Do distortion 's affect enjoyment of speaker?

08-06-14: Bifwynne
@Melbguy1 -- I've had my ears (pun) on the Magico S3s or S5s, for many of the reasons you just mentioned. And in time, I may wind up there. But right now, I'm obsessing over a type of distortion that many do not speak about or understand ... time coherence.

Both the S3 and S5 are amazing loudspeakers in their own way, given the right acoustical environment. I agree with your view of the Vandy 5a Carbons & Vandy 7. Yes, they are very good speakers, but I don't think i'd trade my S5's for even the 7's. I agree with your view that time coherence is important, though of course there are different ways you can achieve that. I recall asking Magico if the S5's are perfectly time and phase coherent & received this response - "If the question is, are the drivers summed in phase and the phase is perfectly aligned in the crossover region? Then yes." Subjectively i'd have to agree, the S5's are very coherent and well balanced.

"If the question is, are the drivers summed in phase and the phase is perfectly aligned in the crossover region? Then yes." Subjectively i'd have to agree, the S5's are very coherent and well balanced.
Melbguy1

The Magico guys are pretty slick & wiggled their way out of your question knowing quite well that you are not fully knowledgeable on this subject of time-coherence. You are not the only one in this situation - 99% of the crowd is in the same situation & the speaker manuf take advantage of this.
Just to be clear: I'm not berating you & neither am I trying to be harsh. merely stating the situation.
The Magico is phase-coherent only at its cross-over frequency & nowhere else! And this is pretty typical of almost all loudspeakers in the market - being phase coherent at the x-over freq comes about pretty easily. You can see from the measurements that tweeter & woofer are in-phase otherwise there'd be a big suckout at the x-over freq. Obviously that suckout is not happening so the speaker is phase coherent at the x-over. But that's about it re. phase coherence for this speaker. It's maintaining the phase relationship among all frequencies across the entire audio spectrum is where the expertise of the speaker designer comes into play.
Not withstanding the above, good to read that you are enjoying your Magico speakers... :-)

Bombaywalla, thanks for your comments. I think however you're jumping
conclusions based on one comment Magico made in isolation. Fyi, I
had earlier received this response from Magico - "The S5 are both
time and phase coherent." Maybe not perfectly time coherent, but I
think you're clutching at straws here. If you read any of the many reviews
on the S5's, including Martin Colloms review for Hifi Critic, there is no
suggestion the S5's are anything but the most coherent sounding of
speakers. And my own experience also reflects that. I've heard Avalon
Transcendent which sounds very coherent. I would say no more so
subjectively than S5. In saying that, it is doubtful any box speaker whether
Vandersteen, Avalon or Magico is going to sound quite as overall coherent
as a panel speaker like your Scintillas. Though no loudspeaker is perfect,
and the Scintilla's have their own demons.

@Melbguy1 ... actually, I think Bombaywalla is clutching something more than straws... its gonads. I put the question directly to Magico's US sales folks. Here is their response:

"[T]his really required a response from our CTO, Yair Tamman. See below response to your questions. You will have to excuse his expressions, being that he is from Tel Aviv, some things don't translate easily to English. That said, I've left his response in the raw form.

"'Phase coherence is one of the most discussed issue in our industry.

"I don't disagree with the fact our speaker can't be phase coherent.

"Yet, it was never prove (sic) in controlled listening test as audible (many tried - all didn't achieve the wanted result).

"Yet using high order crossover has proven advantages. Like low distortion, controled (Sic) directivity , drivers linearity and many many more proven advantages

"There is also a very big difference in the drivers you can use.'"

So there you have it. Here's an interesting experiment. Magico speakers corrected with DEQX.

Hopefully, next week, I'll be able to check out the DEQX on my Paradigm S8s.

Melbguy1, there are no step response measurements for the S5 to verify what you are saying. All their other speakers are not time-coherent so it's reasonable to assume to that the S series would not be. But, like you wrote, I could be wrong. Anyway, I'm not going to argue with you on this. Enjoy the speakers...