Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?

and email's.

 

Oh yeah, to @pat_from_indy 's point.

My brick and mortar Magnepan dealer can’t get the factory to return their calls an email. Contact: 

 for details.

@pat_from_indy 

Regarding your center channel needs: Any KEK center channel, from the R 600’s and up will blow the Maggie’s doors off.

But here’s the deal, most center, and for that matter all box speakers, lack one thing that allows them to image like Slagmapans, a rear firing driver. That's the whole shebang, want Maggie imaging? Add a rear firing midrange/tweeter. I prefer adding a rear firing full range driver like the Fostex FE168EZ 6.5" Full Range Sigma Series. It does two things. It adds "presence" and it adds that feathery ambiguity to the harmonic overtones.

 

That's so sad...

Dsper,

"Why mess with that?"
Because that is what speaker design is all about? 
Continually refining and upgrading components to create the best sound you can make with your product.

It is as if they have the head of Ford automotive design running Porsche. And Ford has all but given up making cars, lest the Mustang, because they can't compete. 
They can't compete because they are making the wrong choices, they can't blame who they hire on someone else; they don't see it as their failure to make their car lines profitable as a process that they would have to change to compete at something they practically invented.

Why doesn’t Magnepan incrementally improve their product by adding a rigid laminate to the MDF frame to tighten up the middle of the frame instead of wasting money on the 30.7?

I hear this over and over about him. I contacted them a few years back about something they may have wanted to consider, and it was "hey, not invented here, go away!" 
I guess this is why my next chunk of change is going to a pair of Zu's. They let me spec the caps, wire, wood and color. Maybe it's a generational thing?

It's something I'm thinking about now that I'm retired. But do I want the headaches of running a company again? No, I don't think so. And I don't view myself as an audiophile as much as someone who loves music and wants the best reproduction I can afford, and you need the personality of a sales person to successfully run a consumer product company. ps audio and Zu have that in their owners. 

Since I already have accepted the size tax on buying the current ones I have, it just makes me wonder why they don't go the extra mile by letting the customers decide how much better their sound should be for the package they buy, and by extension, how much they would pay for for the deluxe model.

I used to do product design and development, you would always logically extend something to the nth degree when you have a unique product. I just read something about the Maggie 30.7 for condos, and that isn’t a bad idea. But why reinvent the wheel when you could improve the sound of the existing product by 15-20%? Marketing should never wag the dog, but it often does; Klipsh is an excellent example of not installing great components so that you can upgrade the line in 2-3 years, based on marketing considerations thinking. Why not just put in the best components and let the market chase you while you look at advances in technologies and materials to refine your design based on research? 
If Maggie’s came in a box, I wouldn't even have bothered posting this, cause it's just another manufacturer implementing their design philosophy on that medium, but Maggie’s are different, and that is something that should be capitalized on, IMHO.
But you know it would be a whole lot easier if they would just finish what they started. No spending my retirement savings on my part, and a lot of happier Maggie owners on their part. 
I wish  Musk would take on audio, he is not afraid of upsetting the market by innovation.

And If I get a windfall of money maybe then I'll ask Mark if he want's to sell. 😉

don_c55,

I get what you are saying, I bought the 1.7i's based on a brick and mortar demo session. They beat everything on the showrooms floor for anything near that price range. 
But I have to say that once home and listening the upper mids and treble sound seemed muddy, sort of like they have a slight head cold. No other speaker in a line of products suffers from that the way the Maggie’s do. My KEF R 300’s have the same midrange tweeter combo as their big brother the R 900's had. So the only thing that suffered in the line significantly as you got smaller was the bass response; just like practically every other speaker line on the market.

Again, K-mart design parameters in an high end market. 

I agree Russ. One of the mods I tried on my Maggie’s was a rear facing tweeter crossed over at 5khz with a 12db slope. I used the Eton 29HD2 Magnesium/Ceramic 28mm Dome Tweeters from Madisound and it added a lot to their tweeter that just isn't possible with their design, but I think a dipole AMT like one of the Mundorf makes would be better. Trouble is their over $600 apiece now, and ideally you’d have three per side in an array. (This is why I would prefer Magnepan make the 2.7 with a ribbon tweeter.)

