⌈ AUDEL is an Italian company founded in 2008 by WALTER CARZAN, who is also its chief designer. Their products are manufactured in a small city of Casteldaccia, on Sicily. For this review we received MAGIKA MkII stand-mounted speakers together with matching stand. ⌋

ET'S HAVE A LOOK AT THE TESTED LOUDSPEAKERS - and what will we see? And we will see speakers beautifully designed and made with a heart. Made of front to back laminated birch plywood layers, with rounded top and bottom corners and veneer inserts. The use of plywood in this way, displaying its natural "architecture", so to speak, is not a new idea - have a look at the Finnish PENAUDIO’s, Polish CLOSER ACOUSTICS’s or Swiss BOENICKE AUDIO’s products. However, the execution, that is, the way they are made and finished, deserve special recognition.

I mentioned „architecture” for a reason. WALTER CARZAN, founder and designer of Audel is an architect by profession and audio was a hobby that has become a way of life over time. Control over form and the awareness of the cooperation of various elements are obvious in his projects. It is enough to take a look at the MAGIKA MkII loudspeakers we have tested, together with the stands designed for them, called the Superior Stand.

▌ MAGIKA MkII

MAGIKA MkII ARE A TWO-WAY STAND-MOUNT SPEAKERS with vented cabinets. Their dimensions - 380 x 200 x 288 mm - place them in the lower regions of the size of this type of speakers. The impression of lightness is emphasized by rounded edges - top and bottom ones.

⸜ CABINET The distinctive appearance of the loudspeakers is due to the cabinet made of plywood. However, it is not a classic "box" with glued, flat panels. Instead, the designer chose a much more difficult and expensive way, because he glued the whole from the panels milled from the inside - there are a dozen or so such elements for each unit. This solution is called IRS (Internal Ribs System) and it is supposed to minimize standing waves. The whole thing is not painted, but covered with beeswax.

⸜ DRIVERS The drivers are mounted on the front, 36 mm thick baffle made of plywood and veneered MDF. The treble range is handled by a 29 mm soft dome with a characteristic hollow in the center and a solid aluminum front. The driver is supplied by the Danish company SB Acoustics and belongs to the Satori series (TW-29R-B). Its characteristic feature is a mechanically separated (decoupled) front, which is to minimize vibrations transferred to the diaphragm from the loudspeaker’s cabinet.

In turn, the mid and low tones are processed by a 14 cm driver with a polypropylene braided diaphragm and a solid, cast basket (the manufacturer specifies the diameter of ø 6", but somewhere else I found a different size specified as 5.5"). In the center you can see a stationary phase cone - it is used to align the phase at the transition point between the drivers. I didn't manage to wring it out, so unfortunately I don't know who its producer is. On its rubber suspension you can see thickenings to improve its linearity. The manufacturer only informs us that it features a diaphragm formed following company's proprietary New Curv geometry.

This driver works with a bass-reflex port formed by milling the housing, with an outlet on the front panel. The company materials say that this is not an ordinary bass-reflex design, but something like a BR combined with a short transmission line - you can see it on the enclosure’s cross-section. This solution is called CLT - Composed Transmission Line.

The crossover, dividing the frequency range at 2.4 kHz, turns out to be surprisingly simple, but very nice. It consists of four elements - two air coils, a resistor and a polypropylene capacitor. It was assembled using the point-to-point technique, without the use of a printed circuit board, on an additional, small wood plate. Internal connections are made with nice-looking cables resembling van den Hul ones.

⸜ STANDS The Superior Stand stands have been designed specifically to work with the Magika speakers and I would not treat them as an option - you have to pay extra for them - but as an integral whole. They align with the loudspeakers in a refined way and look great together.

706 mm high, they are made of glued plywood in such a way that the large lower board and the smaller upper one are connected via a single column. The stability of the bases is good, although the connection between the top and the base column is not perfectly stable. However, the way the speakers are attached to them is more important. Namely, at the front of the Magika MkII they rest on two spikes, and at the back they are screwed to the stand with a screw and a plastic element. I do not know if this is an coincident or an intended choice, but the anti-vibration elements invented and used in Roksan Xerxes turntables look exactly the same.

The Magika MkII speakers on the Superior Stand look great. Front and back veneered with exotic wood veneer, great cabinet, very good components, including speaker terminals, beautiful proportions and careful workmanship - it is really classy looking product. Let me add that you can buy optional, magnetic, round grilles that cover only the drivers.

▌ SOUND

⸤ HOW WE LISTENED The Audel Magika MkII loudspeakers were placed in the spots where most of the loudspeakers in my house sound best, that is at a distance of 210 cm from each other and 230 cm from the listening position. They were 70 cm away from the back wall, but at a much lesser distance from the bookshelves behind them.

