What speakers?


I recently sold my Magnepan 1.6's even though I loved them. They just needed too much space behind them and ended too far out into the room.

I mostly listen to Jazz voacals and easy listening music and loved the Maggie sound. I have a Parasound A21 that I felt drove the speakers well. Vincent Audio tube CD Player. Parasound 21 preamp.

What kind of monitor speakers could I get that will give me something close to the maggie sound? Will it also work with my amp?

Thanks for your input guys.
Dan
daniel825
Dan,
I had the Maggie 3.6's for a few years. In my experience, I have not heard any cone driver monitors that sound like the maggies. Immediately you lose the scale and height of the images. Also the soundstage depth suffers. Of course the conventional monitors outdo the maggies in other areas.
Gallo Ref III. May suffer some near wall though. Since the tweeter is only 180 degree firing it might minimize rear wall interaction unlike the MKII 320 degree tweeter. The top end is fast like your Maggies. Great soundstage anywhere in the room.
To sound like a Maggie, a cone-based speaker has to have no enclosure resonance, project a sort of line source image, and be dipolar to energize the room in a similar way.

Minimonitors don't do that. They function as a forward-firing point source, which is an entirely different dispersion pattern. Hence, they don't disperse sound or engergize a room like Maggies, and therefore can't sound like them in-room.

There are dipolar cone-based speakers such as the Nola Viper 1A and the AV123 Strata Mini, but they're not mini-monitors and I suspect they need the same amount of space behind them as Maggies.

I suspect if you look around, you may find a stand-mounted open baffle speaker that gives you what you're looking for, but I can't think of one offhand.