Magnaplaners

[Floyddroid]

Do magnaplaners boogie? I have just been listening to a pair in my fave hi-fi haunt, Hifisound in stockton on Tees and they sounded great.
However, they were on the end of a Naim streaming system which was playing a range of female vocal. The midband was to die for though i was a little suspicious that appropriate music programme was being used. I play a lot of Prog (as many of you know) like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Camel et al and got the impression they may just not be able to handle weight and depth of such recordings as dark Side Of The Moon, Trick Of The Tale and such like. Please advise.:)

[jon1]

Do magnaplaners boogie? I have just been listening to a pair in my fave hi-fi haunt, Hifisound in stockton on Tees and they sounded great.
However, they were on the end of a Naim streaming system which was playing a range of female vocal. The midband was to die for though i was a little suspicious that appropriate music programme was being used. I play a lot of Prog (as many of you know) like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Camel et al and got the impression they may just not be able to handle weight and depth of such recordings as dark Side Of The Moon, Trick Of The Tale and such like. Please advise.:)


Hi steve my mate has a pair and they are a bit light on bass..as you say great in the midbad but light on bass;)



jon

[nat8808]

Talking of Prog, I came across a good blog called prognotfrog.blogspot.com

A fairly wide ranging definition of prog that includes some library music and others. Some rare things on there, from the guys own collection it seems, with the odd audio clip.

What Magnaplaners were they? Ones with ribbons?

[Floyddroid]

Nah, just panels. I don't usually check out other peoples blogs with regard to prog as i run my own website and quite friendly with a lot of folks in the biz. i'll give it a look though.

[DSJR]

Naim amps just don't have the power to give anything but midrange to these speakers IMO. To really make 'em come alive, you need expensive POWER via a humungous transformer supply. A weedy 70 Watts or so will barely make them move in all honesty :) It's reasons like this plus the need for plenty of space behind them that makes them difficult to sell here in the UK, and they've had a good few distributors in the UK over the years I recall...

[Reid Malenfant]

I'm with Dave on this one, find yourself a 200W rms per channel or greater power amp & you'll begin to see what they can really do :eyebrows:

More the merrier, as long as they get clean non clipped power they love you for it & you'll love them.

If I was contemplating Maggies I'd think along the lines of 400W rms per channel to do the job properly :D

I'm afraid that speakers like these take no prisoners...

[Mr Kipling]

I wouldn't disagree with what's been said. On the the other hand Jon Marks former editor of Hi-Fi World used SMGs with an early Panasonic DVD player and a modest amp, which I can't remember now. Years ago I heard some MG IIIs at Neat Audio when they sold secondhand gear before making speakers. The front-end was a Thorens 150 and again I don't remember the amp, but again, I don't remember it being anything special in the watts department. Not sure if Jon M. used a Cyrurs 1.

[Virkon]

Alan Sircom on this very forum recommends 400w per channel for any magneplanar model.

[daytona600]

Maggies like most electrostatics speakers are very hard to drive they need a amp with a very stiff power supply and plenty of voltage delivery as well as power into low impedance loads
You do get specific amps for drivings Esl speakers that are stable down to 1/2 a Ohm
general rule class D amps can shut down or go into severe overheating or oscillation at HF on Esl speakers
you can borrow mine if you want 900wpc will drive anything

[Floyddroid]

I could well do a spot of welding whilst i am on.

[SquireC]

I heard some Maggies and was VERY impressed. Wonderful mid.

I went back and listened to the same set up, but put some Zeppelin on and Stevie Ray Vaughan and while the mid was still terrific, the bass had no slam at all, so I couldn't live with them.

Listen with a wide range of music, not just female vocal.

[Mr Kipling]

If you look on the 'net you'll find opinions vary (as you might expect) from using 25w receivers to 1000 mono-blocks.

They are, of course, dipoles, and as such critical on positioning. They are never going to have the bass characteristics of a conventional box speaker with their honks and colourations - simply because they don't have a box.

