Reviews

Review: Magnat Transpuls 1000 – Loudspeaker with retro looks

Review: Magnat Transpuls 1000 - Loudspeaker with retro looks is a wonderful speaker for the novice music lover or for music fanatics.
5/5 - (1 vote)

The originally German audio manufacturer Magnat scored an unexpected hit two years ago with the massive Magnat Transpuls 1500. This was partly due to the retro looks of this speaker. Now there is the smaller successor, named Transpuls 1000. We went to test how this speaker (599 euros each) performs.

Exactly in the week that I read that the initiator of the development of the Philips compact cassette tape (more than a hundred billion units sold!) Lou Ottens had died, the Transpuls 1000 loudspeakers from audio manufacturer Magnat arrived at my home. The similarity between these two? They bring my thoughts back to the eighties, the musical period in which I was still extensively involved in playing cassette tapes. Tapes that were played on cassette decks of the brands Akai, Technics and later Aiwa. In the room were heavy loudspeakers housed in large Technics wooden housings. When unpacking the boxes in which the Magnat loudspeakers are packaged, a great sense of nostalgia comes over. Boy, pretty big boxes come out of the box. And they are not lightweight either: twenty kilos each, clean on the hook.

The black-colored speakers are quickly placed in the right place in the listening room, you would rather not have that weight in your hands for too long.

Then connect speaker cables to the fortunately generously sized speaker terminals and quickly go to my listening chair. Once seated I take a good look at the sound boxes. They are indeed ‘good guys’, but the two are not too dominant in the room, despite the pitch black color due to the removable fabric fronts. Due to its size, the Transpuls 1000 can certainly be called an odd duck in our house as a visiting speaker cabinet. This is due to its dimensions: a not very high (78 centimeters) floor stand, but wide: 38 centimeters. The speaker leans back slightly at an angle of five degrees. The fabric cloth has also been placed in such a way that it protrudes a few centimeters at the bottom and exactly coincides with the cabinet at the top, which further creates the impression that the speaker is leaning back. Smart and nicely done. That partly means that I think I’m looking at a kind of monitor speakers that you often find on the stages of concert halls. Perhaps that is exactly the intention of the makers…

Press the front

If you remove the canvas from the front, you can see at a glance who all contribute to the sound image. It’s pretty busy out there on the front. With this Transpuls 1000 we are dealing with a classic three-way system. This consists of a hefty 26 centimeters woofer, a 13.5 centimeters mid-tone control and a 25 millimeters tweeter. The drivers have lightweight paper cones. All in all, the whole provides a frequency range of 22 Hz to 32 kHz. With a sensitivity of 92.5 dB/W/m, the speakers should be easy to control. Magnat speaks of a recommended amplifier power of 30 – 300 Watts. By placing two bass ports at the front, Magnat believes it should be possible to place the speakers close to the wall, without this being at the expense of a good bass reproduction.

Retro or future sound?

Did I mention that the Transpuls 1000 is the smaller brother of the Transpuls 1500, a huge rock box that was surprisingly successful when introduced? I believe so. I’m especially curious now how the Transpuls 1000 performs. To stay in the style of this retro-look box, I decide to mainly play eighties music, or music from this time that clearly has a lot of inspiration from that time. The Weeknd with Blinding Lights can take the lead. The first impression is not wrong. A pleasant ‘total picture’ of the sound, a nice wall of sound as we call it. A lot of bass too, maybe a bit too much of a good thing, but that can also be due to the chosen song. On to ‘the original’ then? Take on me by A-ha, really music from the mid-eighties. Sounds good, again that nice solid rock sound in which the synthesizer can play the leading role in this song. The voices seem to come out a little less prominently and seem to slide into the background a bit when claiming higher volumes. The speakers can handle those higher volumes well, by the way. Let me try something more ‘modern’, Harry Styles with the wonderful uptempo song Golden. The speakers now rock wonderfully. The low tones are slightly predominant and a bit ‘clumsy’ at too high volumes. But it is a nice sound as a whole, the kind you expect at a good concert. Back to the eighties: KC and The Sunshine Band with Come to my island. The song appears to have been recorded on the same sunny island as Harry Styles’s. While the snow is still falling from the sky outside, inside my living room the Magnats are the sunshine in the house. The horns sound as they should, especially not too shrill. Enjoy the silence, Depeche Mode’s hit song (oops, from the nineties…), the Magnats also perform well. Finally, back to now: the beautiful Touch by Ghostly Kisses, in which Canadian singer Margaux Sauvé plays phenomenal whisper pop. The speakers know how to reproduce the pulsating low well. It could be tighter, but hey, for the price you have to pay for these speakers, you won’t hear me complaining. What remains is the entire sound image, and that is simply surprisingly good. All in all, the speakers with their classic appearance are quite up-to-date when it comes to the reproduction of current pop music.

 Magnat Transpuls 1000 – Conclusion

The Magnat Transpuls 1000 is a wonderful speaker for the novice music lover or for music fanatics who want to get a well-performing speaker for a reasonable price. Please note that these speakers will fill your living room in addition to their sound with their dimensions, because they are certainly not little boys. But that said: they are wonderful party boxes with which you can have a good party at home.

Price:

Magnat Transpuls 1000 € 599 each