Magnepan 3.7

I Don't see what all the hype is about the new magnepan speakers, infinity speakers had that technology back in the early 80's, just search for infinity IRS betas the one with 4 12 inch woofers per side and planar mid bass panels, midranges and tweeters with aluminum traces glued to Mylar or the IRS epsilon too for that matter, they were also push/pull designs way back then, their drivers were improved a step further when they replaced the Mylar with kapton in their renaissance speakers and their IRS series speakers omega/sigma/epsilon, so to me the new magnepan technology is not so new at all, it's actually quite old and i'm surprised it took magnepan that long to figure out what infinity knew way back in the day.

Kapton is much stronger than Mylar and being that it is stronger you can make the panels much thinner making them lighter, you made some good points, i wonder why magnepan didn't make the whole panels quasi back then, maybe they felt that the cost would be to high, you have to remember that back in 69 they didn't have the equipment to easily make the panels like they do today and it probably would have cost a fortune to make the speaker full quasi.

infinity made planar speakers in the 70's too, i'm talking about the newest magnepan designs with the aluminum traces glued to Mylar 1.7's,3.7's, infinity had that type of planars in the 80's that's why i said it took magnepan along time to design what infinity had many years ago, infinity made the irs V speaker in the mid 80's that sold for $60,000.00 back then, these are considered to be one of the best speakers ever made, it would be embarrassing to compare any magnepan speaker ever built to them as the irs v's would put them to shame, i have a pair of infinity IRS epsilons that i thought about replacing because they're getting up in age with the magnepan 3.7's but when i auditioned them a few times i always felt like something was missing and was very disappointed, they're not even in the same league as the epsilons, not even close, check out these.
[img]http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6060/6380912979_79a8db596e_z.jpg[/img]
[img]http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6054/6380968449_774007251a_z.jpg[/img]

That's because the ren 90's tweeters are known to roll off a bit, the ren 90 is a good speaker but not in the class with the IRS series speakers, i know i had the ren 90's and compared them to my sigmas and epsilons, the crossovers that were used in the ren 90's were built with a budget in mind and were compromised to lower the cost of the speaker, when i listen to the big magnepans the first impression i get is that of a big sheet of plastic when you shake it back in forth in your hands, that sound is so prominent on them, maybe owners get use to that coloration but i can't, i think that is why infinity designed their drivers to specific frequencies so that they would not be to large for the delicate and faster high frequencies, thus adding less coloration.

Johnny53 did you ever hear the Infinity IRS V or the IRS beta or IRS epsilon or the rs 1b's, i did and i have listened to all the magnepan models and none of the current or past models can compete with any of the above mentioned infinity speakers, if you did a blind a and b test the results would be embarrassing, infinity was bought by harman kardon in 89 that's why all the current infinity models sound like crap, one of the founders/designers of infinity went to genesis speakers
[img]http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7167/6387001843_29bd2c1119_z.jpg[/img] and some of the genesis speakers look and sound very much like the infinity IRS V, also i bet you that the magnets used in those old infinitys were much stronger than the ones used in the current magnepans, i know that they are twice as strong as the ones used in the current VMPS speakers because i measured the strengths of them with a gauss meter, also the magnepans still use the heavy mylar backings that deform with heat and age were as infinity started to use kapton before they sold the company to harman, kapton is half the weight of Mylar and it doesn't deform as easy, infinity was way ahead of there time, all the above mentioned speakers were designed with cost is no object in mind, all of their planar drivers were push pull designs too, if you never auditioned any of the infinity speakers that i mentioned i suggest that you do, i think that you will be amazed at how good those old speakers sounded, the one pairs specs are 15hts to 40khts +or- 2db, some people think magnepans are light on bass so they add a very high quality sub to them, well if you think that one 12 inch sub sounds good for two speakers imagine how good twelve 12 inch servo controlled woofers powered by 3300 wpc would sound, they sure can move allot of air, i don't know of any magnepans that go down to 15hts with enough earth shaking bass and punch and dynamics to be convincing.