don’t expect wood finishes to match your sideboard. Interestingly, the front baffle is also curved to minimise diffraction effects of soundwaves. Built like a Formula-1 car they need to be very agile, maximise stiffness, have minimal internal resonance (unlike Lewis Hamilton’s ill-fated W15 Mercedes), be tested using computers and special rooms, and use lots of carbon and graphene to make it all happen as lightly as possible. Taking ideas from the lengthy development of the M series, the amount of work in designing the frame means that, according to Magico, there is no vibration from the cabinet, and thus no colouration. The “Kippel Near-Field Scanner” robot at their disposal gave lots of readings on the outside of the box to view the “on” and “off”-axis response of the speaker, so that they could create a theoretically ideal acoustic response. The development of this speaker might not be quite as expensive as a Formula-1 car, but they are considerably more technical than that which engineers did at the BBC technical research unit working on the diminutive infinite baffle LS3/5a’s at the Gothic mansion of Kingswood Warren. 

DRIVERS TAKE POLE POSITION

Where the earlier S5 came in at around £40k, this third incarnation is 31% bigger volume, £60k more expensive, and displaces 75% more air than earlier models. This is a 3-way 4-driver design with a pair of massive 10” MAG10508 RTC Graphene bass drivers sitting surprisingly close to the base of the column, a 6” MA6004RTC Mk2 Graphene midrange and 28mm MB5FP diamond-coated, pure-beryllium diaphragm tweeter, and all this powers from 20Hz (5 less than the earlier model) right up to 50kHz. Alon didn’t think diamond was the right component for tweeters as they are too heavy, so, therefore, settled for beryllium. The acoustic-suspension bass units deploy the new Magico Nano-Tec v.8 cone built into a third-generation chassis. The two units work together in phase and have a massive 5” titanium voice coil with a huge copper cap. With no less than one half-an-inch linear movement from front to back they certainly move and do so with exceptionally low distortion, and are therefore able to give excellent sound-pressure levels, with all the drivers combining to give a modest 88dB/m sensitivity. The midrange unit is 6” diameter with a 3” voice coil. Again, this uses the Nano-Tec Gen 8 cone structure built into a third-generation chassis, using an aluminium honeycomb core which is sandwiched between a graphene-reinforced carbon fibre skin. All is terminated in a foam surround. This core structure means there is less weight, lower thickness and better damping. The driver has 2 extra-large neodymium magnets, copper cap and pure titanium voice coil. In listening tests, that midrange was surprisingly clear and quick. The tweeter is based on that of the gorgeous curvy $750,000 M9, having the same diaphragm, and again offers a very clear, undistorted output, and better power-handling than earlier S’ models. As loudspeaker technology has developed so much over the last few years – meaning Magico have had to magically redesign everything for this “new” S5 – it is indeed a new product, so therefore Alon doesn’t see it as just a hot-rodded “Mk iii”. And as he told me, he just couldn’t think of another name for it! 

The crossover uses a Linkwitz-Riley filter, deploying Magico’s “Elliptical Symmetry Crossover” (ESXO) philosophy, giving -6dB at the cut-off frequency, unlike a normal Butterworth with -3dB.  All this is accomplished with an acoustical-target 24dB slope. Consequently, the overall frequency response is kept level, unlike a resulting peak with the standard Butterworth filter. Indeed, in listening it was hard to hear any spikes or movements in response over the audio range, apart from a slight raise at 440Hz in one of the pieces played, but that was likely the hall it was recorded in. The speakers can work down to just under 3 ohms and bass extension was notably tight and uncoloured.  This is surprising, especially as the bass units are so close to the floor; so be careful with your floor material! In the right room, though, that bass will go very low, and unlike a ported or transmission system, will sound very natural. Crossover components come from Germany’s excellent Mundorf, consisting of MResist Ultra resistors and MCoil Foil coils, which have a very low noise floor as they are not microphonic.  Cross-over points for the 3-way are around 350Hz and 2kHz.

The “New” S5 comes in either colourful Softec versions at £90,000, or gorgeous high-gloss polished versions add another £10k.  At 121cm, these four-footers need to be, and will be, seen in your music room, and with all the metalwork will be heavier-per-foot than your average F1 racer, at 118.8kg. Asking Alon about the price, he reiterated the costs of the components, materials, build and design technology and inflation naturally make it high, just as they would in a well-spec’d shiny new sports car, and that “you’ll enjoy this more than any car”. Not sure what Max Verstappen would have to say about that! For me, once I started listening I totally forgot about the price. The truth is you get what you pay for, and Alon developed this contrary to any thought about its final price point. This was a labour-of-love to just get a great sound without having to pay for the M9.

