Set up properly, Maggies are not necessarily 'hot'.
They actually have a slight rise in the bass end to compensate for the cancelation that occurs from front / back interaction. Listen to the exact edge of the panel and you will hear......nothing. The front / back wave cancel one another.
That being said, one of the big debates of panel users is the resistor which on many models can be inserted in the tweeter circuit. The 1.6s, for example, came with 1 ohm resistors.
I, too, found my 1.6s to be hot when I first set them up. Beamy, too. It was impossible to get a wide stage and not too hot. Opening up the toe would help, but the sweetspot was TINY.
Finally, during lots of reading and listening to others, I was made aware of the fact that OLD panels had the POLE PIECE forward...to the listener. New designs feature the MYLAR side to the listener. To me, flipping the panels to listen to them 'old school' made all the difference. Wider sweet spot and much less hot. No resistor needed.
Also, since the crossover on many Magnepan models is Asymmetric....I have a 12db slope on the low pass and 6db slope on the high pass, the low and high drivers are out of phase. Since the drivers are beside one another, one is slightly leading, the other lagging by the amont of phase difference caused by the crossover. Tweeter IN or OUT makes the difference. That's all I can think of to account for the greater clarity with tweeter 'in'.
EXPERIMENT away freely. This will apply to ALL magnepan models except the 20.1, which is a push / pull driver and has a pole piece on each side.
When in doubt? Ignore the directions. And get rid of that fuse, while you're at it. Too much extra wire and many more connections just muck things up. BE CAREFUL!
They actually have a slight rise in the bass end to compensate for the cancelation that occurs from front / back interaction. Listen to the exact edge of the panel and you will hear......nothing. The front / back wave cancel one another.
That being said, one of the big debates of panel users is the resistor which on many models can be inserted in the tweeter circuit. The 1.6s, for example, came with 1 ohm resistors.
I, too, found my 1.6s to be hot when I first set them up. Beamy, too. It was impossible to get a wide stage and not too hot. Opening up the toe would help, but the sweetspot was TINY.
Finally, during lots of reading and listening to others, I was made aware of the fact that OLD panels had the POLE PIECE forward...to the listener. New designs feature the MYLAR side to the listener. To me, flipping the panels to listen to them 'old school' made all the difference. Wider sweet spot and much less hot. No resistor needed.
Also, since the crossover on many Magnepan models is Asymmetric....I have a 12db slope on the low pass and 6db slope on the high pass, the low and high drivers are out of phase. Since the drivers are beside one another, one is slightly leading, the other lagging by the amont of phase difference caused by the crossover. Tweeter IN or OUT makes the difference. That's all I can think of to account for the greater clarity with tweeter 'in'.
EXPERIMENT away freely. This will apply to ALL magnepan models except the 20.1, which is a push / pull driver and has a pole piece on each side.
When in doubt? Ignore the directions. And get rid of that fuse, while you're at it. Too much extra wire and many more connections just muck things up. BE CAREFUL!