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In Reply to: RE: Maggie madness posted by Satie on March 24, 2012 at 03:27:19
I sent your post along to Wendell, and here's what he had to say:
"A few years back, one of our most successful dealers was using smallish tube amps. Dealers do pretty much as they wish. Opinions vary. We have received mixed reports on Class D amps and are conservative in our recommendations. Class AB amps have a long and successful history.
"Jon Valin did not say the 20.7s were underpowered. He said the amp got hot. We don't know why since other amps have not had a problem. I drove the 20.7s with our very old 35 watt NAD receiver."
Follow Ups:
There is no question of there being an audience for low volume playback, as it is never grating and not obtrusive. So yes, you can get much fun out of a SET driving maggies in an isolation chamber where you can hear your own heartbeats. It is particularly a spooky effect when you get sudden music popping up from silence due to the maggie's nonlinear behavior at the initiation of motion - low volume.
But I think Wendell is ignoring the reality of the circumstances at the dealer's. There is just not enough time available for the client and the dealer to do multiple amps. The maggies will get one chance to click with the client. Since maggies are so insensitive and require so much power to get the bass going to normal demo volumes, the amp match at the dealers has to be good.
Class D amps have their problem at the high freq end and it grates like nails on a chalkboard to people who can hear it - particularly on the ribbons but also on the QRs. So point taken, but class AB amps that can drive the maggies to produce their bass potential are generally as costly as the speakers, and then some. But there is no alternative but to have the speakers demonstrated with the proper amp so that the prospective buyer at least gets to feel their potential - even if he does not have the power at hand to drive them properly.
This becomes more extreme with the less sensitive and higher performing 3.x and 20.x models, where the cost of adequate power should not be that much of an issue. Yet the cases in which a maggie is demoed with an adequate amp to elicit bass out of it, are rare. Wendell will doubtless say that near 1 kw for a 3.x or over 1kw for a 20.x is overkill and there is bass aplenty well below those power levels, that is not how it plays out at the demo.
A relatively insensitive Vandersteen 2ce sig or 3A sig costs less than a 3.7 but can output more bass than the maggie and it is sufficiently controlled for most folks with just a solid 150 watt amp. That same amp driving a 3.7 will not produce the same bass output as the vandersteen though it is capable of coming close - just not with the 150 watt amp. With a 350 watter, like the Pass Wazoo was using, there is no problem - 600 watts into 4 ohms with headroom will do the trick. I also think that removing the biamp option for the 3.7 and 20.7 was a mistake, as now there is no legit choice for the owner but get subs or massive amps, or forgo deep bass. The option of using a cheaper high power bass amp with a grainy or otherwise offputting top end and a lower power fine sounding amp with weak bass for the top half is no longer a possibility. The biamp option made it possible to get the most out of a big maggie with $4-5k in amps. This leaves only a handful of amps for the owner. And those go for about $10 grand - and up from there. In that one decision, magnepan limited its client base by raising the cost of driving the speakers to double the cost of biamping, and gave the money away to the big amp makers.
As JV noted, with conventional thinking of amp power requirements, he ran a 500 watt/4 ohms amp hot and was still missing 1/2 and octave of extension that a stock 20.x maggie can produce. That is because he should have used an amp with double the power.
The competition to big maggies is not from ESLs, it is from plain ole steens and the like time coherent designs, that can be setup to produce full sized images with a degree of reality to them that you can walk in between the images. If you can't match most of their bass at a reasonable cost, then you have a problem in making the sale.
I agree w/ your analysis, but I do not believe that high volume and deep bass demos are what sell Magneplanars. Most prospective buyers (below 20.x) are taken w/ the natural timbre of instruments and the human voice suspended three dimensionally between the speakers. Good tube electronics, even w/ modest power (less than 200 wpc) will produce this effect. However, even "good tube electronics" will cost substantially more than the speakers themselves. These buyers have never heard reproduced music sound like music and that's the magic that the dealer offers w/ a good set up. Most of them have heard high volume head banging bass at some venue or another, that's not the Magenpan "hook" IMHO. That real problem is that they get home and hook the speaker up to low quality SS and don't get anywhere near what the dealer offered them. Insofar as the 20.x speakers are concerned I believe that's a different buyer that Magnepan and the dealers are assuming has his/her own gameplan to match his/her deep pockets. Loss of bi-amping on the 3.7s was a marginal decision, but on the 20.7s a very poor decision in terms of amplification needs and resultant choices.
I do believe you are right about the maggie buyer going for the particular open maggie signature and lifesize images in a natural sounding venue, but that does not mean that the prospective maggie owner would forgo bass power below 60 hz on a $5k speaker or 50 hz on a $14k speaker. The market for mini monitors is not that large outside of manhattan appartment dwellers. Besides maggies are floor standers. But the point i am trying to make is that most prospective maggie owners do not want to give up their bass after hearing cheaper Vandersteens or dearer Thiels.
