Choking more SPL's out of Maggie 3.6's

"Don't rock" - One of the classic and commonplace criticisms of Maggies! (Which I love BTW, so everybody hold your fire...) You seem to have a really nice system and room for these speakers, which shows in your comments about other musical styles. You have covered most of the obvious bases: powerful SS monoblocks, dynamic subwoofer augmentation, speakers have room to breathe. I don't have the specific experience with your amp/speaker combo to say for sure, but you may well be up against the inherent nature of the Maggies. The only thing I can see that could buy you a little more headroom and slam would be to run crossed-over dual subs instead, with the panels and amps given a high-pass break, but that may not prove entirely satisfactory in other areas, and runs the risk of compromising some of what makes the present set-up shine on lighter fare.

I thought about that too, Sean, but as I say, I don't have the specific experience with the Brystons to comment, and having to replace the amps that worked well with Rich's previous speakers would be just as much for him to comtemplate as getting different speakers to replace the Maggies. But the one thing I can say is that the Maggies aren't especially difficult loads, at least from the impedance standpoint. They require a lot of power, especially in bigger rooms (where they work best), due to their relative inefficiency, so it's always possible that an optimistically-spec'ed amp could run out of steam at high volumes, but the impedance is purely resistive and dead-flat at 4 ohms over the whole range, except for peaks at the crossover points. Any 4 ohm rated SS amp worth its salt should be unstressed as long as it can supply the desired power, and the Maggies themselves don't have the highest of limits before panel breakup can occur on certain program material. Though the amp scenario is a possibility, it is also true that Maggies in general - both to their credit and occasional detriment, depending on one's listening habits - do not convey the same sort of impact on loud rock material as dynamic speakers can manage. When I used to work in a store that sold the Maggie line, one of the longtime employees used to say wistfully that he would own a pair in a heartbeat, if only they could play heavy rock. Alas, the sound of Marshall stacks and SVT's is the sound of cone speakers in boxes; like everything else in audio, it's tough to be equally great at doing it all...