[DSJR]

All you need is a pair properly set up in a room and a collection of good amps of varying power outputs and clean clipping performance. What happens is that the image size stretches and shrinks quite alarmingly with two amps of the same basic type but with one twice the power of the other. The most memorable test for me was at hifi dave's back in Radlett days (so a long time ago now), using MG1C's with two of the Levinson amps (when they were plain black boxes before the bling started). The smaller levinson sounded ok, but the bigger one took the sound to another level completely. These panels then had some bass extension completely missing with the smaller amp.

Sorry, I repeat that one of the bigger better pro studio (rather than road) amps should be mandatory, as long as they're stable into the load presented......

[Mr Kipling]

Sorry. Forgot this link:

http://www.diytube.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3700

[walpurgis]

Best panel speakers I ever heard were a pair of big Apogee ribbons, they may have been Scintillas, but I'm not sure. This was donkeys years ago at an audio show and they sounded absolutely incredible.

[mrdave]

Heard my first pair yesterday - 1.6es I think.
I was in the hot seat and listening to Rare Earth's Get Ready album on vinyl.
Snare hits were brutal. Cymbals and tambourines were electrifying.
Any sins of omission were mitigated by two 12" subs and it helped that it was all being driven by some big Perreaux amps.
Certainly a new and exciting experience.

[hoopsontoast]

Even the MMG's do drums really well, real kick!

[macvisual]

I once owned a pair of Magneplaners, model was 0.6, had these around six years from new.They have beautiful midrange and upper register and a tad light on the bass, but really superb all rounder.

I then did an A/B comparison with a pair of Quad ESL 57's against the Maggies, and after playing many different types of music for a couple of hours the Quad ESL 57's (for me) won the day, wonderful indeed. So I sold on the Maggies and still own the 57's today.

You hear people saying panel speakers need huge current to drive them, but most amplifiers over 70 watts will cut the mustard fine, I've been there and done it.

Enjoy the panel sound, it can get you hooked ok, you don't seem to quite enjoy box speakers as much after you've experienced Apogees/Magneplaners/Quad's etc....

Fabulous!

[Mike]

Get Simon to demo the Maggies on the end of those AR monsters if he's still got them lurking about the place!

[magiccarpetride]

Do magnaplaners boogie? I have just been listening to a pair in my fave hi-fi haunt, Hifisound in stockton on Tees and they sounded great.
However, they were on the end of a Naim streaming system which was playing a range of female vocal. The midband was to die for though i was a little suspicious that appropriate music programme was being used. I play a lot of Prog (as many of you know) like Pink Floyd, Genesis, Camel et al and got the impression they may just not be able to handle weight and depth of such recordings as dark Side Of The Moon, Trick Of The Tale and such like. Please advise.:)

Maggies are bass shy if not sufficiently broken in. Once broken in, they can deliver beautiful, real life-like bass down to 36 Hz (I'm talking about big panels). Power amps driving them are critical here, as many have noted. Poor, or modest quality amps will not be capable of delivering convincing bass. Since Maggies are very shy on coloration (practically, no coloration discernible by naked ear), they will present all the upstream weaknesses, especially coming from the power amp. They will not smother over the glitches the way many conventional cone-in-a-box speakers do, and will make you painfully aware if your signal is iffy. For that reason, many have walked away from a Maggies audition unimpressed.

But feed them a high quality signal, and you'll be hearing a beautifully coherent, life-like sound reproduction, with plenty of 3D rendition.

With Maggies, anything lower than 36 Hz, you'll have to go with subwoofers. Some people claim that the flagship Maggies (20.x) can go below 30 Hz, but these are merely exceptions.

[macvisual]

Maggies need critical positioning to help make them sing beautifully! Too close to a rear wall and the bass starts to distort/break-up etc, then pull them out too much and they can start to sound a bit thin, but get their "sweet spot" and they'll produce AMAZING results!!

Don't forget about the "toe-in" also, important ok.