AFTER A FEW LAPS

Infinite Baffle loudspeakers can require lots of power to get those lower bass frequencies to show their worth, so at the KJ West One demo we had on hand powerful Dan D’Agostino power-pre amplifiers to supply the juice and sources via the New Zealand’ made Antipodes Audio Oladra music server. With throttle to the floor, the listening began. There was a wide range of music on offer to us reviewers as we sat on comfy seats after having enjoyed a glass of champagne and some canapes. Good job I wasn’t driving. This all showed just how well the speaker worked with all types of musical genres as well as different frequencies or dynamics. For example, Theatre of Voices is an incredible vocal ensemble regularly performing music from the late 20th century – Pärt and Cage – as well as Medieval chants from composers such as Tallis or Lassus. “Christ With Me” was so open and clear I could well have been up there with the spirits. There was no weight to the music, it was all performed so beautifully and focused that my ears could hear the music clearer than I had heard it before. The performance showed their recorded environment had a slight spike at around 440Hz. Interestingly, another performance – this time live – from Paul McCartney who was showing off the double bass that once belonged to Elvis Presley’s drummer Bill Black, indicated a buzz picked up from the microphone at around 3600Hz, though the extreme grunt and musicality and the bass extension from the gorgeous instrument took over any of my “engineer’s mindset”. I wasn’t listening to loudspeakers any more. I was listening to real musicians. The bass here is very clear, and very much unlike bass from a ported or transmission cabinet. Turning to more traditional use of stringed instruments and the well-known slow movement from the Bach Keyboard Concerto No. 5 in F minor, BWV1056 with Murray Perahia on a modern-day pianoforte, the music was again very open with the positions of all instrumentalists clearly defined. More than this, it was highly musical and I felt like I was sitting in the front row of the concert itself. There were two other performances that glued me to my seat, despite (she gulps…) the sources all being digital. Well, if you are going to show off a loudspeaker at its best you need the best sources you can have, and the £29k Antipodes Audio server really did transform “bits” to music magnificently. Lucio Dalla’s “4 Marzo 1943” might well have been the date he was born but the musical performance from him here will live forever – if you can find a copy in your local HMV, that is. This guy has imparted much controversy in Italian musical circles, changing styles and even enraging and alienating audiences in his time. He certainly had my approval here, though. The wide dynamic range and transparency from the loudspeakers was here to be heard in this performance with unusually quiet piano accompaniment and wide-ranging vocal dynamics plus whistling from Lucio at the end of each phrase. Whilst I couldn’t understand the Italian words, the music was highly contagious – especially the whistling. Finally, a rare performance from disco-jazz keyboardist Webster Lewis in “Do You Believe?”, this jazz concert in Oslo has lots of ambience, with forward drum kit plus his organ and vocals. The 20’33” recording might have come complete with inevitable microphone feedback at 1’40”, but this just made the music even more real to me. I was there in the smoke-filled room with a pint, well actually it was the champagne, at my feet. With just a repeated G-minor riff for the first 10’, the music then opens up with a plethora of saxophones and ambience that just made my feet tap away as I got immersed into the music, minding out for the drink, of course. Whatever music was chosen, these speakers worked effortlessly to provide a musicality and dynamism that made you just enjoy the music and not the equipment, plus a transparency that’s missing in so many speakers these days.

Alon Wolf certainly should be proud of what he has presented for our listening pleasure today, and my thanks also go to Absolute Sounds and KJ West One for arranging the listening session. £90,000 will buy you a choice of six matt Softec finishes, plus for another £10,000 there are a choice of six highly glossed versions of the loudspeaker. This is, of course, like choosing the colour of your car, and whatever you decide, they all look very expensive and will last. I love the (Range Rover) Piano Black and (McLaren Spider) Octane Orange gloss finishes, though the Corsa Red might have been an unfortunate choice of name for those that remember the little Vauxhall pocket rocket. Whatever colour you decide to choose, you’ll certainly enjoy taking this loudspeaker for a drive.

Janine Elliot

With thanks to Kasia at Absolute Sounds for some of the images used.