This is the case when you don't need much effort to make the loudspeakers sound really good, but each improvement brings something more. For me the most significant improvement was achieved via toeing them in in such a way that they their axes intersected about 50 cm in front of me. Thanks to this, I obtained an incredibly deep and dense sound stage.

The loudspeakers were driven by the Soulution 710 transistor power amplifier through Siltech Triple Crown cables. I dedicated a separate listening session to a setup featuring the Leben CS600X tube amplifier connected using Western Electric NOS cables. The point of reference for the Italian loudspeakers were the Harbeth M40.1, as well as the Avatar Audio Holophony Number 4 III stand mount speakers and the Monitor Audio Silver 100 G7, tested in parallel.

Recordings used in the test | a selection

⸜ DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET, Time Out, Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment/SME Records SRGS-4535, SACD (1959/2000).
⸜ OSCAR PETERSON TRIO, We Get Request, Verve/Lasting Impression Music LIM K2HD 032, K2HD Mastering, „24 Gold Direct-from-Master Edition UDM”, Master CD-R (1964/2009).
⸜ ARNE DOMNÉRUS, Jazz at the Pawnshop. Vol. I, II & III, Proprius/Lasting Impression Music LIM UHD 071 LE, 3 x UltraHD CD + DVD (1976/2012).
⸜ RIVAL SONS, Great Western Valkyrie, Erache Records/Hydrant Music QIHC-10059, CD (2014).
⸜ PINK FLOYD, The Endless River, Parlophone Records 4621333, CD + Blu-ray (2014).

TAKE FIVE A TRACK FROM DAVE BRUBECK QUARTET’S album of the same title begins with a progression - first, in the left channel includes enter the cymbals, then the piano in the right one, then the double bass appears in the middle, then at some point a saxophone „explodes” in front of us. Progression consists in building a vast space on the one hand, and on the other hand a progression of timbres - from high to low, culminating with the saxophone in the foreground.

Oh, how well these tiny Italian speakers showed these dependencies! I knew it would sound good, I knew other Italian loudspeakers, most of which reproduce beautiful tonality and create a large volume, but there is always a shadow of doubt. The more so that the Audel Magika MkII are small loudspeakers, with a small mid-woofer and a limited internal volume of the enclosure. And yet…

The thing is that these are loudspeakers with a beautifully balanced sound, from high, clean, open treble to quite low, well-saturated bass. The latter is not exaggerated, because the double bass from the aforementioned album was not boosted and did not pretend to be the same as from the Harbeth M40.1. And that’s good, because it could end badly. Here I got a fast, focused and resolved bass, but still saturated, not dry. Even fast playing like in the We Get Request by THE OSCAR PETERSON TRIO. I have this album on the gold Master CD-R disc, which is beautiful, and the Audel loudspeakers showed this beauty perfectly, not hiding it under the problems.

These are loudspeakers that build a big sound, with an emphasis on the foreground. It is shown quite close, as I like it and as it seems appropriate, but not too close. After all, the point is to suggest the "picture" of the instruments without a proper image, only with sound. This requires a change in thinking about recording, which is not meant to be a "document" but a creation, because only then can the emotions contained in the recording be conveyed.

The Italian loudspeakers do it perfectly, really above average. They perfectly cope with dynamic shifts, tonal changes and creating a large, engaging performance. And I truly mean 'performance', as on the ARNE DOMNÉRUS Jazz at the Pawnshop album. Vol. I, II & III in the wonderful re-edition of the Lasting Impression Music (UltraHD CD) from 2012. I was again surprised by the combination of opening and saturation of the sound with these loudspeakers. These are features that belong to the high-end, even "conscious" high-end, so to speak.

| Our albums

⸜ ARNE DOMNÉRUS Jazz at the Pawnshop. Vol. I, II & III

Proprius/Lasting Impression Music LIM UHD 071 LE
3 x UltraHD COMPACT DISC + DVD (1976/2012)

THE HISTORY OF THIS ALBUM is one of those that make a great story to tell at every show, at any meeting. There is an element of surprise, reflection and - finally - a deep admiration for its producer, GERT PALMCRANTZ. The album includes recordings of two concerts that took place on December 6 and 7, 1976 in a small Swedish club located in Stockholm, Jazzpuben Stampen (Pawnshop). Their producer was Jacob Boethius, owner of Proprius Records.

Both sessions were recorded using an analog Nagra IV-S tape recorder, which the sound engineer, for lack of space, kept on his lap right next to the stage. In fact, they were recorded on two tape recorders, alternately, because they had enough tape (at a speed of 38 cm/s) for a 15-minute set. Dolby A361 devices were used to reduce noise. The basic pair of microphones were Neumann U47, positioned 20 cm apart, at an angle of 110-135 °, in the O.R.T.F. configuration. There were 80 people in the club.

