All of the Magico speakers I have heard (M and S) have been outstanding, with transparency so good as to make me question my lifelong obsession with electrostats. Few dynamic speakers do that for me.
They're also sufficiently expensive I doubt I'll ever one any.
But stimulated by Magico I see a fad for sealed box speakers in general arising, and I think that needs to be qualified.
In the 1970's when I was becoming an audiophile, sealed box speakers were becoming unpopular. The physics of ported speakers had become well understood, so they were no longer the shot-in-the-dark they had originally been. And with a ported speaker you could get deeper bass and freedom from bass distortion that were unobtainable in comparatively priced sealed box speakers.
Affordability is still an issue for most people. And many kinds of music require full bass response.
If you cover up the ports on a typical value priced but well designed ported speaker, it doesn't sound cleaner like Magico. It sounds muffled as if you've trapped much of the sound in the box and it can't get out.
What makes Magico speakers work so well is the very rigid aluminum enclosures. Sealed boxes don't sound anywhere near as good in wood, at low frequencies much of the radiation is from the box rather than the speaker drivers. The sealed box design puts a lot more pressure on the box, and if the box isn't rigid enough, it doesn't sound good.
When you go for very solid cast or extruded aluminum enclosures, you are inevitably going to end up with speakers that are very expensive, too expensive for most people.
And if you want full frequency response which much music demands, either you are going to need a very large sealed box speaker, or a subwoofer. And then you are throwing away the simplicity of the design, you will need to do a lot of system tuning and room matching to get it to work right, and likely your sub will be ported to some degree throwing away the 'phase accuracy' of sealed box speakers (which I don't actually think is all that important, but if that was what attracted you to sealed boxes then you should know you may have to ultimately sacrifice it anyway).
BTW, all speakers sound 'cleaner' if you electronically roll off the bass.
Decent high fidelity is only achieved if you have response down to 30 Hz, really high fidelity requires response to 20 Hz, and hyper high fidelity is enhanced by response to 15 Hz.
Whenever you extend the response below 150 Hz in ordinary home sized rooms you are going to need EQ to deal with room modes. And as you extend down each octave further, the requirement gets greater.
But you can't use EQ much to extend the response of a sealed speaker, because the sealed speaker bass headroom rolls off as soon as the bass response rolls off. Boosting the bass will largely increase distortion rather than the sonic fundamentals.
OTOH, ported speakers generally have lots more bass headroom, and you can do more with equalization.
People who have focused on Home Theater and similar things already know these details which many two channel enthusiasts (of which I am one) may be unaware.
