Planar Speaker Asylum

Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.

Return to Planar Speaker Asylum


Message Sort: Post Order or Asylum Reverse Threaded

Taking your Maggies for granted

24.229.63.32

Posted on December 9, 2010 at 08:13:11
criv911@enter.net
Audiophile

Posts: 51
Location: pa.
Joined: January 4, 2004
I have had 3.3"s in my smallish living room for about 4 years now, and wanted to downsize. So I convinced myself that something from Gallo's reference line would do the trick. I've heard the 3.5's and strada's at a rave where Anthony was there himself. In that situation I thought that I could live with them. I found a set of reference av's on Agon for a great price so I went for it. What a mistake! I spent a couple of days moving them all over the place, trying to like them. It's was impossible. Now, I believe that what we enjoy from our senses is in part psychological. If you really want to like something it will sway your opinion. Well if I was Dorothy I wasn't getting back to Kansas. Not only do my old 3.3's blow these away, but my MMG's do also. The difference was so great that my wife, who pays no attention to my audio affliction noticed. Luckily the seller was gracious enough to take them back. So since the barn doors are staying I guess I'm going to have to make hardwood frames for them. At least they will be pretty barn doors.

 

Hide full thread outline!
    ...
RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 9, 2010 at 15:40:48
play-mate
Audiophile

Posts: 948
Joined: November 21, 2008
hey criv911,

thatīs just so with certain elements of luxury.... :-)
-only when you don`t have certain privileges any longer, you find out what they mean to you.

I guess however the most of us could live with a heck less than we would like to admit.

do take the opportunity to upgrade your maggies, so you can be shure to put the priorities in your life right :-)
Hysolid // Mytek Brooklyn // Spectron Musician III // Analysis Audio Omega

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 9, 2010 at 18:54:26
66mgb
Audiophile

Posts: 252
Location: Neskowin Oregon
Joined: November 8, 2009
Many times we listen to equipment , rather than the music. Those of us lucky enough to have a good Maggie system need to be thankful and enjoy music reproduced as good as it gets ( in my ears anyway). I have been a audio tweaker in my younger years and built many Nelson Pass designs from scratch in the 70's when he still worked from his home. I have grown to appreciate the music more than the means that produce it as I have got older. My Maggies were my therapy when I coped with cancer treatments this year. The music they provided kept me sane during the process. Things are much better now with my health and I spent more time this year listening to music than in many years. I can't say Maggies cured cancer but they sure helped get through the treatments!!

Russ

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 9, 2010 at 22:32:45
Kurtle
Audiophile

Posts: 364
Location: Salem Oregon
Joined: December 21, 2002
Contributor
  Since:
April 6, 2011
I had been aware of Maggie's for years but knew that they were picky about room placement, needing to be be far from the back wall, etc. and needed beefy amplification so thought they wouldn't work for me and had never really considered them.

I owned Vandersteen 1's for years and loved them. I upgraded to the Vandy 2C's and loved those as well but always thought the Vandy 1's did voices better and I listen to a lot of vocal music.

I had decided to purchase a new pair of Vandy 1C's and a sub, and was on line doing some research and came across the Maggie web site. I saw the MMG deal and saw that they were half what I was getting ready to spend on a brand new set of Vandy 1C's AND they had the 60 day in home trial. I thought "oh, my room is too small" and then looked at my Vandy 2C's, broke out the tape measure and realized the front of the speaker was just shy of three feet from the back wall. Hmmm... But I would need an amp for them I thought, and looked at my Adcom GFA555 II, I grabbed the manual and realized that my amp would work just fine. I figured I had nothing to lose, and the next morning I called Magnepan and ordered up a pair of MMG's.

That all happened in 2001, and I have been a Maggie man ever since. I built some stands to get them vertical and about 7" off the floor and added a HSU sub.

Last year I had some extra money, and was in a local stereo store, and found out he was a Vandersteen dealer (the closest one previously was 35 miles away and I had never been there, having purchased my earlier Vandy's used). I got a wild hair, and purchased a pair of 1C's (with stands).

