The Teresonic Magus Silver Loudspeakers looked exactly like their regular Magus Loudspeakers. That is they were a strikingly beautiful, stand-mounted, single-driver monitors that utilize a Lowther-Voigt DX-55 driver in an oval, sculpted wooden enclosure. The matching stands were also very attractive and work well sonically. The finish of the 15-inch tall, multi-chambered, curved enclosure was furniture grade and liked by everyone that came through; I was surprised by how many people commented on their good looks. It amazed me that a speaker this small could be 98 dB efficient, but upon use there was no doubt they were every bit this efficient.
Setup
Just like the original Magus loudspeakers, the Magus Silvers came well packed and they used the same wonderful stands which were easily assembled. I should mention again that the stands were beautiful as well as being designed to help you get the most out of the speakers sonically. The adjustable shelf that was under the speaker was ingenuous, more details on this latter.
I used the Magus Silvers in both my upstairs system and my reference system downstairs. Upstairs, I used them with the Roksan Caspian integrated amp, with the Oppo DVD player as the source as well as a Direct TV box. Downstairs, I used them to listen to vinyl with the Wavac EC-300B.
Speaker cables were Teresonic's Clarison speaker wire. Upstairs they were setup close to the rear wall and about three feet from the side walls. Downstairs I used them about two feet from the side walls and about three feet out into the room. You can fine tune the bass to the room by moving the adjustable shelve up and down till you get the quickest tightest bass, or if you like a slightly warmer bass like the old BBC LS3.5s. This feature make placement much easier.
Differences from the Magus
The most obvious difference was that they used the Lowther DX55 drivers now with the pure silver wound coils. Another difference was the addition of an adjustable notch filter. There was a three-position control for the filter on the back that would allow you to start out with a lot of help during break in and to dial down the amount of filtering as the speakers would break in. The far left setting, looking from the back, brought the filter all the way down. The filter was a no-capacitance design, and could also be useful for tuning the speaker to your room or system. I think this was a nice setup; the only other change was the addition of insulated WBT binding post.
The Sound
According to Teresonic's literature, Magus is the Latin word for “Magical”, and it's their intention to bring the magical sound and acceptance that was the BBC LS3/5 to a high efficiency small monitor. By the way the Magus is ten times more efficient than the BBC LS3/5s. While I thought the original Magus was very successful at fulfilling this goal, the Silvers had much more magic. To be honest I was caught off guard by how much better the Silvers sounded.
In my review of the original Magus Loudspeakers I said, “I had no idea you could get this kind of dynamics, scale, life and transparency out of such a small speaker. The Magus was a Lowther to its soul with all of its tunefulness and lack of crossover distortion. They are so good at making music that it is amazing. They get the essentials right. The sound defies their size by many times. They have a sound as big and dynamic as the Audio Note Es while being much more transparent. In fact they are every bit as transparent and dynamic as my Ikonoklast Model 3s, but the Magus will play much louder. I should note that of course they do not go as deep as either the Audio Notes or the Ikonoklast.”
Well, as I expected that was just as true for the Magus Silvers, but the Silvers added a significant degree of refinement, speed, nimbleness, and sweetness to the already exceptional small speaker. Let’s take just a few minutes to break it apart for you.
Setup