What the Fostex does that the tweeter did not do is add the feathery effects to instrument and crispness of certain voices to the sound that only a lightweight paper cone driver can achieve. I'm designing a ported wedge with a surrounding flare around it and incorporating a stand to lose the feet. I can  eliminate some of the noise bleed from that driver onto the wall behind the speaker, and by having the flare  shorter on the inside it enhances vocals for movies.  
I'm sure that once I've removed the "sock" from the speaker to upgrade the x-overs I'll try some lateral bracing in the middle of the panel to resist flexation too.

All things being equal, I would prefer that the factory just offer these upgrades so I didn't have to waste 100 hours on doing the modifications.

To my point on the 1.7i's I messed with some complimentary drivers to incorporate with my speakers, something that has mega definition.

I bought some Fostex FE168EZ 6.5" drivers and Fostex pots from Madisound and made some thrown together boxes that I placed behind the Maggie's with just enough volume to add definition to the mids and highs. What an amazing difference!

I would add them as dipoles but I can't figure out how to do so without making them incredibly ugly, as mounting them to the top of the frame looked horrible. 
Because of this I have decided to go all in on their rebuild with all new X-over components, binding posts and pulling the fuse from the design. (I removed the fuses and replaced them with solids but the gain was not significant compared to what the Fostex drivers do for the speakers performance.)

Once I get my "Maggie’s little helpers" final boxes built and mounted  I'll post a picture of them.

But this is an awfully long way to go in time and expense to do something that I should be able to buy from the manufacturer, don't you think?

Thanks Tweak1. There are so many more speakers out there that I don't know exist anymore since moving away from Boston. 
And as you say, with Emerald Physics they let you mod up to the level you want to pay. Heck, if Magnepan did that, I wouldn't have even bothered with this post.

Anyone Else with other ideas in this size range are welcome to chime in, it is the size that is the limiting factor for me with the 3.7i's. Well, that and knowing that they can be better if I just want to pitch my warranty out the window when I buy them and know that they will need new caps and inductors.

What I would wish for is a "2.7" with additional width for a ribbon tweeter. Why not that for $4k?

@daveyf 


Really, saving me money? 
Has Magnepan ever offered a better crossover to see if I would willingly pay $2,500 instead of $2,200 on the 1.7 series? We are talking about a discretionary income purchase here, not a necessity and the convenience of getting this upgrade is more than worth the extra dollars to me. 
I'm not alone in this opinion as people that are inveterate tinkerers make YT videos showing us how cheap the stock product is made and what can be achieved with modifications, and some people take the time to record comparisons that a good dac and headphones will reveal a demonstrable difference. And some people make a living off of the modifications, either completely or as part of their line of upgrades to a number of speaker manufacturers.
If Mag can make a 15-20% better sounding speaker how many more people in this hobby would pay what some people consider an inadequate amount for speaker cables or interconnects to have "the only reasonable choice" in a price segment? There are only a handful of "full range" speakers in this price range that have adequate low level bass where a sub is not needed to have satisfactory bottom end, so whether they are smaller boxes or smaller panels, the person interested in the quality of sound is going to have to lay out at least $1k per side in addition to the speaker pair price. 
Wendell reminds me of an senior engineer I worked with at Polaroid back in the 90's who said that ccd cameras will never be inexpensive enough for the general public because $165 was the cheapest we could buy an LCD display to put in a camera. Because of him and his lack of understanding of what was going on in the markets and the offshoring of manufacturing, and others like him at that company they didn't jump into that market with both feet where other photography companies were, and they missed the digital boat and went out of business. 
Of course I could make a more convincing argument to that point by discussing their marketing department, but that would just be cruel in this context.