I brought them home, moved the Maggie's into another room and proceeded to hook them up, being sure to follow Richard V's manual for proper setup (speaker placement, tilt, etc). I left them hooked up for 3 1/2 months (playing while I was at work so as to break them in properly).

While the 1C is a great speaker, I just couldn't make the jump. I was constantly tweaking the placement, tried everything to love them but just couldn't. I plugged my MMG's back in and felt like I had just come home again after a long road trip, the "comfort" was back. The Vandy's have been sitting since then, not making a sound. Maybe I should try and sell them and use the money for some Mye stands...

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 10, 2010 at 04:48:48
Talmadge
Audiophile

Posts: 9
Location: NC
Joined: May 21, 2010
I had the same experience in trying to downsize. I went to the highly regarded NHT Classic 3. Not to be critical of the NHT's but the music was no longer alive. After two weeks went back to MMG's!

 

Not Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 10, 2010 at 07:07:21
sailor321
Audiophile

Posts: 636
Location: maryland
Joined: August 26, 2004
I was a Vandy 2c owner for along time with upgrade to 2Ce Sigs. Then I got a pair of Maggy IIIa's which have been completely rebuilt. They constantly surprise me. I have had the currant configuration for almost a year now and with every new LP or CD its just WOW. I just do not ever think I will take them for granted. These are mt last speakers.
So it goes.........

 

'Once you go flat..., posted on December 10, 2010 at 07:45:51
mwhitmore
Audiophile

Posts: 1720
Location: San Francisco
Joined: September 17, 2008
...you can't go back!' (Thanks to whomever I am quoting.)

 

RE: 'Once you go flat..., posted on December 10, 2010 at 08:31:38
criv911


 
I guess was just surprised at how big the difference was. I wonder if some of it is acclimation. We get so used to their sound, that everything else sounds fake. I can say I heard a pair of the big dipole Genesis that were impressive. Of course they were huge, needed a lot of space, and cost ridiculous amounts of money.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 10, 2010 at 11:37:57
Cuehead


 
A planar speaker emits sound in way so different from cones that I think it impacts how you feel about the music being reproduced. If music through planars resonate emotionally for you, it is hard to go back to cone drivers no matter how good those cones are. Ever since I heard an pair of Magnepan SMGA's 20 years ago I've been hooked on planars. That is not to say that there aren't some great box speakers that I like, they just don't move me emotionally the way planars do.

 

My story, posted on December 10, 2010 at 13:13:59
slapshot
Audiophile

Posts: 2248
Joined: January 9, 2006
I initially heard maggies under poor circumstances in a dorm room when I was in college. The experience stuck with me, however, and 20 years later, when I could afford to set up a decent system, I went with the 1.6s...and I'll never go back.

I've often heard setups of box speakers in hi-fi stores that sounded fine, but I've never been impressed enough to want to exchange my system for the one on the store (even though the setup in the store was many times more expensive).

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 16, 2010 at 11:15:59
magiccarpetride
Audiophile

Posts: 1523
Joined: March 31, 2010
I've just ditched my car, so now i'm out of that abusive relationship. I thought that such a radical move as dumping my vehicle will create all sorts of problems for me, but was shocked how much better I feel now that I'm free from that terrible piece of technology.

So why am I bringing this up? The getting rid of the automobile incident has taught me a valuable lesson, and it is that I can indeed be very happy without many of the trappings of modern, technology driven lifestyle. So it forced me to step back and think -- what would be my bare minimum, the amount of technology I just couldn't live without? I came to a very surprising conclusion. Basically, I've realized that there are only two things that I wouldn't be able to be happy without:

1. My old school gas stove (Norge)
2. My Maggies

The Norge stove is a miraculous piece of technology in that it makes everything we cook on it taste sublime. Especially when using its oven, things just magically turn into ambrosia. We've tried preparing the same recipes on other gas stoves, but couldn't come even close to Norge.

