Followup-Magnepan 1.7s in a 10x13' dedicated room?


Well I brought the demo MG12s home from the dealer for the weekend and they actually worked very well in my small listening room. Everything I love about Maggies was there with a couple of surprises. First, I ended up with the speakers fairly close to the side walls, though the walls are treated. Second, I obtained the best imaging with the tweeters on the outsides. I assumed they would work better on the insides considering their close proximity to the side walls. The sound stage was wide, deep and well defined. I was able to hear and feel bass in the low 40s, which was another surprise. I give credit for that to the 4 inch thick bass traps I made myself. It's amazing what those have done for a room that literally sucked bass out of the room without them. Some recordings were a little bright, but I think I could remedy that with resistors applied to the tweeters. The dealer didn't supply with resistors to take with me. The MG 12s worked so well in fact that I'm seriously considering the 1.7s. Especially since I hope to be moving to a larger room in the future.
linesource
"Some recordings were a little bright, but I think I could remedy that with resistors applied to the tweeters. The dealer didn't supply with resistors to take with me."

If you ask Magnepan, they'll send them to you. They didn't ask me for any money, so they probably won't charge you either.
Rhanson, I can't emphasize enough that in my room, though it has very plush carpeting, Maggies were a no go without treating the back corners floor to ceiling with auralex panels. I glued them to blue board insulation, covered them with fabric, and wedged them into the corners at a 45 degree angle to each wall. Without them, there is a certain high frequency that was reinforced to ear bleed levels. The corner treatment substantially mitigated the problem with the 1.6s, and combined with tweeters inside arrangement, completely mitigated the problem on the 3.7s. The remaining walls were untreated.

I would much rather fix what is wrong with the room than attenuate those angelic maggie ribbons. No issues with those who use the resistors, its just my preference to fix what is really wrong.

I also think it is extremely important with Maggie based systems to address RFI/EMI issues in the entire system. It is my belief that Maggies somehow reveal the high frequency grunge caused by these issues to a greater extent than most other speakers, resulting in high frequency related listener fatigue. This can, I think, sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing. If something is wrong in the high frequencies, you are going to hear it. Attention to power treatment is pretty important with Maggie based systems.
I also think it is extremely important with Maggie based systems to address RFI/EMI issues in the entire system. It is my belief that Maggies somehow reveal the high frequency grunge caused by these issues to a greater extent than most other speakers, resulting in high frequency related listener fatigue. This can, I think, sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing. If something is wrong in the high frequencies, you are going to hear it.

One probably does need to treat the room for Magneplanar speakers but it's for the wrong reasons - the reason that these speakers appear to have an "overly aggressive top end--too bright" & "The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing" is that, basically, Magneplanar speakers are not time-coherent speakers.
This is very clear from the measurements Stereophile has published for the MG3.6/R - see Fig 6: step response:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/magnepan-magneplanar-mg36r-loudspeaker-measurements-part-2
and for the MG1.6/QR - see Fig 5: step response. Here even the published text clearly states the speaker is not time-coherent:
http://integracoustics.com/MUG/MUG/reviews/stereophile_mg16qr.htm

Non time-coherent speakers have the (very) bad habit of letting the listener hear the high frequencies before the mids & the mids before the bass. As a result the sonics are tipped towards the high frequencies & you get these sort of comments: "sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing".
Making Magneplanar speakers time-coherent would resolve the issue but this has to be done at the design/factory level & not in the listener's room after the fact they are purchased by the user.
I stated this in your other thread concerning the Magnepans. When I tried the MG12s, I could not tame the aggressive treble energy. Resistors helped but not enough.
Bombawalla, thanks for sharing this info. I had not heard this idea, and I must admit it makes perfect sense and is probably a contributing complication. I have used Mye stands with both the 1.6s and 3.7s, and have found that the ability to tilt the panels in order to align the center point (vertically) with a perpendicular to the listeners ear when seated, substantially improves the overall performance. What this does is achieve the best possible time alignment of each panel or ribbon with respect to itself, if you catch my meaning. In other words, not only are the speakers not time aligned in the conventional sense, but because the panels and ribbons are so tall, the arrival time to the listener's ear from each individual panel is smeared more than would be the case were the sound to emit from a single point.

On the other hand, there are many non time aligned speakers that are not perceived as bright, just as I suspect one can find time aligned speakers that are perceived as bright.

If there were a perfect speaker design, everyone would be using it and life would be much simpler. Maggies, like any other speaker, have their strengths and weaknesses. I used them exclusively from about 1991 to 2014 for a reason. Up until April of this year, I could not find a single dynamic speaker under 16K that I thought I could live with. I picked up a pair of (time aligned, it turns out) Coincident Triumph extreme IIs, and I have just fallen in love with these little monitors. As expected for monitors, they don't do everything, but for what they do, they do as well or better than speakers I have heard costing much more. It would seem that at long last, I have found the speaker that could induce me to move on from Maggies and not look back.

I am still a fan of Maggies, because they can do wonderful things when implemented properly. But, for me, at long last, it is now time for something different.