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In Reply to: RE: The correct magnepan for my room posted by partell on December 31, 2016 at 13:10:21
If my experience is any guide (and it may not be), you're going to have trouble with the fireplace location. I wanted to put my Maggies on either side of my fireplace too -- the room works out brilliantly -- but no matter what I did, I couldn't get that magical Maggie imaging. The sound seemed to be coming from the mantle. They really seem to prefer a fairly plain wall behind them (though HP of TAS had a lot of luck with a bay window -- you never really know with planars!).
You might have better luck than I did, but I'd be cautious. Not that they'll sound bad, but they may not sound as spectacular as you remember them.
That said, I love Maggies as movie speakers, preferably big ones. It isn't a combo that most people think of but it's the best theatrical sound I've ever heard, and I used to work in motion picture audio. The naturalism of the sound adds a lot to the experience. I had the big Tympani 1D's back then, which play louder and deeper than the smaller ones, but I've also had MMG's and they did well, just not at thunderous levels.
I think you may want to wait until you know the exact room layout and then talk to Wendell Diller, the head of sales at Magnepan. Wendell has had more experience than any of us with what model sounds best in which circumstance.
Follow Ups:
My fireplace will have a hearth and stone going to the 12 foot ceiling. I am starting to wonder if the Maggie's are a good choice for the room?
You are the slave to Maggies. They have to go where they need to go. If you can't deal with that, they will not work for you. I've never heard any Maggie located near a wall that sounded good. They NEED room to breathe and the back wave needs some space to reflect off the rear wall and match the front wave. No getting around that.
Hard to say. Fireplaces are famously problematic with any speaker, if they project beyond the wall, anyway -- if they're flush, they seem to be fine (see Green Lantern's post).
What will happen with the Maggies or what happened with mine anyway is I didn't get the great soundstage that everyone craves. But they still sounded good. And that was with e.g. symphonic reocrdings. It might not be a problem with the stuff you listen to. And you won't get that great soundstage with non-dipoles either, so . . .
Would it be possible to put the speakers against another wall? Or, alternatively, what about the Maggie on walls? They should be affected because they'd be mounted on the walls -- the back wave then skitters off the side walls. And they'd also save space in your room.
Really, Wendell is the person to ask about this -- as I said, he has more experience with varied customer setups than any of us.
Finally, in the end, you may just have to experiment. For me, anyway, there's always an unpredictable aspect to acoustics in that things never work out quite the way I expected. But I've also always found that I could jigger things around until they worked well, as I did in my room here -- they're sounding quite spectacular now.
I had the best Maggie experience (soundstage wise) with my original pair of 1.6s flanking a brick fireplace. Vocals were so stunning there were more than a few times I was late for work while listening to them.Of course sibilance and edgy-ness were problematic, but the pinpoint imaging and multi-layering were extraordinary .
I'm sure the room played the most important role; it was 'huge' (25x30).
Edits: 01/01/17
Interesting. It seems to be flush with the wall? I'd expect that to be OK and the slightly rough surface/bricks to help with diffusion.
The issues in my case are I think because the fireplace projects forward and the mantle has a shelf with a curve at the bottom that just happens to be at ear height. I had to solve the problem by putting the speakers against the side wall, but as you can see it screws up the room arrangement something fierce -- I'd hoped to have a couch facing the fireplace, with the speakers on either side. (It isn't as bad if I push the mid-tweeter panels back to 3' out but then the image suffers.)
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