The Analysis Omega Ribbon Speakers Vs. Magico

Cont.

And every now and then, thoughts would drift back to my visits to a local high-end dealer to listen to the much J. Valin praised Magico speakers. Jonathan and TAS have seemed much impressed with them, issue after issue.

I recalled walking into this dealer’s incredibly well setup “big” room and saw the imposing Magico Model 6’s sitting on their musical launch pads, all fueled up by the Very Best of High-End Everything. At 650 pounds each, a mighty impressive sight it was.

Magico Model 6

Even though I was way off axis as I entered the room I immediately noticed the $160,000 6’s imaged like crazy. I also noticed some vinyl was spinning on a multi-kilobuck Clearaudio rig. Wow. This experience was going to be a life changer, I thought as I sat down mid center.

Black things spun, notes played, the room’s acoustic treatment Obama swatted pesky artifacts, and life was grand—Not.  Cognitive dissonance had arrived, an unwanted and untimely guest if ever there was one.

The brain has this nasty knack of processing things out of sight, rendering your conscious mind usually the last to know. It can be anywhere from a slow as ice few milliseconds to as much as several glacial seconds before “you” have fully comprehended what’s going on, according to a number of recent scientific studies. In a very real sense, your conscious self is just a continual memory, always lagging behind what other parts of your brain already know. 

Maybe that’s why listening to music is like munching on Proust’s petites madeleines; past and current mental ingredients get baked together in the background, and the conscious mind is eventually served up a tasty, or sometimes not so, dish. Musical madeleines are what we audibly dine on. And this Magico treat did not taste as overwhelmingly excellent as I had been expecting.

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