While they do not necessarily want to blast house music and drive by rap, they do want to know the speakers can produce what they want, even if it requires a later upgrade of the power amp. But never knowing that you could do without the expense and space needs of a subwoofer because the dealer was not mating the speakers with enough power - that is just a lost sale and another ding in maggie's already weak reputaton for bass production.
So Wendall ran 20.7's with an old 35wpc receiver. Incredible, when I moved into my codo from my small apt, my MGIIIA's popped a tweeter with a 2001 era NAD receiver at 70 wpc and this was at low to medium volume.
So I upgraded to a NAD 218THX at 225wpc, and currently I am running 3.6's with no problem's. Well plus a subwoofer crossed over at 40hz.
I see Magnepan has no problem running 1000wpc Brystron's at their booth at the CES Show.
The bass output of Maggies is really room and setup dependent. When I auditioned my 3.6's at the dealer the room was very dead and full of bass traps and sound deadining materials. As a result there was no bass below 50hz even though he was using Roger Sanders amp designed for the Maggies. But I still bought them because I had 1.6's at home getting down to below 40hz. My 3.6's at home are flat to 32hz and 3db down at 27hz. I use no room treatment and have them set up in the Rooze configuration. I do use a sub for that last deep octave.
Alan
You have just pointed out why you are an exception to the rule. Most folks would not know to expect more bass at home. You were fortunate to have the demo with the amply powered Magtech amp, but had it been a more mainstream amp with 1/3 the power, then the 50 hz cuttoff would have gone up to 70 hz. That is musically damaging.
You also brought up the other issue with maggies demoed in the same space as boxes, where the room would be overdamped by a hefty margin for a planar.
I'll bet if you're handy with a soldering iron you can bi-/tri-amp anything.
Wendell wrote to say that the 20.7 doesn't have bi amping because the circuit doesn't allow it. He also pointed out that the dealers don't work for them . . . they can pretty much do as they please.
BTW, I think there are good, economical SS amplification options for Maggies, e.g., the Emotivas. Not the last word in amplification, but so damned good that no one is going to be displeased with the results unless by way of comparison to the very best. And then it isn't so much a matter of being displeased as it is of saying "This cost only $700?!? It's almost as good as a $10,000 amp!" You'll get a vast, three-dimensional soundstage, though not quite the pellucid three dimensionality and natural-sounding liquidity of the best tubes; strides have been made, but still, in my experience, there always seems to be a bit of an artificial flavor quality to bipolar A/B.
Second the Emotiva as a budget option. Earlier in this thread I mentioned that I took my son HT shopping. We settled on Emotiva gear including their 5 channel amp. We just got everything set up a couple of days ago, and nothing is broken in yet, but still the initial impression is quite good for the money. Repeat, for the money. Emotiva sells a 1000 watt (over 4 ohms) mono for $999 each that has reiewed pretty well. I work with someone who has heard my Maggies, loves the sound but like my son can't afford sufficient power. He is really curious to hear my son's Emo settup after it settles down some.
If I were a Maggie dealer I would use a kilowatt amp and play both Diana Krall (soundstage and imaging) and Flim and the BBs (massive dynamics and bass). Next I would explain why the choice of amps and explain that the combination of Maggie cost and amp should be considered in total to other shopping choices. I would also explain that a getting started option is to use something more modest if the budget didn't allow it. IMO you can't just demo Maggies with weak power.
I have and enjoy the XPA 1's with Maggie 1.7's. They have treated me to a level of dynamics and clarity at a price level that was unimaginable afew years before.You get an awful lot from a set up like this without investing big books. Because they are so full sounding from top to bottom as are the Maggies. room placement is essential: also a combination of resistors and chokes. are well worth the trouble. It is a amazing what a few $ worth of resistors can do. You can shape the XPA 1/ mG 1,7 in many ways to fit your room characteristics. I would assume this process must be done with much higher p;rices equipment. My view is that even with this relatively modest expenditure you can really enjoy music....
I have an XPA-2 and I think anyone would be happy with the sound. It's like the smaller Maggies in that respect -- sure, you can get more for more money, but it passes the threshold at which most anyone would be delighted to own and use it.
I do understand the lure of sonic perfection, but even an unlimited budget won't get you there and I wouldn't want to get to the "audiophile nervosa" point at which you stop enjoying great sound because there's something with a bit more bass or cleaner treble. Improvements should be fun, and something to look forward to.
I tend to think that even those who don't push their speakers to natural levels on Mahler are likely to do so *during a demo* just to see what the speaker can do. Not to mention that some do like to listen at those levels. And either way, if this happens, you'll lose sales.
I wrote Wendell back last night making those points but he said he trusts his dealers to know what sells speakers. I gotta think, based on the reports I see here, that he's sometimes too trusting a guy. :-)
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