Magico - Wide vs. Narrow

This thread has some incredibly horrible misinformation in it. It is full of speculation and simply wrong assertions. 
I happened to have a pair of M5’s loaned to me directly by Alon for an event we did for him relations to his personal art endeavors. 
For starters they are NOT simply boxes or “Lossy” boxes as someone speculated. They are all aluminum with the aluminum machined cross bracing seen in all of the Magico designs. The drivers are sandwich cones and yes the ring radiator is the Scan Speak 9900.  The baffle is machined from a solid aluminum slab and is wood veneered over aluminium.

Regarding baffle width there is so much misinformation here. The rectangular baffle mostly affects 2 things, 1 the frequency where edge diffraction begins and 2 the corner frequency where radiation goes for 1pi to 2pi.(  unidirectional forward facing radiation to Omni directional radiation.) Technically the 2 factors work against each other as you want the edge diffraction out of the critical upper frequencies that interfere with localization which means big baffles and yet the opposite is true in that we want wide dispersion that a narrow baffle gives.

It is always a compromise where 1 approach is supplemented with techniques to overcome the the shortcomings of either approach. Narrow baffles need a lot of baffle step compensation and a loss of efficiency is a result as well as diffraction effects in the critical upper mid band.  Wilson, Vandersteen and several other narrow baffle advocates add heavy wool felt to absorb the HF front radiation that would impact imaging and diffraction.

Wide baffles move diffraction down in frequency to ranges that have far less impact on imaging and have less loss of sensitivity from baffle step compensation which typically gives a more dynamically responsive speaker. They unfortunately need rear firing drivers to help rear / side radiation in the typical living room although for near field listening they have great precision since there is less room interactions. 

The 2 design approaches  yield designs that have radically different room interactions and wife acceptance factors.  The wife acceptance factor and typical living room treatments are what hurts type wide baffle speakers today. 

I don’t believe anyone suggested the Magico cabinet is lossy.

it like many competitors is largely inert and typically exceeds the s/n of the room it resides in.

A rear firing tweeter hopefully with both an on/off switch is 100% distortion and can be found on some minimal baffle designs ( the Vandersteen 7 for example ) principally to compensate for “ overdamped rooms “… which i think, if i understand the OP point about music lovers vs audiophile are mostly the domain of the latter.

Enjoy the music

@tomic601 said, "A rear firing tweeter... is 100% distortion..."

I disagree.

Implemented correctly, one beneficial thing a rear-firing tweeter does is this: It corrects the spectral balance of the reflection field.

Duke

rear-firing tweeter advocate

While destroying the timing information that the ear brain is much more sensitive to. 

i should add that my decision references are unamplified acoustic instruments in reverberant spaces captured w simple microphones, so the temporal data is in the recording.

I understand the allure of the rear firing tweeter as i have them. It’s possible Vandersteen didn’t implement them correctly. They include both a level control, on off, zobel and i can verify step correction ( there is certainly step correction on the front facing drivers.

i do respect your work Duke.

Best in musical happiness