Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.
Return to Planar Speaker Asylum
Let’s do an experiment first. Put your hand on the back of your Maggie until you touch the perforated steel plate while you are playing a CD with a lot of bass information. You will feel the steel plate is vibrating. This experiment indicates that the vibrating plate may be one of the reasons which cause Maggie has soft and weak bass. I have been trying to find a solution for a while as indicated in my other post. I thought about gluing some steel bars on the back of perforated steel plate but I was not sure what the result would be since this tweak can’t be undone.Finally, I came up a solution, which works wonderfully (see the picture). This solution doesn’t block the sound while it reduces the vibration of bass panel and it doesn't push the panel forcefully to cause distortion either. It keeps everything intact. In case you want to try it out for yourself, you need to be extremely careful without tightening the screws too much. Once you feel slight pressure, you should stop so the tip of screw just touches the perforated steel plate. I use 7 screws behind the bass panel initially. It is no doubt that bass is further improved, but the image is so steady that separation of instruments is a bit too much for me. I have to loose those three screws close to the midrange area to soften image. I use two 1X2 oak supporting bars for each speaker.
After I finished it, I turned on the system. Boy! Mahler’s Symphony never sounded so good. Every instrument in the orchestra is well defined. I also played some pieces of solo instruments. Bass cello is simply wonderful. Drum sound is very well controlled and the texture of sound while sticks hit the skin of drum is so real. I simply love it. I don’t know if my idea works for 1.6 or smaller Maggies. But I am sure it could help 3 series as well.
Follow Ups:
Don't try this on stock 3.5 and IIIa, or other models which have perforated metal plate on FRONT.
If the magnets are in back on your midrange while still contending with the perforated steel, I might be tempted if I were in your shoes. At least the unmagnetized steel would be braced.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
I was informed that MG20 had preforated staal in front of the bass panel too.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
20 has preforated metal plate on back. Since it is a push-pull design, I guess it should have prefortated metal plate on front side as well. However, I can't see it on front without opening the sock. For on midrange area, my best guess is it has metal preforated plate on both sides but magnets on back side only.
You have the acoustic chamber sonic character added to the midrange with the added steel, but without the magnet's structural vertical rigidity & improved dynamics. Damn, I'm glad that Magnepan went to a MG20.1 with a push-pull midrange. I just assumed that the steel stopped in front of the MG20 to let the sound through unimcumbered.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
on 20, midrange is quasi-ribbon with magnets on back side only. On the front, the preforated metal plate doesn't cover midrange area. It has about 3x4 openings over the midrange area from top to bottom. I looked really hard this time with a flash light.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
here are some posts where I addressed my view of the problem ...
1 & <2 & 3
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
In my opinion, putting felt into the channel between magnets may block sound too much. Those small holes are only ways for back sound wave come out.Gluing whole piece of plywood on the back of preforated metal plate may make the plate too firm which may cause unnatural sounding. Also, it is almost impossible to do it for diyers.
I fear that we may be getting out of control a bit here. It's one thing to upgrade the cheaper caps that Magenplaner uses to keep their costs of materials in check, or to upgrade the cheap stands they employ for the same reason, but to start mucking with the basic design is, IMHO, a bit of a sacrilege!A tweak that cost near nothing in materials, such as the one proposed here, would certainly be employed by Magneplanar if it improved the solidity of the bass response. After all, this has been one of the few areas where the folks at Magnepan have received any criticism.
Jim Winey is an artist who happens to be an engineer. This is important to keep in perspective! We all appreciate how brilliant his designs are for releasing the music to ears in an open and airy manner unencumbered by the confines of wooden boxes. His ability to recreate a realistic soundstage is breathtaking and the overall coherence of his designs is unequaled. To venture into structural changes to his designs is, IMHO, not unlike rearranging a few of JS Bach's notes in one of his fugues, or revoicing some of Ludwig Van's chord structures!
We all strive to bring out the absolute best in each component we purchase, and to put together the combinations of components, cables, etc. that work best for our rooms and listening preferences. With all due respects, I have found that 'un-doing' tweaks and returning the original designs of audio engineers usually has far more advantages in sonic improvement than the converse.
To quote Mart - "just my 2 cents!"
..
...that's why I carefully qualified my remarks - "...with all due respects" in recognition of the quality of your efforts!!We all draw the 'tweak line' at different places. You are definitely more advernturous than I am!
... adding the felt would change the speaker Qts, but considering that they were purported to have been acoustically measured as 3 or 4. This initially sounded absurd to me as it would be indicative of poor transients. However, when I played with some equations, I saw that the actual acoustic Qts of a purely resistive driver is probably half of that measured via SPL. So, since the transients are that corresponding to a 1½ or 2, I thought a little variventing of the perforations may help.OTOH, I don't see how stiffening the steel plate is any more than tweakers who do the exact same thing of dynamic chasis with weight, wood, and modeling clay.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
The concept was an elegant appearance that fuses techno with organic aesthetics. This was also the thought behind gluing tool cloth unto the mylar which should render a textile diaphram type sound without the need for a sonicly stiffling grill cloth in front. Thus, the appearance hasn't degraded. In fact, it may appear enhanced. However, this was just another unrealized concept as of yet.
» moderate Mart £ « Planar Asylum
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: