Unless you’re one of the few very wealthy people who have seen a marked uptick in their personal fortunes recently, you’re probably not in the market for a pair of insanely expensive speakers. But it never hurts to do a little window shopping, so feast your eyes on the $750,000 per pair, Magico Audio M9 floor-standing speakers.
Hayward, CA-based Magico Audio is no stranger to the ultra-high-end speaker market. Its previous flagship, the M6, sell for $172,000 per pair.
But the M6 were clearly just a warm-up act. Standing at 80 inches tall (about 6.6 feet), the new M9s possess the stature of Darth Vader, while their aggressive posture and five front-firing drivers have convinced us that their designers were also big Doctor Who fans — these are undoubtedly the Daleks of the speaker world.
The superlatives don’t end there (and for three-quarters of a million dollars they better not): The M9s weigh a jaw-dropping 1000 pounds each. That’s more than a well-equipped Harley-Davidson touring motorcycle. We suggest you consult an engineer before placing them in your home just in case the load proves catastrophic.
Magico claims that the M9s use the world’s first loudspeaker enclosure to combine inner and outer skins of carbon fiber, and we all know how expensive carbon fiber can be (ahem, Lamborghini). It’s not just for looks. The use of the ultra-expensive material paired with Magico’s construction techniques is aimed at eliminating the vibration that lesser speakers can suffer from.
Unwanted vibrations not only introduce competing sounds that reduce the overall quality of the audio, they effectively rob the drivers of some of their energy which should be used to project sound outward, not inward. Magico says it has accomplished just that: “Even though the M9 has a commanding physical presence, in sonic terms, it completely vanishes.”
Despite the M9’s incredible bulk, Magico felt it needed to outsource the necessary crossover circuits. But don’t worry, the separate 40-pound crossover unit and its 60-pound dedicated power supply are included in the price. Yup, we were relieved, too.
It’s unlikely we’ll ever be fortunate enough to audition these audacious audio components ourselves, but Magico’s listed specifications should give you a sense of their capabilities.
Within each tower (a speaker term that has never been more fitting) you’ll find a 1.10-inch diamond coated Beryllium tweeter, a 6-inch Nano-Tec cone with aluminum honeycomb core midrange driver, two similarly constructed 11-inch mid-woofers, and two 15-inch woofers.
This combination of drivers runs the full gamut of frequencies from 18 Hz (which is about as low as most home theater subwoofers go) to an impossibly high 50 KHz. And if you’ve got the right amplifiers to drive these beasts, they’ll let you push a maximum of 2,000 watts into their circuitry.
If your home is big enough and your credit card limit high enough, the Magico Audio M9 speakers can be yours this fall, as they’re expected to ship by the fourth quarter of 2020.
