Magico S5 Speaker - SET UP ADVICE PLEASE - Tow-In - Etc.

Fsmithjack,

Welcome to the world of high resolution for both the pros and cons.

When you have a hyper detailed speakers you will be aware of all of the tiny things that can affect the systems tonal balance and utlimate performance.

We have the Personas and they are as revealing if not more so than the Magicos, but boy when you get them setup right, they are an amazing window into the music.

As per cabling, the Kubala Sosna sound is definatly on the warm side there are a new line of Enklein cables that are reasonbly priced at $1,800 per a set of interconnects based on the $16k David interconnects and they have a wonderful balance of warmth and body as well as detail.

You will be amazed at what changing your power conditioner might accomplish.

We do not have the negative view of Beryilium drivers as Bar 81 does, Beryilium, Diamond, Aluminium, Titantium, are all good materials which in the hands of a skilled engineering team can all make excellent diaphrams.

Beryilium is prized for its light weight and high ridgidity so it is very fast and clean treble, with a lot more resolution than the wizzer cone/ Lowther sound, exact opposties in fact. So with that kind of resolution you will have to retune your entire setup to add more warmth where your old speakers needed enhanced clarity, so very revealing silver based cables would work wonders on a softer treble speaker such as the Rythem.

Please read up on the Isoacoustics you will be amazed at how big a change they will make.

Good luck and our phones are always available for any questions or ideas you want to bounce off of us.

Your sub hookup questions should be addressed directly to Sumiko. As the ground for the speakers on a Rel is not like a nomral ground in an electrical sense. the Rel subs read the signal from the amp like an rca cable.

Dave owner
Audio Doctor NJ

What you are doing is putting bandaids on a problem instead of fixing it.  If cables make that much of a difference in your system in the other direction, you are simply trying to offset issues with both products.  Before wasting money on bandaids, address the core problem - which is your room and depending on your floor, the speaker footers.  If you do that I expect that you might not need to change much and even if you decide to get new cables you will be looking at other cables, etc that aren't that colored.

@fsmithjack 

The Kubala Sosna cables are filtering the sound and no doubt removing some of the treble and brightness. Glad that this band aid works for you for now but you really should try to get to the bottom of what is causing a sound that is giving you headaches.

Audiotroy 10-14-2017
Your sub hookup questions should be addressed directly to Sumiko. As the ground for the speakers on a Rel is not like a nomral ground in an electrical sense. the Rel subs read the signal from the amp like an rca cable.

Hi Dave,

Before I submitted my previous posts about this I had looked at the manual for the Sumiko sub. As can be seen on page 15 the recommended connection of the black wire in the Speakon cable to a "bridged (differential input) amplifier" (which obviously would also apply to a fully balanced amplifier) is to a chassis screw. That is the same as what is recommended by REL for their subs, and will work ok in most cases as I mentioned, although depending on the amp design hum may result in some cases. But connecting it to the ground shell of an RCA input connector, as I suggested, is a better approach that will certainly work well with this amp, given the mention in the amp’s manual that the RCA ground shell corresponds to signal ground. Which would be the case with almost all other amplifier designs as well, aside perhaps for some that have transformer coupled inputs.

Fsmithjack, two more points on that subject, the first of which you'll be especially glad to hear:

1)The risk to the resistors that I mentioned, if the black wire were connected to the amp’s negative output terminal, would be much greater with the Magicos than with the Rethms, since the much lower efficiency of the Magicos would result in more voltage being applied across the resistors for a given listening volume.

2)If the subs were connected in that manner the risk to the resistors would arise even if the subs were turned off, since it is the ground path through them that is involved.

Regards, and continued good luck!

-- Al

fsmithjack-
this is a very interesting thread with excellent information. You posted beautiful pics! Hope your system is getting better w/ help from this panel of experts.
Happy Listening!