Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.
Return to Planar Speaker Asylum
72.220.145.238
In Reply to: RE: Maggie IIa's, tubes, and the 3.7 posted by Grimace on October 02, 2014 at 17:20:36
Hello Grimace and welcome aboard! IMO bi-amping is the way to go with tubes and big cat Maggies. I run a pair of old VTL 100 watt mono blocks on the tweeter/midrange of my MG20s, along with a pair of solid state mono blocks on the bottom; in this case a pair of beefy Emotivas (1K watt each @ 4ohm). The best of both worlds, the tweet/mids panels cruise up in the mid 70s dbl's and of course the Emotivas pound the boards on the bass end. They're both split with a Marchand XM44 XO.You'll never realize the full bass potential of the big Maggies with only a pair of 100 watt tube amps going at em' full range.
Just my opinion ; )
Edits: 10/04/14Follow Ups:
though it is less impactful at the 2khz XO to have a separate amo for tweeter and bass, it is still a good idea if you want the sweet top end of a tube amp and the power of a SS amp for the bass.
While it is very good to have biamping on a 3 way maggie, it is less useful on the 2 way maggies.
I agree that 3's need bi-amping, but how many people here recommending that on II's have heard IIs? Based on my limited experience with my IIb's, I cannot imagine much improvement from the extra work in this case.
It isn't a huge deal like in a 3way maggie, but it does allow a little more flexibility within a budget in getting a great performance rather than just good. It allows you to have the low powered low feedback SET or class A amp on the tweeter and have a high feedback big damping factor amp on the bass. The difference with the 3way maggie is that you still need to watch for the midrange SQ of the bass amp.
.
That particular opinion circulated amongst Maggie owners since the beginning of time.
Mostly because Magnepan encouraged bi-amping and had ARC design an electronic crossover especially for the Tympani models and sold the XO-1 unit for the II's and III's.
IIRC they then sold a tubed X-0, the EC-3/A for use with a Tympani 1-C (and EC-4 for use with a Tympani IIIA), both quite a while prior to the simple XO-1.
Back then ~40 years ago when this equipment was considered amongst the best, (and also when my hearing was a lot better) I owned a Tympani 1C, EC-3a, a pair of D-76As as well as Mr. Bongiorno's original Ampzilla having lots of fun alternating between the D-76As (bridged) and the Ampzilla driving the tops and bottoms of the Tympani
A friend had a III-A for which his Maggie dealer recommended a pair of Crown DC-300As and I recall spending many afternoons enjoying his rig (Decca arm/cartridge/SP-10TT.
At my age, if it plays loud enough while not setting off the smoke detectors almost anything is good. :-(
So do you disagree with it then, Norman?
Andy
Perhaps a little bit of the 'chicken little syndrome'.
Davey:
It's "chicken little" in that after one chicken gets hit on the head by a falling acorn, it then runs around telling all the other chickens about it and eventually all fall into the common belief that the sky is falling and the world is coming to an end, (and has nothing to do with technology).
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: