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Magnepan announces the 20.7

Jacob Heilbrunn has a first look on The Absolute Sound's site.

"But here’s the skinny: no other speaker at this price will offer even remotely similar lifelike performance, and it should—no, will—scare the bejeezus out of most of its competitors. It’s no accident that Audio Research, which I also got to visit, has 3.7 loudspeakers as part of its reference system. So go ahead. Search for another loudspeaker. But I can only wish you good luck. I defy you to find one at up to five times the cost with the scale and realism of the 20.7."

http://www.avguide.com/blog/first-listen-magnepan-s-new-flagship-207-loudspeaker
josh358

Showing 2 responses by douglas_schroeder

douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Despite the hyperventilating expect an incremental improvement, as I predicted with the 1.7 and 3.7.
douglas_schroeder
3,281 posts
 
Brownsfan, You are right that semantics plays a large part in the matter. For me an incremental change happens when a speaker retains its basic character and is improved. I believe that is the case with the 1.7 and 3.7, and I believe it will be the case with the 20.7 as well.

I owned the 1.6QR for years and can't recall all the times aside from shows that I've heard the 3.6 in dealerships and at shows. My impression at the shows where these speakers were revealed was that they were not vastly different from their predecessors. I agree that the bulk of the improvement is in coherence.

When I reviewed the Eminent Technology LFT-8A and did the conversion of the speakers to the LFT-8B I was shocked at how one change, replacing the tweeter with an upgrade, made the entire speaker sound different top to bottom. Keeping that in mind I felt I heard similar improvements from the 1.7 and 3.7 which could be caused by incremental improvement.

One reason I would suggest that this is incremental improvement is that the bass has not been improved appreciably in terms of extension. The design of the speaker has always dictated a shallow low end and this has not been addressed; I believe technologically it cannot be ameliorated or else Magnepan would have done so. If that had been altered appreciably then I would be much more inclined to call it a sweeping change.

To be fair, I enthused about the change from the Legacy Audio Focus HD to the Focus SE and felt it was a profound enough difference to merit the cost of the upgrade. The driver set was the same but tolerances matched to +/- .25dB, and the cabinet was new as well. The tweeter received a silver wiring upgrade and Solen caps were used. Finally, the M/T drivers were set higher in the cabinet than with the HD version. The low bass response of the SE version was improved by 2dB.

It is possible that if I had the 3.6 and 3.7 or the 20.1 and 20.7 in my room I would conclude likewise.

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