MAGICO M9
Product Reviews:
A summation of our no-holds-barred assault on the limits of dynamic loudspeaker design, the new Magico M9 establishes new benchmarks in musicality, transparency and fidelity. This four-way, six-driver floor standing 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. The result is a revelation, a loudspeaker that can present intense crescendos with unconstrained power, yet reproduce the most delicate musical passages with transparency and stunning microdynamic detail.
Carbon fiber enclosure with Aluminum honeycomb core
From the very outset, we’ve known that the loudspeaker enclosure must enable sound to pass through completely, without “singing along” with the music. Controlling cabinet vibration without storing energy remains one of the greatest challenges in loudspeaker design. Our quest for the ultimate in enclosures has driven us to pursue the latest in materials science, computerized modeling and meticulous assembly. The M9 represents a new milestone in that journey: the world’s first loudspeaker enclosure with carbon fiber inner and outer skins over an aluminum honeycomb core. This technology reduces overall weight yet doubles the structural stiffness.
The enclosure also incorporates our latest application of constrained layer damping using aerospace composites, plus familiar features of Magico construction including a baffle board of 6061 T6 aircraft aluminum and front-to-back tensioning rods. Through many rounds of Finite Element Analysis modeling, we fine-tuned the enclosure design to suppress resonances and any possibility of stored energy. We also calibrated the organic shape of the enclosure and machined the front baffle to reduce diffraction effects to near zero. Sound waves from the drivers propagate without obstruction. You can hear the difference. The resulting soundfield replicates that of the recording space. Even though the M9 has a commanding physical presence, in sonic terms, it completely vanishes.
New beryllium-diamond dome tweeter
Magico has long recognized that the bending and flexing of non-pistonic motion in a soft dome tweeter leads to large-scale distortion. That’s why we chose the high strength and light weight of Beryllium. And we went even further, enhancing Beryllium with the incredible stiffness of diamond, carefully applied by chemical vapor deposition. This enabled us to go larger, building the world’s first 28 mm Beryllium dome and improving performance without the weight penalty that diamond normally incurs. Now the M9 raises the stakes with an even more refined 28 mm Beryllium-diamond dome tweeter. The new drive unit delivers high-frequency reproduction of extraordinary accuracy, confirmed by Laser Interferometry testing and by careful listening. You’ll hear microdynamics of even greater subtlety, revealing musical detail with even greater clarity.
Eighth generation Nano-Tec cones with Aluminum honeycomb core
Our insistence on diaphragm rigidity and pistonic motion also drove us to offer the world’s first loudspeaker cones with incredibly strong Graphene nanotubes. Every cone in the M9 incorporates our eighth generation Nano-Tec design. With this design, Magico became the world’s first to feature an Aluminum honeycomb core sandwiched between Graphene/carbon fiber skins. In previous Nano-Tec cones, the skins provided all the stiffness and the core provided damping. The Aluminum honeycomb changes everything, providing a core material so stiff that we need to apply 26,500 pounds (12,000 kg) of pressure to shape our 15-inch cones. This added stiffness pushes resonant frequencies far beyond audibility, requiring hardly any damping at all.
Graphene, the hallmark of the Nano-Tec cones, is a hexagonal lattice of carbon just one atom thick. Graphene combines incredible stiffness with the highest tensile strength of any material known to science – some 40 times that of carbon steel. The resulting cone is so rigid that, inverted on the ground, it will not deform after being run over by a sedan. With our eighth generation refinements, this unprecedented strength results in the closest ever approach to pure pistonic motion.