Daveyf,

I did not go to the demos because buying those speakers would have required me to add an $80k addition on to my house.

I’m glad Wendell was accommodating to your club. This is my Wendell story: Wendell says don’t waste your money on speaker cable, 14awg spool cable is "adequate". It is hardly that, once I started reading what NASA has to say about cable, RF interference and a side by side configuration. You just don’t do that in long runs. Minimum the cable has to be twisted so that the ground interferes with the positive sides ability to amplify extraneous background noise RF noise. Then when you look up neurological experiments that require an RF cage, they still use multistanded cables in a woven configuration to maintain the almost imperceptible impulses from neurons.
So I used Audioquest side by side cable, and it sounded thin. Then I read about the twisting and twisted the side by side cable and set it with a heat gun, 8 rotations per foot. Better sound, but my amp was still overheating. AHB2.

Then I bought Benchmark's star quad cables with Neutrek spekons for the amp and bananas for the speakers. The difference blew me away. And the amp runs 7 degrees cooler and never overloads.
So do I trust the ear of a guy who can’t hear the difference between lamp cord and bespoke speaker cables? No.

And you prove my point by being able to set his new speakers up better than he can.

I've heard that. The 3.7i's sound so much better than the 1.7i's that I would have to live with them to nitpick that aspect of their design. 
I'm simply looking to find out how many flat panel fans would pay for the upgrades if available from the factory?

@nd1der

I don’t hate them, I bought them back in the beginning when there was more attention to cosmetics, and I have the current model.

I’m pointing out the fact that when someone has a question as to why the current models are underbilt, the answer is always "Wendell says...". And I know that to be true because I talked to him 3-4 years ago about my homemade Maggie’s Little Helpers, he was totally dismissive, insisting that the current product line is "good enough".
Since he’s a marketing professional, where are his side by side comparisons to prove to us that he is right?
Make one as well as it can be made with current technology and let the market give feedback on what improvements they would and would not pay for. Because now that I know what an upgraded crossover can do for my speakers I am compelled to buy the parts and install them myself. However, I am on the fence about the frame material and it's lake of resistance to torsion until I remove the grill cloth and see what can be done with lateral struts to improve rigidity.

Let me frame this another way, since the topic has expanded.

Do you feel bilked when paying audiophile prices for a speaker that uses consumer electronic grade parts?

@audioman58,

I'll check out the Spatial Audio speakers when I get a chance.

You make one point for me: Is Magnepan competing with itself, or other speaker companies? They seem to be operation on the assumption that if you want a better speaker than the 1.7i you’ll buy their 3.7i; but there are more than a thousand other companies making high end speakers out there, so why not take business from them, and not the next level up in your line? 
I really like my 1.7i's, but now I have to upgrade them after hearing the moded ones. Making me do that is the quest to have the best product for me in this package. There is a rational reason to do this in a market based on taste and audio acuity, and every other hobby like this, from performance cars to instrument manufacturers companies of a performance version to the person that can appreciate those improvements at a higher cost.

Answering a lot of questions, comments at once:

None of my friends who are well healed that are not audiophiles would consider buying a complete stereo for $2,200 let alone $6-12k for the better models. They’d rather go to Hawaii or Italy or buy a painting. I only have one audio friend that has spent close to $100k on his system, and I haven’t seen him in 10 years.
People are either sound freaks or they are not. Yes some rich people buy audiophile grade equipment to accessorize their home, wish I was them.

I'm sure there are a lot of us who have our equipment rather than a boat, horse or some other expensive hobby. That's me, no other expensive hobby to blow money on, just audio equipment.

Bose only charges a lot for junk, they are a unique demographic that sells embodiments of Ralph Lauren Polo shirts, with speakers. I know someone that worked for Bose, there is a reason they don't like to demo their products next to others.

