There’s a hallway in Warsaw’s PGE Narodowy Stadium that houses several rooms designed for recording television broadcasts at sporting events. These rooms are acoustically treated, large in size, and typically locked down yearly by exhibitors showing the largest, most expensive systems.
Jason Thorpe and Matt Bonaccio about to go down Super-System Alley
Again this year, there were three rooms, pretty much next to each other, housing systems that retailed for big bucks, in some cases well over a million dollars each. Matt Bonaccio, Doug Schneider, and I had talked at length about these three systems and the speakers that fronted them. We decided that we would see if we could rank them in some way, based on, well, based on whatever we wanted—by the whole experience they provided for us.
Is this informal? Oh yes. Fair? Maybe, maybe not. But let’s just say that by displaying their systems, these companies are opening themselves to public scrutiny, and that makes them fair game for a journalist looking for a story.
Sonus Faber hosted the first room we entered, and here they were headlining their new, all-out, baller Suprema speaker system, part of the company’s Reference collection. I had seen this $750,000 speaker system (all prices in USD) in photos, and via Doug’s extensive writeup, but being in its presence was a different experience. The main towers look like large speakers on their own—elegant, beautifully sculpted enclosures with feminine profiles.
Behind them were two large, dedicated woofer cabinets, which come as part of the package, and these, quite literally, pounded. When we walked in, they were playing some sort of ambient jungle soundtrack interspersed by insane waves of deep, pulsating bass. It was a massive sound, one that was more performance art than actual music. This trend toward sound effects continued, with ethereal techno featuring—once more—high levels of deep bass.
Loud, they were playing it loud. It didn’t take long for us to get the measure of this system. The high volume was impactful without being shrill or harsh, and imaging was, quite frankly, beside the point. The size of these speakers, the insane volume levels, the quirky techno—the Suprema system made its point in a way that few audio systems can do.
This was Holy Shit Bass. The VU meters in the four Classé amps swung wildly, almost hitting their stops as the amps gave it their all. One techno track I recognized was “I’m Free” by Symbolico, which features more jungle sounds and nutty bass, totally in sync with each other, played at honest-to-god dance-hall levels through this system. The impact and physical force of this presentation was astounding.
We moved along to the Magico room, hosted by Magico’s Polish distributor, Dwa Kanaly. Here we found a pair of Magico M7 loudspeakers ($375,000/pair). A pair of M7s do not have separate subwoofers and are half the price of the Suprema system, but are still in Oligarch Audio territory. Amplification was by Pilium Audio, and the digital source components were by MSB Technology.
It’s no secret that the music played in system demos at audio shows is, for the most part, insipid pap. Audiophiles seem to listen for ease of consumption, and hard-edged music drives listeners out of a room. So exhibitors tend to tailor the music to the tastes of the audiophile masses, softening down into the middle and doing their best to avoid offending while still providing pleasing details and flourishes that show their systems to good effect.
And, again, for the most part, these bland offerings get on my wick more with each passing year. It’s gotten to the point where I dread having to sit through a demonstration curated by an exhibitor whose prime goal is to play music that he likes and has personal meaning for him.
Here we were presented with a lush, pan-flute-in-an-English-meadow symphony, but played at a volume significantly lower than ideal. How the hell are we supposed to do a shootout with this lame-ass, bullshit music? I had my laptop open and was taking notes, but I had to type in the loud passages only because a bald boomer with a six-pack of wieners on the back of his neck kept looking back and scowling at me as the noise of my keyboard was disturbing his listening experience.
Next up was Norwegian wool-cardigan fusion jazz, still played at a level so low that the Magicos sounded small and ineffectual. I had to recalibrate myself. Was I still feeling a numbing effect from the high volumes of the Sonus Faber room? To give the benefit of the doubt, we sat through several tracks played through the M7s, so we had plenty of time to acclimatize.
At the tail end of the session, they played Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” which, while not a favorite of mine, at least gave me a point of reference because we had made a point to listen to it in the Sonus Faber room. It sounded good, but again, at low levels it just didn’t energize the room and the low bass seemed to be lacking, whereas it certainly wasn’t lacking through the Suprema system. I asked the exhibitor if he could turn up the volume, and he bumped it up maybe 3dB, but I’m pretty sure he turned it back down again. However, for a brief moment, I heard the Magicos open up and start to bloom. These might be fantastic speakers, but I have no idea what the hell they actually sound like. They deserve better than this sort of demonstration.
Sandwiched between the Magico and Sonus Faber rooms was one featuring a pair of Wilson Audio Alexx Vs (135,000/pair). Each Alexx V was backed up by its own Loki subwoofer. Amplification here was via Audio Research. Although the music was also curated for this demo, and once again the music seemed deeply personal to the exhibitor, this was a more engaging demo at reasonable volume levels.
The room was tightly packed, so we grabbed a couple of spare seats way off to the side of the left speaker. Here the midrange sounded shouty and out of balance, with no air in the highs. No surprise there. Hovering like vultures, we pounced on a couple of central chairs as they opened up, and now we were in business. The mids and highs opened up, with a nice sense of scale with fantastic imaging, but again, the bass seemed somewhat lightweight, especially given the size of these formidable speakers and their augmentation by two powered subwoofers. Doug wondered if the Audio Research amps were to blame, because they use tubes throughout. He wished they used the solid-state D’Agostino amps that were just sitting there doing nothing. The Alexx Vs, he felt, needed some solid-state muscle to hold a tight grip on them, even if each speaker had a small powered sub tagging along.
I guess it’s always possible that briefly subjecting ourselves to the monstrous bass and over-the-top presentation in the Sonus Faber room ruined our bass-appreciation abilities for the day, but I don’t think that’s it.
Statement-level speakers should really do something more than just image well and politely play audiophile standards. Any decent-sized floorstander can do that. No, what I think happened here is that the Sonus Faber’s outsized, almost-cartoonish volume levels and outlandish bass made me rethink what a cost-no-object speaker should accomplish.
I suppose it’s only fair to consider price here. The Magicos are somewhere close to twice the price of the Wilson Audio speakers, and the Sonus Fabers are twice the price again. So damn straight the Sonus Fabers should sound better than the other two. But there’s more to it than that. I have no doubt that if the Magico and Wilson Audio exhibitors had cranked up the volume levels and dispensed with the audiophile fluff music, this comparison might’ve been a dramatically closer matchup.
A statement-level speaker should make a fucking statement. In this head-to-head competition, only one of these three systems threw down.
Jason Thorpe
Senior Editor, SoundStage!
