Magnepans...any thoughts on them? (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

how dare you leave out the intentionally poor accounting practices of the US govt?!

Way to go Chu! I was discussing this earlier with friends. It turns out that someone applied GAAP accounting standards to the government, the "surplus" of $170 billion would have been like a $358 billion shortfall!

And Congress is grilling Enron executives? How ironic! They practically invented off-balance sheet financing!

Anyway, 120 decibels is way loud and not really a good measure of dynamics as stated earlier.

 

[Tom Brennan]

The ability to cruise at 120db means that transients and peaks can be reached effortlessly and that the system won't crunch down when called on to do peaks. It's not about long-term listening at 120db. It's about lack of compression, a virtue that shows up at levels much lower than 120db. Live music suffers little from compression, most speakers suffer severely from it.
Amplifier power alone cannot cure compression because most drivers reach their mechanical limits long before their thermal limits. And as the voice-coil heats it becomes increasingly less efficient at driving the diaphragm. Even a high output prosound driver like the JBL 2226 15" woofer suffers from 4.6db compression at it's full rated power, meaning that the driver is acting only as a heat sink at that level, more power is going in but more sound is not coming out. This from a 15" driver with a 4" voicecoil and forced-air cooling, imagine the compression from a typical small hi-fi quality driver with a 1.5" coil and no cooling.
Compression is a "dirty little secret" of loudspeakers and I've never seen it addressed in specs from home loudspeakers, only from pro ones and from damned few of those. Ironic that many audiophiles are dead-set against compression on recordings yet use loudspeakers that are compression generators.
I hope this explains the reasons for using speakers capable of very high output.
www.chicagohornspeakerclub.org

 

[John Royster]

Tom,
Thanks for the info.
Who said anything about speakers with voice coils?
wink, wink, poke, poke

 

[Arvin_C]

Woops...see below for the post!

 

[Arvin_C]

Okay guys, here are the demensions (roughly) of my new basement area where I hope to put my H/T: 32(l)x26(w) rectangle. On the far side wall, in the middle, there are double glass sliding doors to the back yard. To the left of these doors, in the corner, is a gas fireplace. The front and back wall are clean and flat. The near, side wall has an opening along the front 3rd of the wall that finctions as an opening from the rest of the basement.

The entrance is open, no doors. Wall material is wood paneling lower half, plaster/dry wall top half. The ceiling is about 8 ft. high.

As far as the Maggies go, I was thinking of a set-up like this: MGCC2 center, MG 12s upfront and MMGs in the rear. Probably will get a SVS 20-39 subwoofer to finish it off.

Think I could power all of this well enough with a receiver along the lines of an Onkyo 797 or 898?

Thanks for your input/help!

 

[Tom Brennan]

John---I can explain why electrostats compress too. Remember those big Dayton-Wright ESs from back in the 70s? I liked those. In fact I like ESs, if I didn't use horns I'd be using ESs, no doubt.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

As far as the Maggies go, I was thinking of a set-up like this: MGCC2 center, MG 12s upfront and MMGs in the rear. Probably will get a SVS 20-39 subwoofer to finish it off.

Unless you need TONS of bass, I would try to stretch to the Maggie 1.6Qrs for the Front Left and Right and not worry about the subwoofer (although you may want it if you watch a lot of movies). I would use the new Maggie surrounds (MGMC1s) for the rear channels as well. They hang off the wall and are optimized for HT use. With the 1.6s you get an strong high end speaker for two channel and great LCR front speaker mix for 5.1 sound.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Arvin,
One more thing, the double glass doors will interfere with the high frequency notes but this can be damped. You may also want to insert resistors in the Maggies to make sure the sound is not bright on HT material.
Also, be sure to have the speakers at one end of the rectangle. I am also working on my new listening room and I am planning on double sheetrocking the walls based on a recommendation from the manager of Atlanta's Fox Theater.

 

[ling_w]

Arvin,

The MGCC2 need special handling. Magnepan recommends you either get a dedicated sub for it and cross it over at 160hz, or use the Outlaw ICBM magnepan edition, which would reroute the bass to the main speakers.

Sub integration is also a issue since the dipole planar bass is hard to integrate seamlessly with subs. Something that allows crossover freq in the 40-50hs (high and low pass) or 30hz (bass augmentation) is needed.

I would also go with more speaker and less sub, since the 1.6 is quite a bit better than the MG12. But then, the front end becomes a weak point and needs to be upgraded.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Ling,
Didn't Wayne Garcia just review a similar HT system in The Absolute Sound?

But then, the front end becomes a weak point and needs to be upgraded.

An upgrade from 1.6s would only be required if you really are an audiophile, as the price jumps from $1,800 to $4,200.

 

[Jeffrey Chin]

i used to own maggies 2.5r/mgcc/1.4
power hungry but fragile..popped a fuse once

switched to bohlender graebeners dx series..they rule

although u need a sub for both, i would say maggies are better for music and bohlenders for home theater

 

[ling_w]

An upgrade from 1.6s would only be required if you really are an audiophile, as the price jumps from $1,800 to $4,200.

He should upgrade to the 1.6s, not from it.

 

[Doug_B]

switched to bohlender graebeners dx series..they rule

I also use speakers based on BG's ribbon - Link Removed SL3s, which is a hybrid planar (mid/high) / dynamic (low) speaker. These speakers have placement issues as well, but the horizontal dispersion is generally better than the Maggies, and I don't think that the variance in sound based on distance from wall is as great as with the Maggies I have heard (although I know I could do better if furniture wasn't in the way).
Although I loved the Maggie 3.6s, they are too wide for my room. They were also particularly placement-finicky, as only one of the places where I heard them really had it set up optimally, and that required them to be halfway into the room! FWIW, I would not have gone with the Maggie 1.6s (in my primary listening room) after hearing the 3.6s, even if the size was closer to my needs; there was that much of a difference soundwise to me.
Doug