Since I had the MGI and MGII's in the way back I had Maggie's that the company gave a damn about public perception, Hardwood and plywood frames, and at the time they were using almost the best electronic components you could readily buy. But technology has come a long way since then. Material science has become a separate science. I know, I have a Holman PreAmp that I'm rebuilding with current quality components* and since the design is solid, the specs that I'm getting so far are impressive. But it will never have a remote, so it's mostly a mental exercise that I'll get some use out of. *(Not Vishay $54 a pop resistors.)

So I'm going to take the bottom of the socks off of one of my Maggie's tomorrow, write down the specs and diagram the x-over as well as test the load of the wires and order better parts, resistors to chassis wire, and I’ll even build a box off frame for the new parts if I have to do that. 
I'll record the before and after with some wonderful quality recordings in my listening space with a high quality mic and AD converter that I have and we shall see if the effort is worthwhile or not, and if not would it still be worth spending more to have the company do it, or is it simply a fools game in total.

I like to put my money where my mouth is.

@daveyf 

This is Wendell speak from Magnepans Website where Wendell says they are "Purists".

"How do Magneplanars produce bass? 

If you make it big enough, a full-range dipole speaker can equal the bass performance of a dynamic speaker. We could have gone the route of other companies and made a hybrid speaker that uses a dynamic woofer for the bass. We made some prototypes, but they didn't sound like a full-range ribbon speaker. Again, it was a choice. Should we stick with a purist strategy? Race car engines are not a compromise. But, there is a "price" to be paid for the performance — size."

Well guess what, most race car engines are smaller that their street car brethren because they use more expensive technology, not bigger technology. And a Purist would use audiophile grade components in their "race car". I do think that the design is worthy, but that came before he came along.

He can't have it both ways. Well he can, but some of us believe he is expressing false economy, and projecting that on Magnepan's customers.

As I said before, taking his word for speaker wire specs was a mistake, and I might as well confess that I also bought his line about subs, having never heard REL's, and so bought two DWM bass panels. What a waste of money. I can't even sell both for $500.

And this is Wendell dissing other manufacturers for using less expensive parts in their product. 
"A good receiver might produce 30-40% more power at 4 ohms. Most receiver manufacturers don't want to talk about 4 ohm ratings because they have cut the "guts" out of their products to keep the cost down."
So I must be missing something completely, right?

@jkf011

The reason passenger car engines are getting smaller is the use of advanced technology in their design, and that has historically come from race car technology trickling down to the consumer market.

Race car engines, of any kind, have almost always been blueprinted.  And only the finest custom made components are used in them, even the casting of the block and headers, something that is cost prohibitive in consumer cars. In fact, most consumer cars are de-tuned to increase mileage.

Better tolerances equal higher hp per displacement unit. Smaller, lighter engines increase speed and response, just like light strong diaphragms increase speed and reduce latency in speaker drivers. 

@phillyb

We will never know for certain until they do the logical thing from a manufacturing/development process; offer a standard and a high grade and let the consumer decide.

Much more cost effective than building new designs as an x-over upgrade would simply involve having two bins at that assembly point in manufacturing.  Better components from wire to caps, perhaps a better design?
Logically, would Magnepan rather maintain their market presence, or would they rather sell every $2,500 dollar speaker sold for those that have the space for them? 

I'm ordering the GR Research kit today to see how Danny's take on this sounds.

Update.

Sock off. There are lateral structural braces on the metal panel to help tame frame deformation in that direction. So maybe the frame is as strong as the old ply ones on my MGII's on the 1.7i laterally and that is the reason they don't sound that much better when modded?

@richopp PS
Yes, now that I've wasted almost as much as I spent on my system, I would never skip the setup part of the process again. But then again I see a new DAC in my system this year, so that ratio will change now that I'm on the right track! 😉

Thanks for the info @tom8999. I agree. I love the presence of a dipole design, and I do like to tinker, so I bought the right speakers. 😉

Yes, I saw Peters web site, and I also agree with him on the foil wires in the bass part of the diaphragm, but that can be upgraded by adding another layer or two of foil tape over the existing ones on the surface of the diaphragm. Foil tape is the future of Maggie’s I think, because it transfers the electric signal so effectively, since the signal travels over the surface of the conductor, not through it, and industry has years of experience manufacturing thin film with a near perfect surface from the audio tape industry. 
I expect they will add multiple layers separated by thin film inside the diaphragm in the future. But this is something I don't expect them to do now as they are probably limited by a concern for deformation of the diaphragm material.

i have been experimenting with stronger magnets, neodymium, on the bass parts of the panel, especially near the center.

As for the De’WooferMagnepan panels, I have not tried them with serious speaker cables yet. But here is the thing about them. If I had bought decent cables when I bought the speakers I wouldn’t have thought I needed more bass from the main panel, in fact, this weekend, just for yucks I ran 8 gauge cable to one side, and this brought about better dynamics, just with solid copper 8-2wg, so who knows where this will go.

I have 2 KEF R400b subs that I bought with my R300's and they pair really well with the 1.7i's. But they are finicky so I have to move them out into the room and rotate them when I listen as I place them in unison with the panels phase corrected.

Thanks so much for the positive response, and if I am up that way I will contact you!

@richopp

No, the lamp wire comment was from and interview or their website. 
  In fact my dealer lamented that this comment was ever published, that he in fact knew this was a Wendell quote when I bought them, as it hurt his cable sales. 
  And if he would have been able to convince me I would have never bought the DWM panels. Why? Because of the old audio ax of speakers in the showroom not sounding the same in your home. I assumed the lack of bass was because of all of our overstuffed furniture and lined drapes. 

  Yes, there is in fact tons of science and published research on cable quality and orientation, twist rates and basket weaving. I was dismissive about this until I did my own research on the matter not in audio circles but through research web sites, NASA, and neurobiological science testing of neurons. 
  As an example I did not know that the reason a conductor is called that is because the signal travels over the surface, so if you have multi stranded cables they should have Litz wire or at the least individually coated strands to prevent the signal from jumping from strand to strand and degrading the signal. Oxygen free equals a smoother finish, and you would preferably have a mirror finish on every strand.

  Also, there is no correlation between AWG for a constant state signal like the current that comes into your home and signal carrying, Audioquest's woven speaker cables are derived from the military, and theirs from the Apollo project at NASA. You will always see twisted pairs on signal cable in planes and rockets, someplace that a confused by RF signal cannot happen. 
Best bang for the buck I have found is Benchmark's cables, but I can hear a difference between them an $800 dollar cables as well. The Benchmarks are designed with conveying the dynamic range in mind, they source their wire from Japan. But, say Cardas? They source some of theirs from New England Wire. https://www.newenglandwire.com

A wannabe speaker designer.

https://www.gr-research.com/store/p70/Magnepan_1.7_Upgrade.html

Magnepan's 50 year anniversary is coming up in a few years. Hopefully they'll make an anniversary edition speaker fully boated in a limited run for the occasion.

I'd definitely buy a pair.

@speakermaster

I don’t know what’s going on there, so I can’t say. I just know who everyone points at when you ask "why" of Magnepan’s corporate decisions. It's the same guy that I have a bone to pick with.

If, once Wendell is gone, Mark wants to keep a steady course, that’s just the way it is I guess.

@jaytor 

I know, I was referring that comment to the person who said we we were speaker designer wannabe's for criticizing a manufacturer.

I ordered his 1.7 upgrade package today and it will be here Thursday. I want to hear what an experienced designer of his caliber  can do with these before I go off on a tangent. If it is what I expect, I may not pursue this any further, except to try a return baffle on the back for rigidity and deeper bass. I also have to chamfer the MDF around the panel, everything in me says it is wrong to have a right angle next to a radiating surface.

I would like to try his open baffle subs in the future also, as they are servo controlled.

Sorry for the mixup.

You wouldn't happen to need any De'WooferMagnapan panels in Oak, would you? 😉

@panzrwagen

All good points. I do that with my Mustang, I love to drive and I get a lot of satisfaction from wrenching this car.

