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Maggie! Maggie! Maggie!

I shall report in regularly Craig :)

First impressions on day two - many similarities to ESL57s, about the same sensitivity and overall bandwidth, i.e. 50Hz and then a cliff edge. Not as critical in terms of sweet spot.
Amazing image depth, they can place a piano in front of the speaker, vocalist centre stage and percussion way to the back. In comparison the 57s keep things in the plane of the speaker.
I'm hearing plenty to like and nothing to dislike at the moment. They nail vocals on terms of tonality, detail and intimacy and that quality alone propels them ahead of the speaker herd IME.

For giggles I connected the little Rega IO tonight just to understand this whole amp killer thing. They don't' need tons of power, they need an amp that is 4 Ohm capable, i.e. not one that has impedance sensing and shuts down at the merest sniff of a 4 Ohm load, and conditional on the amp being able to handle the extra thermal load.
The IO sounded just fine up to moderate levels, in the same way that 15W Quad IIs work just great with the 57.

Lots more to come :)
Don’t know if you have this recording but the Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana sounds outstanding with these speakers, well worth a try.
 
I always fancied a pair of Magnepans after hearing a vintage pair being driven by an Arion acoustic Talos amp.

Mrs Seeker won't let me have them as they're too big. :(
 
My first salary bought me SMGbs in 1993. They sounded spectacular (or so I thought), but were not very reliable: rust particles (!) from the top of the frame travelled down the tweeter section of the diaphragm, repeatedly shorting it. The trips to and from the dealer were not exactly fun.

In 1996 I added a pair of decent, but not restored, Quad ESL-57s to the system. Just for laughs (or so I thought).
The Maggies were slaughtered in every respect, went in storage, only to be revealed again the day I sold them on in 2004 or so.
 
They are better built nowadays. That was long ago. A lot of today’s classics were dodgy in their infancy.
 
Time will tell if they last without failure but continuing the Quad comparison these feel slightly less solid than 57s in terms of build but better than 63.
The LRS doesn't bend, flex or creak when you move them.

There is also the cost, since these cost £1200 new in the UK, are US built and shipped.
I note they are shipped in a flat cardboard box with virtually no soft packing, just layers of cardboard wrap. They survive transatlantic shipping in those boxes so must be pretty robust.

Maggies generally are not expensive by audiophile standards, far from it.
 
My first salary bought me SMGbs in 1993. They sounded spectacular (or so I thought), but were not very reliable: rust particles (!) from the top of the frame travelled down the tweeter section of the diaphragm, repeatedly shorting it. The trips to and from the dealer were not exactly fun.

In 1996 I added a pair of decent, but not restored, Quad ESL-57s to the system. Just for laughs (or so I thought).
The Maggies were slaughtered in every respect, went in storage, only to be revealed again the day I sold them on in 2004 or so.
My first Maggies were SMGbs.My partner at the time called them 'the musical ironing boards'. I never had a moment's trouble with them and they sounded fantastic.
 
I have the .7 and they are just slightly bigger than the SMG. They fitted nicely into a 12' x18' study room with wood panels and book shelves. I also have the 3.6 in the basement but I rarely use them because wife don't like the big sound and it only sounded good in high volume. Over the years, I had the MG2 and the MG2.5 and I always like its big sound stage.
 
For giggles I connected the little Rega IO tonight just to understand this whole amp killer thing. They don't' need tons of power, they need an amp that is 4 Ohm capable, i.e. not one that has impedance sensing and shuts down at the merest sniff of a 4 Ohm load, and conditional on the amp being able to handle the extra thermal load.
The IO sounded just fine up to moderate levels, in the same way that 15W Quad IIs work just great with the 57.

I only like to play at moderate levels, hence why the Quad 306 works for me. I've owned these for nearly 20 years, and can never see me getting rid of them. For me the positives out way the down sides.

I'm sure if you can dial in the subs the sounds will be excellent.
 
Interesting indeed but it seems the chap in the video is saying that in order to get these speakers to sound right a pair a subs and an active crossover is required? Does that not mean the design is fairly flawed or compromised to start with or am I missing something?

I wouldn't say flawed, he even said, the problem was only when you turn the volume up, they were ok at lower listening levels. I just thought it was interesting, I certainly heard the problem on his pair, do owners of Maggies ever hear this, I don't know?
 
Well time passes so fast, its been a month since these landed and I've had plenty of time to experiment with positioning, and even <cough> wiring.

I've reverted to a mid-field listening position as this is essential in my room to adequately support the low end. It also allows positioning in accordance with Magnepan's suggested method - distance between 'speakers approximately 60% of the listening distance. In my room I can get about 10ft listening distance. Tweeter panels on the outside, lightly toed-in ensuring that the tweeter panel is slightly further away than the bass panel. This avoids something often seen in Maggie response plots, the presence dip. Stand flippers down to set the panel almost perpendicular to the floor, though tilting back also works pretty well.

Lateral listening window is quite wide and can certainly ensure that 2 listeners get good sound, though for absolute best performance the window suits a single listener. Then again this describes most 'speakers.

You want to use heavy gauge cabling with these. The load sits at 3.3 Ohms across most of the range and drops to about 2.7 Ohms through the crossover - lower than all other Maggies. They will draw current and they will show small differences between say 12 and 16 AWG cable over longer runs (mine are 6.5m). To put that into context, plain cheap old Linn K20 bests expensive Tellurium Ultra Blue. No miracles, no magic - one simply has a lot more copper and lower resistance.

Performance comes pretty close to Quad 57s overall but with a couple of notable differences.
Imaging is very different. Never the strong point of the 57 IME which tends to paint everything in ultra crisp precision but with little depth (unlike the 63). The LRS stretches the soundstage in all directions to quite amazing degrees on some recordings, though it cannot then place individual sounds within the left-right stage with quite the precision of the 57 and especially not the 63.

Bass is tighter and leaner than either Quad, with less apparent drumskin 'plonk' than either. Goes about as deep as a 57, but 63 goes a little lower. They can play loud but will need lots of power for headbanging loud.

One fascinating aspect of the LRS is an ability to decompress old, flat recordings. It seems to pull them open and juice them up just a tad. Really enjoyed some Elvis recordings of various quality the other evening. These can often sound a bit brash, thin and squashed but the LRS almost seemed to be acting as a dynamic expander.

You don't need a gazillion watts for the LRS.
Again - you don't need as gazillion watts for the LRS!

Measured as you would a typical box design gives you a painfully low 80dBw sensitivity. In practice and in room this feels more like 85dBw. Dipoles typically sound louder than they measure in terms of sensitivity. For modest rooms you need an amplifier comfortable pushing about 100w into 4 Ohms minimum.

Negatives?
The top end can't match the purity of a Quad ESL but it gets decently close and bests most dome tweeters I've heard.
Getting a reasonably uniform in room response requires a lot of experiment with positioning. Get this wrong and they have no bass and lack upper mid projection.
If you can only tolerate 'speakers with a near perfect on-axis response and textbook directivity performance from the Harman playbook, walk away, these are not for you.
The LRS relies on the ear/brain synthesizing the speaker and room response into a cohesive whole in order to achieve relative neutrality.

And finally, beware well meaning folk who measure these dipoles on a Klippel near field scanner (clue's in the name kids) and then proceed to 'subjectivise' the graphs into prose. No...

These things are astonishing value even at the inflated UK price.

Quick and dirty in-room plot for both LRS playing together at the listening seat.
The usual bass woodles but fairly uniform and note, down to 35Hz in room without EQ or subs.

lRS pair far
 


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