Magico Q7 Mk II - Small Changes, Big Difference

[Steady339]

Link to a Oct 20th, 2015, The Absolute Sound review of the Magico Q7 Mk II by Robert Harley:

Magico Q7 Mk II Loudspeaker | The Absolute Sound

[cmarin]

Steady339,

Thank you for sharing the review.

Great read and agree completely with Harley's perspectives: the Q7mkII provides both greater transparency and musicality at the same time; and small changes create big differences.

In economic terms, it provides a Pareto optimal improvement - increasing the value of two typically mutually exclusive goods: transparency and musical engagement.

The reduced overall distortion floor of the mkII also opens new possibilities to musical enjoyment by pairing them with components with equally lower distortion. And since you are better able to hear the distortion contributed by associated components, it makes it easier to select the ones with the lowest relative distortion.

In my case, this allowed a profoundly noticeable improvement in the performance of my digital sources by reducing distortion through improved software (Windows Server 2012R2 and Audiophile Optimizer in Ultimate Core mode); high quality linear power supplies for the USB card and the SSDs used to store the OS and music files; lower distortion cables and power cords; and the use of a highly resolving DAC that extracts even greater value from straight 16/44.1 files.

And the low sensitivity of the mkII (94dB), allows it to be paired with both the wonderfully sublime Absolare (845s/52watts) SETs, as well as the forceful yet delicate solid state Soulution 701 monos.

The Magico Q7mkII is a tour de force. Magico and Alon Wolfe deserve credit for pushing the envelope of speaker design.