I was pointed out to the fact the Magico has a new idea of their 5 way horn-loaded speaker. I did review the Magico former 4-way project, it was very bad:

http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?postID=2103

The new one looks like take the idea a bit further. I generally do not extend my observations to the people and companies that I despise and I do hate the dirt that owns Magico.  Still I think it would be worse to review what new Magico 5-way setup offer.

It looks like the speaker is not the actual acoustic system but computer graphic, which is perfectly fine from my perspective. It has a number of good ideas and a number of bad ideas and I think it has merit to be review. I certainly appreciate the Magico desire to build a completed attractive 5 way horn loaded installation. So let see what they offer, even at the level of futuristic blueprint.

Start from the end. In the back it looks like the speaker has some like LF channel, elegantly hidden in the midbass horn’s curve and serving as contra-weight. Well, this is very bad idea. If the speaker would be some kind $5000 monitor then this solution would be perfectly fine.  However, the system is look like designed to be many hundred thousands setup and in that level of expense it is unspeakable to have LF bound to MF. It will work in one room out 150 rooms in any other rooms it will demand force room correction, which in my books sets all bets off. So, the LF driver must go to external module, this is not arguable.

The MF and HF channels looks like fine size, there is no exponential crap in there anymore as it use to e in former design, and looks like time-aligned. It is nice to know that even idiots read my site and learn.  For sure I would like to have the HF on the same vertical axis as MF. So, what I would do would be to cut way that leg that goes from MF to the bottom of midbass horn. This will free up the back-reflections to midbass driver and give some room to locate the MF horn 6-10” lower, freeing space to put HF in the vertical axis with MF driver. Since the construction is metal I do not see why the MF island  can ‘t juts hang like some kind of proverbial fruit from the top surface of midbass horn. Also, sine anything in the mouth of midbass horn is contra-load the midbass driver I would very much minimize the size of all metal frames that hold MF, HF and upperbass. I would also put the sharp-pointed conuses on the  back sides of the MF, HF and upperbass drivers, looking with sharp sides toward to the midbass throat.

The upperbass look a bit too short to me it looks like it is 150-170Hz, it has to be longer. I also do not see why it can’t be extended forward to be time-alight with MF. Frankly I do not like the upperbass sitting on the top of the speaker. I would like to have my upperbass at the bottom regardless what it is.  The upperbass needs to be ground-bound and my cello and sections shall not be “somewhere” but it need to be right in front of me. Some what I do would be setting the upperbass in the floor, running the upperbass throat through the whole in the midbass surface. Then the speaker would have the perfect room for MF and HF above. It would also convert the speaker from futuristic utopia to more balance acoustic system. It might be necessary after then to modify the size of the midbass mouth to make it more attractive in respect to the new visual proportions.

For sure the line-array HF with restricted vertical radiation would be highly effective in here but it is another story…

Anyhow, I would like to point out that metal construction when frame and horns are the same give a lot of opportunity to abuse firmness and do not  worry about support too much.