The Maggies... I don't know what to say. Words fail me. These speakers deliver music that is so emotionally gripping, that I cannot help myself but often choke and hold back tears. Now, is there anything else in a typical household that can do that? No other pair of speakers I have ever listened to have been able to bring me to the verge of tears on almost every listen.

Maggies just pull you in. You forget about the gear, forget about the technology, the speakers disappear, the walls disappear, and you just look directly into music. It's pure magic.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 16, 2010 at 11:33:51
Sorscha


 
Once "magnepanned" man is lost or spoiled forever. There's no way of going back.
Me and my four panel per side Tympani pairs are together for many many years and we will never part. It is a reference on its own. Perhaps surpassed in detail by others but for sure never in the "wow" factor. As far as cd's concerned, I don't use them much. There's so much music that will never come to cd.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 16, 2010 at 11:58:12
magiccarpetride
Audiophile

Posts: 1523
Joined: March 31, 2010
"There's so much music that will never come to cd."

I've noticed a number of out-of-print LPs becoming available for download in a needle-drop digitized FLAC format, thanks to the tireless community efforts. The idea and the intent are noble, however I haven't been able to come across a decent sounding needle drop FLAC. Somehow, in the process of playing back the LP and then digitizing it, the clarity and the oomph! of the original music is pretty much lost.

Have any of you guys heard a good digitized LP that would be worth having? I've only heard one -- the digitized needle-drop FLAC of Mike Oldfield's original pressing of "Hergest Ridge" (it's out of print, or perhaps have never been offered in a digital format before).

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 16, 2010 at 12:21:14
"Me and my four panel per side Tympani pairs are together for many many years and we will never part."

Could you please clarify that one? IOW, what have you done to make them 4 panels/side?

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 16, 2010 at 13:15:40
"Have any of you guys heard a good digitized LP that would be worth having?"

I don't really know if this relates to your observations or not. I've been using stand-alone CD recorders since the dawn of that era, burning CD-Rs from LP and tape (both O/R and cassette). Currently I mostly play with my old "semi-professional HHb BurnIT 830". However, starting about eleven years ago, using a Philips 870 and burning many discs via the infamous "swap-trick", I've yet to hear a single disc which is distinguishable from its source material. One only has to be careful, not setting the recording level too high which could produce some distortion.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 19, 2010 at 03:05:07
seagolfer
Audiophile

Posts: 2
Location: North West
Joined: December 18, 2010
Maggies are fresh salmon.
Maggies with ribbon tweeters are fresh salmon cooked over a wood fire eaten by the river.
Home rewired Maggies are fresh salmon you caught yourself.
Cone speakers are fine in their place, just as tinned salmon is.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 19, 2010 at 08:04:55
I had been anticipating a move to smaller quarters so I bought 3.6s to replace my Tympani IVa. The move didn't occur so now I listen to those 3.6s augmented by the four panels of the IVa woofers; some downsize that turned out as being.

 

four panels per side, posted on December 19, 2010 at 08:51:21
mwhitmore
Audiophile

Posts: 1720
Location: San Francisco
Joined: September 17, 2008
Maggie Tympani speakers (various models) used to come three panels to the side--two bass panels and one with midrange and treble. But you could special-order additional bass panels. Some people even ordered the bass panels for use with other speakers, e.g. Harry Pearson's QRS/1D and Crosby-Quad/T4 hybrids. Some people considered or still consider Tympani bass panels the best mid-bass transducer ever.

 

Sounds fishy to me. (nt), posted on December 19, 2010 at 13:51:58
esande
Audiophile

Posts: 1663
Location: Washington, DC
Joined: December 27, 2008

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on December 20, 2010 at 16:48:37
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
>Some people considered or still consider Tympani bass panels the best mid-bass transducer ever.

