Awsome neutrality but sweetness as well!!!

Price and (for some) looks

More or less the same as the reviewer above.
P.S. The price in Greece is ONLY! $30.000 or so

Similar Products Used:

Wilson Grand Slamm

Still an incrediblly good speaker. (medea II only)

Taken out of production, so not updated anymore with latest technology
Way, Way, Way, too expensive.

It has been over a year now since I wrote my review of the Medea and some things have happened in the mean time.
Comparing the zerobox 103 and the Medea we were trying to find out the stong and weak points of both speakers.
This was our conclusion
Pro Medea:
Deep bass response
Looks
Tonality was slightly better than old zerobox
Semi active concept allows use of a no-compromise fast amp.

Pro Zerobox:
With new holoprofile and the new MSWs: blows the Medea away in imaging without sacrificing tonality
Beter power handling for bass heavy music at the cost of deep bass response
Price is much more realistic

Since the Medea is now taken out of production, it will never reap the fruits of the latest manger developments but frankly, I personally found it was getting so disgustingly expensive that it was becoming more of a status symbol than a loadspeaker.
Where Manger kept persuing the path of perfection by further developing their bending wave concept, AP has decided to give in to the taste of the masses and made a megalomanic classical speaker their new flagship: the Cherubin. (shame on you Joachim!).
Anyway, back to our analysis of both speakers.
We decided that for the price of the Medea it should be possible to build a "cost no object" system that uses the latest manger technology combined with no-compromise materials and servo controlled woofers which blows the Medea right out of the water.
So that is what we have beeing doing the last year and now the result is here:
A hand-made hand-tuned masterpiece
http://users.skynet.be/accupulse/
This speaker is really awsome.
It can deliver >120db without any hint of distortion reproducing a percussion solo at live level AND quality.
Even at discotheque level with discotheque music, the cabinet remains completely dead.
You can walk around the room and the imaging remains locked in space as if it was a live performance. You can walk up to the speakers until the vocalist seems to be standing right in front of you, recede back and the voice remains in the same position (almost spooky)
You can play music at very low volume and still hear every detail of the recording.
The sound is silky smooth without ever becoming mushy
At 330 pounds each, they are even burglar proof!
No nostalgia for the medea: the emperor is dead, long live the NEW emperor.
With the medea being terminated, I whish that other manufacturers would take this speaker as an example and start building comparable systems commercially so that everybody who is not on too tight a budget can continue to experience the "Manger Magic".

Similar Products Used:

Zerobox 103, 107, 108, 109 Home built manger system.

Utterly astonishing way with signal

fifty ... THOUSAND ... dollars! (touches pinky to lip)

I saw a pair of these at Immedia in Berkeley. They were driven by a Revolution turntable and a GamuT amp. (I didn't pay attention to the rest of the playback chain, like I don't know the cartridge, step-up device or preamp.)

The sound coming out of them was really something - made my Virgos seem like cones in boxes. The Medea is a two-way design with a peculiar flat mid-thru-high range driver.
Tonal clarity was the best I've heard anywhere. Specificity of imaging gives NOTHING up to the Virgos, and those are imaging champs. Dynamic attack was un(bad word)believable.

If I were rich, I'd want a pair. They are the most amazing speakers I've heard. I do wish they cost less. Because they are in my opinion a very special product. Even at the price I consider them to be a good value. If you have the money and the acoustic setting to let these tigers loose, do audition them.

I will go back to Immedia and, if time permits, I'll see if digital playback through that amazing system is as magical.

Similar Products Used:

I own Virgos

Incrdible imaging, horn-like dynamics, Both Musical and analytical, Deep bass response

Price,
Deep Bass range has limited SPL

The Medea is one of those rare speakers that sound fantastic in every listening environment and with every type of music.
The imaging is incredible and the whole panorama remains stable, even when you are walking from left to right and towards the speakers.
Up till now, you could more or less divide the better speakers into 2 categories: fast sounding and warm sounding, each of these categories having their own adherents.
The medea is the only one combining these 2 virtues.
It sounds incredibly dynamic and fast without ever becoming agressive. It has the punch of a dynamic speaker with the finesse of an electrostat.
All these qualities are due to the use of the famous manger transducer, which reproduces the frequency range of 150 to 35000 hz without any phase distortions and which took more than 20 years to develop.
It certainly beats the Manger zerobox 103.3 in the whole bass range, but from there on up it has not that much more to offer to justify costing 3 times as much as the zerobox, hence only 3 stars for value.
Joachim Gerhard, founder of the renowed company Audio Physic, once said the medea is the best speaker he has ever built. I think what he really ment to say was that the medea is the best speaker anybody has ever built.

Similar Products Used:

Manger Active Studio Monitor
Manger Zerobox 103.3