Floorstanding loudspeakers — Magico A5

The Magico A5 is the biggest tower of the A Series from Magico, the California company founded by Alon Wolf in 2004 and based in Hayward, where it machines and builds its speakers without outsourcing. The A5 brings the sealed aluminium enclosure and driver technology of the Q and M Series to a more accessible price, and it was the first Magico model with a dedicated 5 in midrange. The A Series itself began with the A1 stand-mount in 2019.

Key specs that matter

The layout is sealed and three-way, with five drivers - a 28 mm pure beryllium dome tweeter, a 127 mm midrange and three 229 mm woofers, the midrange and woofers using Graphene Nano-Tec cones. Frequency response runs from 24 Hz to 50 kHz within 3 dB. Sensitivity is 88 dB at 2.83 V and nominal impedance is 4 ohms, and Magico recommends 50 to 1000 W of amplification. Including spikes, each cabinet is 267 mm wide, 1137 mm tall and 378.5 mm deep, and it weighs 81.6 kg. The launch price was USD 24,800 per pair, backed by a five-year warranty.

Engineering and use context

Midrange and woofer cones are a sandwich of graphene-layered carbon fibre around a core. For the A5 that core moved from Rohacell foam to an aluminium honeycomb, which is stiffer while staying light. Magico chose the size of the 5 in midrange so that its dispersion matches the tweeter and gave it a new foam surround and a motor with a pure titanium voice coil and a copper pole cap that reduces eddy currents. The midrange has its own sub-enclosure, shielded from the back wave of the bass drivers. Each woofer has a 5 in titanium voice coil, a large copper cap and half an inch of linear excursion, with inductance below 0.18 mH, and produces 115 dB at 50 Hz and 1 m. The tweeter follows the geometry of the M Series units and uses a customised neodymium motor in a damped back chamber. A 24 dB per octave Linkwitz-Riley crossover based on Magico's Elliptical Symmetry topology divides the signal. The enclosure is machined entirely from 6061-T6 aircraft-grade aluminium with complex internal bracing and finished in black anodising with a matte or eggshell sheen. Grilles are optional, and the speaker stands on spikes.

Pairing

A moderately sensitive 4 ohm load like this calls for an amplifier with high current delivery, and the upper end of Magico's power range leaves room for the largest solid-state designs. The sealed bass extension suits rooms of roughly 25 to 50 m2.

Alternatives

Magico's A3 applies the same sealed aluminium concept in a smaller floorstander.