You can put me on that list. Once you've lived with that combination of naturalness and slam, it's hard to settle for anything else.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 20, 2010 at 16:55:21
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
Years ago, I tried AB'ing the output of my turntable and the digitized output of the Sony PCM-F1. I couldn't hear a difference. I know that others have made the same observation. So I don't see there's any reason why it's impossible to make a transparent digital dub of an LP. I also don't understand why you would. The LP is a generation down from the master tape. It can only degrade the signal. Unless the master tape has been damaged by self-erasure, print-through, or oxide loss, it makes much more sense to me to make the digital dub from the master tape. Besides which, the LP-originated FLAC's I've heard always sound like the record was played 400 times with a twenty-six pounds of stylus pressure.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 20, 2010 at 17:00:31
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
LOL

But it's a great way to go, about the only thing better would be a pair of 20.1's and the IVA woofers . . .

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on December 23, 2010 at 16:20:46
Sorscha
Industry Professional

Posts: 18
Location: Holland
Joined: December 16, 2010
As I use the tweeters and midranges from 'her holiness' the 3a ...
I use the lower panels (with the button) of a 1d system, and pair of subwoofer panels.
The setup is mid+tweeter hinged together, and both the lower panels hinged together.
power amplifiers are from Electrocompaniet. They drive them with ease.
Everything else is 'home brewed' electron vacuum love

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on December 23, 2010 at 16:31:48
Sorscha
Industry Professional

Posts: 18
Location: Holland
Joined: December 16, 2010
Oh yes !

Josh, I completely agree. No other thing is so lifelike in that area.
After all, those four panels are moving a lot of air :)

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on December 23, 2010 at 17:07:35
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
IIIA's + 1D's sounds like a great way to go. I still have my 1D's, alas, no room for them, otherwise I'd be tempted to follow your example.

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on January 2, 2011 at 14:55:20
Sorscha
Industry Professional

Posts: 18
Location: Holland
Joined: December 16, 2010
Hello Josh,

The Tympani IIIa is an 8ohm system, where the 1d is a 4ohm system. What I have done is rewired the panels to a: Rewire the 1d so that it becomes a 8ohm system. B: the IIIa is wired in a different way. E.g. I rewired my mid panels from the IIIa to "double" wire. This is different alu wire with double the electric resistance so it still is 8ohms. This is merely to the different magnets used in both series. So .. why did I do this ?
And 8ohm IIIa and the 4ohm 1d are not much of a match when paired up together. Even when you use separated amps, like I do, The response from the 4ohm panels is different. It just doesn't match the IIIa mid and high. After rewiring you will get that beautiful homogenous image where Magnepan is famous for. Note that I use the word rewiring. I do not use glue to attach the wires to the foils anymore. We are living in 2011 now (Happy new year everyone !!!) and we have other ways of having a better "bond". This also saves a lot of weight on the foils.
Last and least: It is a much better way of sealing the wires from the open air. I am still in a testing stage but they can handle the power of two bridged Electrocompaniet AW75, balanced amplifiers (which is equal to an AW220). The transient responses are better. Low frequencies are tighter. I also restore on special request the tweeters of any Tympani (!) Something that is most of the time cheaper than an exchange by Magnepan. But please do not open the tweeters yourself, They are push-pull with magnets on both sides. Open up the wrong side and you're lost. It is probably better to get a replacement. So ... why do I restore tweeters then ? Well .... everybody knows that the early tweeters aren't that good. Since the 1d tweeters (1980) are fine tweeters (last in their line) They cannot replace a IIIa tweeter(1975). I will rewire them according to a IIIa one, One radiator(wire) instead of two in the 1d.
I'm crazy enough to do these things myself since I'm an electronics engineer, I know what I'm doing, and I can get my materials to do this. But hey, who am I ?

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on January 12, 2011 at 17:30:52
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
Cool that you repair the 1 D tweeters. I've read that Magnepan says it can't be done, but someone else said they'd fixed theirs -- guess they got lucky and opened up the correct side?

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on January 13, 2011 at 00:35:13
Sorscha
Industry Professional

Posts: 18
Location: Holland
Joined: December 16, 2010
Hi Josh,
It can be a pain. But if you know how those units are build, it is a fairly easy way of rewiring them.
But please note that you put them in a 'vice'. eg. clamped onto a flat service. they will bend due to the tension of the mylar if you just remove the top plate. Never repair them, go for a rewire. Also be very precise with driling and tapping out the rivets. These are actually your 'locating' pinholes when re-assembling. Don't make the holes bigger than they are. The perforated plate to remove is the front plate after removing the tweeter unit from the panel itself. (the one you are looking at when in use is the front plate. But .....
Magnepan has this excellent replacing program for them, and to a price which is very affordable for everyone (!). To me, since I live in Holland, the price would be much higher due to shipping costs. That is why I decided to do them myself. Though I will not use them, I also did not rewire to the original 1d, but to the IIIa tweeter panel. Where the IIIa uses a single wire, the 1d uses two pairs of wire. So that leaves me with a couple of spare IIIa tweeter units :)
Now you also know the reason why I 'retrofitted' 1980's tweeter units to 1975 IIIa units: better magnets :)

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on January 13, 2011 at 01:48:23
Sorscha
Industry Professional

Posts: 18
Location: Holland
Joined: December 16, 2010
I thought some may be interested what unheated storage will do with perfectly fine maggies.
This is a 1d tweeter unit, opened up and cleaned already. The wires are still on but also "kaputt" as they are the original ones (!) Amazing is the condition they are in. Just lightly corroded.



A complete tweeter panel opened up and down on the carpet. Both tweeters were bad :(




And this one of the 1d low panels. I personally found it quite interesting to see that the wire is being transformed in something else. Everything white means no wire.




But it can be worse. This is a mid panel of my IIIa. Look at the old wiring at the top (there's still wires in the glue) and the black edges, I think it has been rewired two times before I got them. So much glue there that I decided to leave it on. Trying to remove it is the end of the mylar. I rewired them in 1994 and they are still as new, just as the "glue" is.


 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on January 14, 2011 at 09:21:53
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
I used my Musical Fidelity HTP's ADC and DAC feeding internally, and compared it to the analog passthrough. The analog passthrough sounded mostly as it did running through my Melos SHA Gold and Audible Illusions preamps. The DAC output sounded like CD played through the DAC. The DAC - however convincing it is, did put on its sonic imprint.

I would assume that you had better ADC and perhaps DAC in the studio. But I think the difference would seem subtle on a system with normal speaker drivers. It is very obvious on the Neo8 Tympani setup. I very much doubt it would have been obvious on my old Vandersteens.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on January 14, 2011 at 10:02:48
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
I did the comparison at home, on my 1-D's, which I'd describe as having middling definition, substantially better than the dynamics of the time but not the equal of stats. So I can't rule out the possibility that the F1 would have been audible on more revealing speakers. I do know that I saw an account some months back from someone who had done the same test, and reached the same conclusions I had.

The F-1 was certainly a clean sounding box despite the fact that it wasn't oversampled -- the brick wall filters were analog. I have no doubt that they would have been audible on a live feed as opposed to already bandwidth-limited analog tape-sourced LP's. Curiously, it was a consumer rather than a professional device, but much better sounding than its professional big brother, the PCM-1610, which ruined so many early CD's. Pros caught on to that early on and to Sony's annoyance started buying the F-1 instead of the 1610. Which is why I had the F-1 at home. The main functional difference between the 1610 and the F-1 was that the F-1 split the CRCC blocks between fields, so when you did an edit, you got a hard error and a pop. My friend Dave Smith came up with the idea of building a box to detect and interpolate over the hard error, and I designed one using a memory chip and a TRW multiplier for the crossfade. When the edit occurred, the box detected the error and did a crossfade to the circular memory buffer, then crossfaded back to the output of the F-1 when the dropout was over. The resulting edit was inaudible, despite having a bit of historical material in it. We ended up selling about 50 of them.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on January 15, 2011 at 23:24:04
Satie
Audiophile

Posts: 5426
Joined: July 6, 2002
That is a very cool device you built then.