The version I propose is, in my opinion, the best one - it was remastered by former Telarc engineers for Mr. WINSTON MA’s Lasting Impression Music label and released as part of the "UltraHD CD" series. Moreover, this particular unit is part of the initial series of the first 2,000 units. When pressing CDs, similarly to LPs, matrices are used, which wear out with time, so the closer to the beginning, the better. I have a lot of Test Presses on CDs and SACDs and they sound better than regular pressings.

But let's get back to the music. Only one album was originally released, with material recorded on the first day. The "Anniversary" release added all the tracks recorded at that time. Now it's three CDs with full material from both days, plus a DVD with interviews. Equally important, however, is this fantastic booklet with an essay regarding the story of this recording.

The sound of these recordings is incredibly good. And at the same time it's great music. The sound is open, remarkably resolving and tangible. It is not warm in the common sense, but it has depth and density that are associated with warmth. We are talking about a live recording, in which the sounds of the audience are incredibly natural and "in harmony" with the sound on the stage - usually the audience sounds as if they were added on top of music. A perfect concert with perfect sound in a perfect edition. ♦

HOWEVER, LET'S RETURN TO THE SOUND OF THE TESTED SPEAKERS. The foreground is quite close to us and it is the most important thing to know. But not because the edges of the frequency range are weakened or the depth of the stage is hazy. All these elements are equivalent, and the depth and span of the stage will depend only on the acoustics of our room and accompanying electronics. The depth improves perfectly and stabilizes when we toe the loudspeakers more in. During the test, the axes of the loudspeakers crossed some 50 cm in front of me, but please try the 1 m variant and you will see what will happening there!

Another thing that struck me, after the perfect, saturated and open timbre, outstanding dynamics and a stable, large sound stage, was the ability of the Italian loudspeakers to play quietly and - if necessary - loud. When it was quiet they did not collapse or "dull" the sound, and when it was loud they did not "scream". You can listen to music really loud with them, and nothing will be bothering you. On the contrary, you will subconsciously strive to make the music play even louder, because you will want to be in the center of events, you will want to be THERE.

To check how the loudspeakers work with powerful recordings, I reached for the RIVAL SONS album entitled Great Western Valkyrie. Oh, how good music it is! The fourth album in the discography of this American rock band, released in 2014, has excellent timbres, although it is clearly compressed. And yet the energy it offers is electrifying - as in the opening piece Electric Man sings Jay Buchanan X: "I'm electric man ..."

Interestingly, the tested loudspeakers immediately showed the gap in clarity, definition and resolution of sound, not to mention the dynamics, between this type of realization and the perfect recordings that I mentioned above - that's one thing. But there is also the second one: we turn up the volume and even with this type of recordings we get an incredibly addictive, with beautiful timbre, saturated sound. One of the highlights of this album are the guitars played by Scott Holiday, often on multiple tracks, giving an impression of a wall of sound. It was amazing how well this music, with its problems, but also with its energy, was shown by Magika MkII.

They play the music as if they don't compress it. This is not true, obviously not true, because loudspeakers of this size, with a mid-woofer of this diameter, have to do it in order not to introduce chaos to the sound they reproduce, and yet the sound was clear. But they also did it in such a way that I couldn’t hear it. In fact, they did it better than many large loudspeakers for the money. They delivered a big sound and the sound was very clear. Not only with jazz, not only with good, strong rock, but also with the atmospheric message that requires a huge sound stage, presented by the PINK FLOYD on the The Endless River album.

▌ SUMMARY

AUDEL MAGIKA MkII ARE SPEAKERS offering an extraordinary nobility of sound. At the same time, they are very versatile and they leave their mark on the recordings to a small extent. I mean - they are open to recordings. Their quality is legible already when 0:01 appears on the player's display, and yet good music sound good with them, regardless of the quality of production and release. The most important thing in them is the saturated foreground, and yet they project a huge sound stage.

Excellent, beautiful loudspeakers that will prove themselves in even very expensive systems. The RED Fingerprint award seems most appropriate. ■

Technical specifications (according to the manufacturer)

Design: 2-way bass-reflex
Cabinet: multi-panel system – structure laminated birch wood
Tweeter: 29 mm, silk soft dome
Woofer: 140 mm, New Curv cone
Frequency range: 40-25 000 Hz
Crossover frequency: 2400 Hz
Sensitivity: 87 dB
Nominal impedance: 8 Ω
Power handling: 25 W-120 W
Finish: Birch cabinet, Ebony front, bee-waxed surfaces
Dimensions: 380 x 200 x 288 mm (H x W x D)
Weight: 18 kg/pc.