Magnepan 3.7


Looks nice, link below.

“the 3.7 is a 3-way, full-range ribbon speaker with a very ‘fast’ quasi-ribbon midrange and true ribbon tweeter.”

"The 3.7 is available in new aluminum trim or our traditional wood trims of oak and cherry. Fabric options are off-white, black and dark gray. Suggested list pricing starts at $5495/pair for aluminum or oak versions, or $5895/pair for the dark cherry versions."

Magnepan 3.7
james63

Showing 5 responses by weseixas

Josh358 wrote :
Unsound, a quasi ribbon is a ribbon that is attached to a mylar backing. A true ribbon is just the foil, without a backing.

Hello Josh,

The magnetic assembly is what determines if it is a true ribbon or not , not the type of diaphram, FWIW all foil diaphragms will have some sort of mylar backing, it reduces ringing.
Maggies are very good value, the 1.6 and now the 1.7 are really good value and with a few mods they step up to another level, not so much for the 3.6 or the 20.1.

In all my magnapan experiences i have never heard better performance from 20.1's. nor 3.6 over the smaller less costly models. I have heard 3.6 sound better than 20.1 and i have heard 1.6/1,7 sound better than the 3.6/20.1

The 20.1/3.6 has a better tweeter and hence better top end, but poor xover /build quality i have never heard them fully better the smaller speakers and at a 1/10 of the cost, the bigger models don't fly in my books.

Ohhh i have a few friends currently with 20.1's I'm still waiting for them to finish their "mods" and then the "phone call" to prove me wrong , at 5+ times the cost of a 1.7 i find it absurd, but they are having fun and it makes for good entertainment value ..... :)

regards,
If they were to use a straight foil for the woofer, a transformer would be necessary due to the impedance.

Yankee Ribbon used a push pull ribbon for there speakers all other magnostats that i'm aware of use planer bass units
( maggies , apogee's , et al). The Yankee approach is better as the planers tend to be one legged and do not have a linear field.

regards,
Hello Magfan,

Maggie is not using a foil backing on their tweeters,they are using corrugation to move/control the resonant freq. Some do it this way, others use damping. IMO corrugation works on the tweeters ( which maggie do ) but have found that damping the foil is much better sonically than corrugation. They use mylar with foil elsewhere and describe the 20.1 as,

"3-Way / Ribbon Tweeter - Planar-Magnetic"

Mylar is necessary if you are running foil traces. On ribbons with more than 1 foil trace, you have to use some kind of backing , mylar is used when this is necessary, if running a straight foil then no mylar backing is necessary unless for sonics.

Extra foil traces are necessary to make the impedance more realistic to the amplfier ( 3 or 4 ohm vs .25ohm) Maggie apparently is running there ribbon direct
(.25ohm) and is then compensating in the xover, 99% of ribbon speakers are built with multiple foil traces and mylar.

IMO direct ( no foil traces) is the best way, a direct ribbon ( my choice also) is the correct approach unfortunately it does not lend itself readily to most amplifiers and efficiency is lost in the xover.

3.6 description:

Description: Three-way, floorstanding, planar dipole loudspeaker. Drive-units: 500-in2 planar-magnetic bass driver, 199-in2 planar-magnetic midrange driver, 0.16" by 55" ribbon tweeter. Crossover frequencies: 200Hz and 1.7kHz. Frequency response: 34Hz-40kHz, ±3dB. Impedance: 4 ohms nominal, constant, resistive (4.7 ohms bass, 4.2 ohms midrange/tweeter, 3.3 ohms tweeter only). Sensitivity: 86dB/2.83V/m. Recommended power: 75-250W.

Making only the tweeter a true ribbon ....