Well, my point is that things are funny with the problem of resolution differences. Before I got the Neo8 drivers I thought many differences between components and equipment were very subtle and require much time to make out and define - if at all. Now, despite having very good but by no means top notch equipment, I can find surprisingly big differences between items. A recent test of an Audience power conditioner - the horribly expensive one with the teflon caps I only used it for the phono pre and it was very obvious that it lowered the noise floor substantially, improved the transient behavior and increased dynamics.

In this context, I really do understand that some things would seem entirely indistinguishable on one system and plain as day in another. I also found that though most decent electronics are fairly transparent, particularly solid state. But I also found that they distort unsubtly - particularly solid state. Over time I came to question if what is on our recordings - were it to be reproduced "perfectly" - would sound offputting, artificial (see Michael Fremer's review of the Vandersteen Quattro), harsh, phasey, etc. and thus we are fortunate to have distorted playback that forces the engineers to "voice" the equipment into a balance of compromises - thus possibly undoing some of the distortion introduced during recording.

Re testing through the T 1D - yes, the midrange and treble resolution are not quite there - so I would not expect you to hear the signature of the ADC or DAC except as a rather slight or subtle difference.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on January 16, 2011 at 09:02:00
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
There's no question about that. I've always been able to hear things on electrostatics that I couldn't hear on planars, and on planars that I couldn't hear on dynamics. The difference is anything but subtle. So it's entirely possible that I would have heard the sound of the PCM F-1 on more revealing speakers.

I guess I'm of two minds when it comes to euphonic coloration. In my experience, speakers with a somewhat tailored frequency response -- the 1-D's are a good example of that -- really can undo some of the harm in poor recordings, because they reverse some of the response aberrations caused by close miking, EQ, and two-channel stereo itself. I'm less wild about euphonic electronics, particularly sweet "tube" equipment. The effect always sounds somewhat artificial to me. Like the sound is being heard through the aural equivalent of rose-colored glasses. But I have to admit that those prematurely rolled off (and very beamy) 1-D highs produced a very natural effect with the typical recording, despite their suppression of detail.

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on January 18, 2011 at 18:02:37
josh358
Industry Professional

Posts: 12332
Joined: February 9, 2010
Thanks, great photos and good advice. Kind of interesting to see the inside of my tweeters after all these years.

By the way, Peter Gunn has a great discussion of delamination and corrosion on his website if you haven't seen it.

 

RE: Taking your Maggies for granted, posted on September 12, 2011 at 10:31:22
computerman
Audiophile

Posts: 491
Location: Northeast
Joined: August 31, 2011
Although this is an old post, but I thought I would respond with some good news. I have been digitizing LP's with a program called Pure Vinyl with excellent results. I save the files as Apple Lossless files, but they can be converted to FLAC i believe. It is Apple software and so far they have not come out with a PC version. I truly believe what their advertising states. The resulting file is simply awesome. Using their RIAA curve in software (need apppropriate3 interface-I am using Roland's UA-25EXCW-you don't need their unit which is much more expensive) one is able to produce a superior recording. They claim it is way better than a regular preamp no matter how good it is. I do not have a high end preamp to compare this with so I really can't give an opinion on that. I can attest to the quality of recording with their software curve though, and it is excellent. I do not have any great LP's only 60's and 70's run of the mill LP's like Sgt Pepper's :) and such. I wonder if these are worth anything. If you have a Mac kicking around it can be downloaded for trial for 15 days. It is a fully functional trial as well. They even answered a question I had via email before I bought it. It costs $229.00 but it is well worth it.

 

RE: four panels per side, posted on July 6, 2015 at 00:28:40
andrebfantunes
Audiophile

Posts: 4
Joined: July 6, 2015
Great job,

I'm doing the same.

Could you share your 8ohm speaker wiring schematic?

By the way what is the wire thickness in the tweeter of the 1d?

regards

 

Page processed in 0.080 seconds.