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Where are your maggies??

Hi,

Just took delivery of a pair of Magnepan 3.6 R's and I'm just starting to get a handle on their sound and at the same time having some placement issues.
I'm using a Belles 250i integrated, which despite it's modest power rating seems to handle the Maggie's incredibly well....large, open soundstage, dynamic, no compression to speak of at higher spl's etc.

My only issue so far is that the overal balance and presentation is a little on the bright side of neutral, more so than the monitors that I've used for the past 6 years or so. Also, bass is definately on the 'lean' side, which doesn't help with the issue of a bright tonal balance.
I'm wondering if my room is mostly to blame for the forward presentation, and wondered if any Maggie owners could cast some light on their own placement issues with 3.6's and what steps they may have taken to overcome the forward presentation and lack of bass. I know that placement with the Maggie's is critical and so far I've spent two evenings making adjustments without any real impact to the overal sound. I have some issues with reflective surfaces, but the speakers are 10' clear from the front wall, 25 or so feet clear from one side wall, 12' clear from the other side wall and 18' from the listening chair with 3' behind the chair to the back wall. So room reflections ought not to be a significant issue given their proximity to the room boundaries.(also, they are 12 feet apart with slight toe-in and the tweeters on the outside).

I've messed around with distance from side and front wall, distance from listening seat, distance between speakers, toe-in angle, and have switched the speakers around between tweeters inside and outside.
The changes in position have effected the soundstage, imaging depth/width but have not really altered bass response or the tonal balance to any real degree.

I'm wondering if these are just inherrently 'bright' speakers with no bass??....though I have heard people claiming to get great bass response from 3.6's and have never heard anyone claiming that they are overly bright. (I've got the Maggie supplied tweeter attenuator installed also, by the way).

Should I be trying anything else as far as placement is concerned, what have others used to tame a forward sound??

Should I be concerned about the amp?...it is an integrated with a tube pre and solid state power stage, and most people describe it's sound as warm, full and tube-like.

Sorry for posting yet another 'Magnepan' thread, but my instinct is that these speakers are capable of much more than I'm getting out of them, and I have the space to allow them to 'breathe' with a room approx 30x60.
I do however have a limited budget for amps, $3k max, though I suspect the Belles is really a great amp that is up to the task of handling these puppies.

Any ideas, insights or tweaks would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,

Rooze

128x128rooze
jwmazur
190 posts
 
I bought my 3.6's new and had the roller coaster ride. The brightness puzzles me because you don't have reflectve surfaces. Pay attentention to the toe-in they mention in the manual for this will affect the phase relationship between the bass and the tweeter.

The amp does indeed need to be a brute. The Maggie spec's are misleading on sensitivity. They use a voltage figure instead of the 1 watt/1 meter spec'. That shows a speaker that is actually less sensitive than what is first believed. So, even though it may be a fine integrated, the power supply probably can't keep up, especially in the cavernous room you are listening in. Try using the Spectron Musician II. It is a digital amp that puts out 650 wpc into 4 ohms with 40 amps of current. I have had this thing cranked in my 13x26 room to the point where the fuses on the speakers quit the next day just on power up. But, we had a rock concert goin' on with ZZ Top right in front of our eyes. This is a fantastic amp. I can say that as I have owned 28 amps in the past 13 years and I started this whole hobby off with listening to Maggies.

The rest of my system is a Sony SCD-1, Kern modified SACD player feeding an Eastern Electric MiniMax tube pre. Harmonic Tech Pro Silway MK111 interconnects are used with Spectron's sense cables used on the output of the amp to the speakers. I have also chucked the metal factory-supplied jumpers. I replaced them using Audio Magic silver jumpers.

Finally, get some of the Mye Stands to firm those panels up. You have that big room and the panels are just rocking back and forth with the bass they are being fed. The stands will give you great bass and will provide so much more information retrieval that the factory stands will be useless.

Good luck and don't give up the ship...yet.
frogman
7,389 posts
 
I second the suggestion of moving the panels to about four feet from the back wall; start there and experiment. Also, IMO Maggies LOVE tubes. 200 watts of quality tube power should do it. I use Manley Reference 200/100 mono's, and in my very large listening room I get an incredibly large and dimensional soundstage, without too much brightness.

Good luck.
sean
6,231 posts
 
El: A really big room is harder to pressurize and obtain high levels of low frequency output. If you doubt this, compare the figures that are used for "room gain" in a house and "cabin gain" when used in a car. The smaller area of a car is easier to pressurize and actually increases apparent output as frequency drops.

On top of this, you have to take the speakers that are being used into account. While dipolar bass can sound very good, it also brings with it some very different attributes in terms of how low frequencies "load up" into the room. This is especially true when half of the speaker radiation is out of phase and is trying to cancel out the other half. In this respect, i highly agree with the others that the location of the speakers in terms of how far off the front wall they are and where the seated listening position is could be suspect.

As a side note, i think that a similar yet different speaker might have been a better approach for this size room. The big Carver's would have been a great choice here as they have all the speed of a ribbon with GREAT bass weight and extension. Since this room is SO large, it would have helped to balance out the bottom end on these speakers since they can tend to sound a little bottom heavy in a smaller room. Sean
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PS... I'm simply "thinking out loud" here, so i hope that Rooze does not take this personally. Obviously, i'd like to see everyone happy with what they have but at the same time, i'm trying to be as honest as possible. You folks can tell me to shut up at any time and i'll understand : )
tireguy
1,964 posts
 
Sean- Shut up! heh heh :^) Its not every day you permission to yell at you.
sean
6,231 posts
 
You can always tell me to shut up. That's part of the beauty of having an open discussion. That doesn't mean i'm necessarily going to listen though, but it might send me a message : ) Sean
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