It has taken Magico rather longer to get the S5 2024 to market than originally anticipated – probably as a result of all the additional effort and machine time that’s gone into the parts. Despite showing its face in Munich last May, we are only now seeing and hearing a series of public launches in individual markets. Once again, Magico has continued its (extremely sensible) policy of presenting its new products through a major dealer in each significant market. So saying, the French audio press duly converged on Presence Audio Conseil in Paris, immediately following a similar event held at KJ West One in London. There we were treated to a system consisting of the Antipodes server, an MSB Cascade DAC (or Wadax Studio Player, for those still attached to physical media), Soulution 727 pre-amplifier and 511 mono-blocs, all hooked up with top-end Crystal Cable, supported on Magico M-racks and fed from a Telos Power Station and Grounding Monster. That’s quite a system and it’s also the first indication of the shifting landscape around the S5.
While it’s always hard to reach definitive conclusions about any product in an alien system and environment, several things were abundantly clear. The S5 2024 is a far more musically and technically accomplished performer than previous models carrying the designation. It may not be any more sensitive on paper, but it’s certainly more willing in practise, both dynamically and in terms of musical articulation. It’s a better integrated and far more expressive speaker. Earlier S5s were never short of detail. The S5 2024 adds even greater low-level resolution and integrates and exploits that detail to far greater effect. All that extra work that’s gone into the cabinet components and the high tech materials in the drivers are clearly evident in the speakers’ performance.
This more refined musical response reflects the lower system noise floor, with more precise timing and wider dynamic response. It is reflected in the speakers’ transparency to source and recording differences. Not only is the character of individual voices and instruments distinct and distinctly different across different recordings and performances, rarely have the relative virtues of disc replay (on the Wadax Studio Player) and file replay (via the Antipodes/MSB been so apparent). The file replay was extraordinarily detailed, focussed and transparent, with impressive bandwidth and startling dynamic range. The contrast with disc replay from the Wadax couldn’t have been much starker, the Studio Player immediately investing the sound with its familiar fluid warmth, rhythmic flow and natural sense of human agency. On the one hand, precision, resolution, dimensionality and detail; on the other, presence, body, weight and colour. In digital terms, you pays your money and takes your choice – but what the experience really demonstrated is just how clearly the Magico speakers reveal both the costs and benefits of that choice. Hang the S5 2024 on the end of a system – any system – and it’s going to tell you exactly what the system’s doing. If the goal of audio design is “nothing added, nothing taken away”, the latest S5 represents a giant step in that direction over any of its predecessors.
