Hi Peterayer,
Of course not! I still love Magico VERY much. I admire the way they do things...
And yes, I have listened to all the Q models. The day I went to listen to the Q7, I really went to listen to the Q1, which sounded very fine indeed. But as the Q7 were 'right there', I had to ask the sales to turn them on, and what a mistake. They made me 'forget' that I went for the Q1. haha...
The Q7 were driven by a Balabo amp. DAC was BADA Alpha2, Preamp was Balabo. CD player was Spectral. I only had 30 mins that day, but it was a very memorable 30 mins.
I know Nilthepill say he doesn't express his opinion often, but the comment that he is "highly skeptical that these speakers can 'fully' produce life like woody bloom".
To me that is just a plain wrong statement. Are you saying that the wood should 'sing along' to produce 'bloom'?
Whatever bloom there is, it should have been recorded. And the drivers should faithfully reproduce. If the 'wood' starts to sing along, you will get 'double the bloom'. It just doesn't make sense. I can see why one would associate wood with 'bloom' (all the wooden instruments), but don't forget, there's also brass instruments. So wood speakers can never reproduce brass instruments faithfully?
In short, speakers should just disappear and get out of the way, and only an inert silent cabinet can to that!