I love GTI’s too, I’ve had 2 of them including a prototype that I bought off one of their engineers in 1986. Man did that thing eat electrical relays! Why give the money to the modders when you can mod them and sell them?

That’s why Civics go from about $22-36k, right?

I will document the entire experiment from beginning to end.

So far I have them depantsed, which is appropriate for No Pants Day, and the the circuit diagramed, it's very simple.

I got GR Research's XO upgrade yesterday, it too is a first order with better components. But with that I'm really not buying parts, I bought Danny's knowledge and research. I am going to put those on a separate board for the time being.

I  may buy top of the line components, at least Clarity Caps and Goertz flat wire inductors to see how those would work, and go up an order on the XOver depending on how GR's work. I'll know buy this weekend, and I'll keep you posted.

@hartf36

I was happy with my Maggie 1.7i, but thought they lacked something, clarity in midrange and highs.

Why would I not want any speaker I buy to sound better than it does, ever?

The interesting thing to try with them is to place them on top of your subs if you have them. Solves the spacing problem. You may also want to try raising them with the radiating panel equidistant from the floor and ceiling, that gives you very nice sound, much better than on the floor; it is sort of the embodiment of the "floor to ceiling line source" view of speaker design.

@jfuguay


I asked and did not get a reasonable reply. 

Because the market won’t bear the cost is absurd in a hobby where people spend so much money. It is totally counter-intuitive.

As I said, and upgraded XOver for the 1.7i, I have yet to look up the prices of all of the stock components, would add about $30 total for the pair, cost to the manufacturer. The markup in this hobby is enormous, and the reality of that if extrapolated over the cost to the consumer is in the neighborhood of $1k retail, on the Maggie’s if you follow what the cost of the original parts is.

If your not the kind of person that likes to take things apart and tinker with them, you will never see the difference, only hear it.

When I took my R300’s apart I was blown away by the quality of these not top of the line KEF’s, custom everything and of excellent quality. So it is not a stretch to expect similar quality of components in like costing products. 

I would still like someone to explain to me why a company will not offer the consumer better quality based on the the manufactures terms of costing the parts forward.

But I will say at the end of my experiments whether the quality of the upgrades warrant the cost in my opinion, and I’ll back that up with audio samples. And if the difference is not noticeable on my iPad with under $100 headphones, I will say that I am wrong, that I was fooled by snake oil claims.

For everyone who is saying Magnepan is about value.

Exactly how bad could they make them for you to still want to buy them? 

I can live with the paperboard circuit board and the cheap connectors, and the imprecisely applied diaphragm conductor tape, but you must realize that those are more a result of lack of manufacturing savvy than necessities to keep the price down.

Handmade can have several connotations.

@bdp24

One of my major shortcomings on this forum is that I have never attended a stereo show. There are so many speakers made that I will never hear because of availability, and I am not in a large market and what is available locally is limited. One of the dealers happened to carry Magnepan’s and I was drawn directly into that location and did not look farther.

The Eminent Technology LFT-8b look like an excellent choice in this price range.

@bdp24 

I am never offended when people offer me honest informed advice, about anything really. I will attend a show once they start having them again, I was thinking RMAF.

@drbarney1

I hope they do pursue Tri-eo, it is better than stereo and works well for audiophiles who happen to want to use their stereo with movies. 
Both Bryson and Parasound make very good 3 channel amps. The devotion to 2 channel evades me, especially when considering soundstage. It is plain wrong headed to pretend that a soundstage does not have a center. And a singer is usually at the center of a stage of one, ergo a a +60hz center channel, not unlike Paul Klipsh envisioned for the Heresy.

The thing that saves my 1.7i’s is my KEF R600 in the middle to fill in the highs.

I did not know that Wedell’s wife works for Magnepan as well.

@hardtobeme


Teritorial?

@russ69

Yes, you caught me. I mixed up film and foil while trying to make a point about the limitations of a true ribbon. Sorry. I have a bad habit of admitting my mistakes.

