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
Once the 3.7s were introduced it made little sense to jump into the 20.1 unless they were used at an attractive price. There was little doubt that the QR technology would be applied to the 20 series within the year. No manufacturer is going to announce near future changes at the expense of current inventory or near future sales. Caveat emptor as they say. I plan to listen to the 20.7 when they become available; however, I purchased the 3.7s a year ago without listening first to compare w/ my 3.6s and I would not go that route again.
I had 1.7's and felt that, among other postive things, they sounded sterile compared to my 1.2's utilizing the same Pre amp and amp (W4S products).

I traded up to a dealer demo pair of 3.6's at a steep discount and a one year full trade in value option.

The warmth is back, plus I obtained all of the other attributes of the 3.6's over the 1.7's.

My point is I agree with Djexxx that an updated model may not necessarily sound better once you get past the "its new and sounds different" stage.
I've heard excellent things about the W4S amp with the Maggies. Caveat being that I haven't heard the combo myself. Not sure about the pre.
If there are separate drivers with separate terminations then the 20.7 can be bi or tri amped. Of course we are talking modding the thing. Stock it may have just one set of speaker posts and an internal series xover. This does not mean you cannot take the speaker apart and wire it any way you want. You could use a seriously tweaked analog or digital xover and get as crazy as you like. The first thing you would want to do is build some serious damped and braced frames/baffles for them. The magnepan stock frames are not very serious.