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In Reply to: The system that made me love Magnepan speakers posted by Bigjimsguitars on April 8, 2015 at 08:41:32:
Well, I guess I should put my story up too.
As a kid, my composer uncle had Alison square speakers shooting at the walls that always made music seem to occupy a real space. I wanted to have that.
At 15 my music teacher gave me my first lesson at his place since he didn't manage to book a practice room in time. He had Quads with a KEF oval sub driven by a Mac 40 watter with a TD125 TT and a DBX expander used for larger pieces. It was amazing for me and made my folk's system sound broken. The detail was astounding and the natural tone was phenomenal. Imaging was very convincing too. Dynamics - despite the sub were MIA beyond a certain level. I asked him to give me more lessons at his place so I can hear more music on his setup. Which we did occasionally. On his advice I got a subscription to HiFi Choice and later swapped to What HiFi and picked up a sub for Stereo Review, then for Audio
I already had a clear idea that I wanted planars eventually. But was intrigued by articles about Maggies. At 18 I went to an audio show and heard 3 setups that really struck me. One was based on a Canton tower speaker then sporting the newfangled titanium tweeter which I liked for its incredibly tight bass. Then after hours there was a CLS driven by a Teac R2R with Joni Mitchell playing, powered by a class A Krell. It was as if she were right there on the show's big hall's floor encased in the intimate studio acoustic which was surreal considering the ballroom sized space. Last was an Altec VOT driven by a tube amp. Dynamics drive and impact and a sense of "touch" .to quote Art Dudley.
Needless to say, I immediately had in my head a hybrid horn loaded electrostat with a column of woofers. I went through all my audio rags and there was nothing like that to be had. No dealer had anything like it. And dealers laughed at me for expecting to ever find anything that performs like that. It is either/or, not all together in one package. Perhaps an IRS from Infinity when that rocked the audiophile world.
A couple of years later visiting the folks on break from engineering school I did a tour of the North Chicago audio shops and came across a T1D in Audio Consultant's used room in Evanston I think. It was being demonstrated for someone else but for the first time I could imagine having fine detail and immense spatial presentation with sufficient deep bass and realistic dynamics. I then knew that one day I would own a big Maggie. It was not the imaginary horn loaded ESL with a woofer tower, but at least it existed and did not cost as much as a house.
In the interim the Apogees showed up in the press and at grad school the Apogee dealer was right off campus and I pestered them and barged into their big Apogee demos when time allowed. I wanted a big Apogee but the price tags of the grand speaker and the electronics that could drive it without shearing your ears off were just too far out of the realm of reasonable.
It took two decades till budget and available space made it possible, then I got my T IV and eventually got it the Neo8 magic mids (near ESL detail, horn like dynamics and full scale soundstage with full size and precisely rendered musicians and space) and I got what I imagined a horn loaded electrostat might sound like (sans horn hoot) and eventually figured out how to get big bass out of it too. If I ever get a larger space then I will build my subwoofer tower. At the moment the room can just about handles the panels alone (to 20-25 hz and audible output down to 16hz) and the bipolar subs overwhelm the room .
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- RE: The system that made me love Magnepan speakers - Satie 02:01:16 06/17/16 (0)
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