@krelldreams

I am a retired product designer/developer and have a fairly good idea of what it would take to offer a factory upgraded XOver; a second set of picking bins at the XOver assembly station.

Like everyone here you offer good insight from the customers perspective on the issue, but I disagree with other points you make, and so I will address these.

I drive mine to from low to moderately loud volumes, from time to time, with a AHB2 amp. With upgraded cables it sounds as rich and dynamic as a Para A21 or a Bryston. It has all of the power I need. If I got the 3.7i's I’d just use two of them. So this discussion is not about what I'm doing wrong, or all of the old saws we already know about the speaker line, it's about what the factory can do for us as consumers and if there is a need for that.

Another example of where this company lets customers down is contacting them for amp recommendations. They go to great lengths to point out that these speakers require a "special amp" before a purchase, and then tell you that they don’t have time to test amps to tell you which ones work better? How do they know the speakers require a Special Amp if they have listened to some they have rejected?

 A company that makes speakers doesn’t have the time to review amps? What do they do all day at work, watch television? Perhaps they should listen to their speakers with different amps while working? That would require doing two things at once, I know, but I am sure that as a professional courtesy amp companies would provide "loaners" so that they could be on a thumbs up list? Amp arrives on Monday, put in house system and listen for a week or two, ship back to manufacturer. Does that sound like a difficult task to anyone?

There simply is no rhyme or reason to their persnickety behavior, and there are no shortage of complaints about these things on this or other forums regarding this company. I am not the first person to broach this subject, and I know I won't be the last. It's part of Magnepan's job to listen to the consumer, even if it isn’t about how broke they are, that is called only hearing what you want to, and that is the exact opposite of what someone with a marketing background would recommend, in most cases. 
This is how companies stay in business, and why some have to close their doors. Their story isn’t over, so cut me a break on defending abusive behavior, I would prefer a company pretend to be listening to me, and then ignore what I have to say, rather than have them tell me openly to piss off, I'm bothering them. If that's too much to ask of a manufacturer, I must be mistaken about all the companies I have dealt with over the last 65 years where I walked away feeling reassured that I am important to them and that I and others are the reason they have a successful business.

This isn't getting anywhere. I thought someone might lift a veil that helped me to understand why the company is so ridged regarding all of their customer base, but that hasn't happened.

Maybe It's Wendell or maybe it's part of his job is to take the heat for company decisions, apparently no one knows.

Several agree that they would like to have an upgrade option, and that would satisfy both the people that like the product as it is and those who would prefer to spend more on factory upgrades. But nothing has been accomplished and I didn't post this to bash the guy or the company; I do have their speakers in my system and that is a testament to their brand.

We are planning on expanding the listening room in the fall to enlarge it from 12x22x8 to 14x22x9 and with that additional space I can rotate the system 90 degrees to accommodate our furniture and our system and will then have the room for 3.7i's if they are needed/desired.

I don't expect the world to accommodate me, but if enough people left responses that encouraged them to offer factory upgrades, there may be enough public sentiment to institute a new policy at the company. I don't see that happening from this informal poll, so I will fiddle with expanding the upper range of mine and see what I can do without adding Maggie’s Little Helpers. Then if I'm successful I will post those plans and any XOver info info someone else might need if they would like to mod theirs.

Peace

@krelldreams

I don’t mind your comments, some valid points.
Actually I helped a little, I bought three pairs of speakers from them. Others heard mine and bought more. No one has heard these and bought some though, mostly the MGII.

I only became upset when Benchmark told me it may be my cables and I bought some from them. Night and Day. And they didn’t think I was imposing on them by contacting them, they were very helpful. They put Customer in customer service.

So I bought one of their DAC’s as well. There is exceptional attention to detail in these two boxes.

I love the concept and would move on to open baffles if I didn’t have planar speakers.

