Cannata,
I'm not sure if this is progress as far as you are concerned, but here's a little tidbit from Fremer's recent blog. As you can tell, Mr. Fremer actually is not afraid to speak his mind, unlike the stale characters that Wolf uses as his pet parrots...
"...Also in attendance was Magico's Alon Wolf, who, in the upstairs listening room was debuting the new Magico M3 speaker (appx. $82,000). Electronics were CH Precision, C1 DAC/Pre-amp, D1 SACD/CD drive, L1 preamplifier, P1 phono preamplifier, M1 mono-blocks and X1 power-supply, The turntable was the DeBaer with Ortofon MC Anna. Cabling was AudioQuest Wel signature.
As I told Mr. Wolff after sitting through his demo for consumers, I thought it was too loud and the musical choices not sufficiently varied to show off the speakers' capabilities. The people who design and/or own companies are not necessarily the people who should do musical demos!
This is something I learned a long time ago that this experience only confirmed and I wasn't shy in telling him. Members of the San Francisco Audio Society also in attendance agreed. However, obvious from the demo was the superb sonics of the newly developed tweeter and the room's big mid bass hump that was not the speaker's fault, but why play the system sufficiently loud to excite it?
Later after the crowds had mostly left, Mr. Wolf and I listened to 96/24 vinyl rips I'd brought on a USB stick, including the entire second side of an original UK pressing of Abbey Road. Wherever I start that side, it always ends up going for the entire side!
Wolf's reference was the recent stereo re-master and this rip just made him shake his head in disbelief. The sound produced by this system was very, very impressive in every way. These speakers do what Magico does best but for a very "reasonable" cost compared to some of the line's more expensive products: superb linearity and revelation of inner-detail. The room issues prevented any kind of accurate take on the speaker's bottom end.
However, it was the downstairs system located in a big entry room that you really couldn't call a "listening room" and which had no business sounding as it did in that location, that really impressed me. It consisted of a pair of Kharma Exquisite Midi-Grand loudspeakers, CH Precision electronics, the aforementioned Spiral Groove SG 1.2/Kiseki Purple Heart combo that I set up and Audioquest Wel Signature interconnects and Kharma Grand Reference speaker cables..."
I wonder if they smoked a big, fat J before putting the Beatles on. It is San Francisco, after all.
Read more at
http://www.analogplanet.com/content...dio-systems-san-francisco#5eLfg6CHLQ8Qab4M.99