Good enough is a term I dislike. It seems incongruous to me that a speaker company in the high end business should strive for perfection first while paying attention to the bottom line a close second. It stands to reason that you would want to sell as many of your product as possible, and to do this would try and create a product that defines the market.

If I didn’t care about Magnepan, I wouldn’t waste time on them. 

@lastperfectdaymusic

FYI

Magnepan Europe: https://magnepan-europe.com/pages/shipping-and-delivery

For other international locations contact the manufacturer: Sweden: 0046 8 362240

US for International calls: 1-651-426-1645

@jafreeman 

From what I can tell from testing cables so far is that you want mass. After hating my Audiquest 14 gauge side by side cables that should have satisfied Magnepan's directive, and getting Benchmark's, 11 gauge equivalent, and liking them I decided to test what I had laying around. Some of that was an industrial grade 10 gauge extension cable, and a 4 gauge one. Mass matters. I am theorizing that since the signal doesn’t go through the wire, that the signals from the amp require maximum throughput capabilities for minute bursts of energy, regardless the length of the peak power output. But if anyone knows that, it's a closely guarded secret.

And no, Magnepan has to charge less for it's speakers because they require $10,000 worth of watts output. How is that saving me money?

But I could now write a book on this, an example being: Regardless of the cables gauge, the ends of multistranded cables have to be tinned to the connector that attaches to the binding posts on both ends. And if you are using Magnepan's steel ones, you should tin the cable with no addition at least, however if you tin a copper tube over the end of the cable to match the inner diameter of the sockets, there is better definition.

This makes sense when you view the signal from the amp as a field of energy, and any restriction of the signal carrier diameter as something that deforms that signal. And don't ask about the interior wires on Maggie’s, I had to rip that crap out and replace it with Cardas Chassis wire, 12 gauge. Does owners for the bass, mids and highs. But with no inductor on the bass panel, it's trying to be a full range driver itself.

And everything you do to get bass out of Maggie makes you aware of how deficient the 1.7i's are in midrange and highs.

@ironlung,

First, I reserve the right to bitch about what I want to where I want to. I'll never ring you up to see if you approve before hand.

We have gone over, ad nauseum, what Wendell does and does not do for the company. He mostly tells customers and retailers no. As in no, we don’t really want to hear what you think about our product. Doesn’t matter if it's an end user or retailer.

Being a Magnepan owner/s we reserve the right to discuss whether the company offering upgrades to customers has any merit. While some people have not read the discussion the fact of the matter is that other speaker manufacturers are now doing that, so dreaming that the company may some day do this when Wendell stops saying "No" is a dream we can hold in our hearts.

Offering upgrades does not affect the base price model for cost conscious buyers, only affecting those of us that are bats enough to buy a speaker that has to be repeatedly pushed and pulled from a wall without acceptable handholds to do that.

And they don't even include white gloves...

@ironlung,

Give me a break. My 1.7i's arrived with the one inductor in the x-over wired in series at the end of the circuit between the x-over and the ground.

They sounded brilliant up to about 3khz. Do you want to defend the nimrod that soldered that up, or Magnepan's QC department? And how do we know mine were an anomaly?

So yeah, I have earned the right to criticize Magnepan by being abused by them. 

Folks, you don’t have a clue as to what the 1.7i’s are capable of. I installed Danny at GR Research’s 1.7i’s upgraded X-over, eh, marginally better. Basically a waste of $290.00 

I just approached the whole thing from a different direction, and this design is better, and cheaper. I have to dial back the mid’s and hi’s to the bigger punch bass. No problem matching the speakers to a lowly Velodyne sub now. So now I've wasted about $500 in inductors and capacitors to find out this out.

On the other hand, my Maggie’s sing like no single panel before them. I like that. And 100 watts is plenty to achieve 100db.

Never apply box speaker X-Overs to planer speakers, you’ll just fail.

Oh, and PS.

Magnepan became successful because it was based on a patented design, and then another. Those were extended and the last will soon be coming to it's endpoint soon.
 
They were an IP company, and soon won’t be, and I find fault with that as well.