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I drove to Gifted Listener outside of DC to give a listen (although my mind was pretty much made up already). I brought some CD's and one of my W4S ST-500 amps. My very first impression was that they were not as bright as my modded IIIa's and the bass was muddled. A bit disappointing. The dealers amp was an Ayre VX-5 (175 WPC @ 8 and 350 WPC @ 4, continuous) which should have enough oomph for the 3.7i. The room was nicely set up but the speakers were a little too close to the front wall (about 3') because of cable length limitations.
I switched over to my W4S and the definition in the bass had an immediate improvement. This was a very pleasant surprise as the W4S was ~$1200 v $8000 for the Ayre. The 3.7i sounded warmer than my modded IIIa's (less bright?) and the integration of the mid and tweeter drivers (actually of all 3 drivers) was definitely superior. The bass extension is excellent and was up to E. Power Biggs playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue in d and just fell a little short on the lowest notes of the Bach Passacaglia & Fugue in c which really hits rock bottom. I may have to consider selling the Rel Strata III sub.
I asked Tom Unger, the owner of Gifted Listener, about the difference between the 3.7 and 3.7i. He commented that the 3.7i just sounded better and he speculated about some modifications to the mid-driver but he admitted he did not do an A/B comparison as he sold his demo 3.7 just before the 3.7i arrived. He told me that Wendell felt that the $500 upgrade (plus about $500 in shipping costs) was not worth it.
Tom was a bit shocked when I told him that the trim and socks didn't make a lot of difference to me (I am getting oak rails and black socks) as I had every intention of ripping these babies apart and building wood frames, no socks and more than likely designing a parallel XO to emulate the series XO and then converting to an active LLXO.
Speakers should be ready for pickup in about 3 weeks. In the meantime, I need to consider what to do with the IIIa's. I may sell them as is or sell just the tweeters and the custom mid-tweeter xo. I will hold on the the Marchand XM-44 in case I do go to an active LLXO. The sub may go, time will tell.
Music:
E Power Biggs: Bach Toccata @ Fugue in D min.
Bach Passacaglia @ Fugue in C min.
Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus: Money Jungle
Buena Vista Social Club
Kodaly Quartet: Haydn String Quartet in Bb, op. 50 #1
Angela Hewitt: Bach Toccata for keyboard #1 in C min
Charles Mingus: Mingus-ah-um - Better Git it in Your Soul, Goodbye Porkpie Hat
Diana Krell: The Look of Love - 'S Wonderful
Follow Ups:
If I had the room and no cats.
"A lie is half-way around the world before the truth can get its boots on."
-Mark Twain
Speakers should be at home in 3 weeks. I have already made an educated guess about the crossover and just need to confirm the values when the speakers arrive. I already designed a PLLXO which should bring a smile to JBen. Here's my guess and emulation with a parallel xo (dotted lines).
The first order filter on the woofer allows the driver to extend in to the upper reaches (totally different from the 4th order filter on the 3.6) and may explain some of the improvement in the integration of the drivers.
Edits: 06/05/15
That seems to put a lot of stress on the ribbon tweeter. Quite different from the Tympani IV/20-series. What about the bass reaching into the territory of the midrange? Will the rather "massey" bass driver do that well? With the 3.6, it looks like Magnepan tried to restrict the midrange extension towards the tweeter in order to minimise the subjective transistion from each driver (wish english was a native language...). Will your arrangement create a small or large sweetspot? To my experience first order slopes combined with side by side drivers create a small sweetspot.
Having done exactly that I concur that the sweetspot can be rather narrow with 1st order and side by side drivers. But it depends on how much output the midrange (or bass) driver actually puts out at the higher freq.
I wanted to note that with 1st order slopes there is little benefit to triamping, though the normal benefits of biamping are retained since you don't use the same amp to produce high power signals for the bass and upper range. Speaker level 1st order XOs are innocuous to the amp and moving them behind the amp to line level has little benefit but for eliminating the mid LP inductor, which can be just done with a better quality foil inductor.
The parallel emulation is for biamping so the signal to the tweeter will go through the mid HP filter just like the OEM (note the 2nd knee in the tweeter curve). Making a triamp parallel XO would eliminate this knee extending the tweeter even lower. Remember this is all preliminary as I don't have the actual impedances of the drivers (other than the ribbon) or the values and DCRs of the inductors. OTOH the filters are suppose to be 1st order so the general shape of the Bode can't be that different.
As far as the sweet spot, I haven't seen much mention of that in the reviews and since I am the only one that listens to the system -- that maybe a sad statement on my social life or audiophilic heaven :) -- it is not of great concern to me.
Edits: 06/06/15 06/06/15 06/07/15
I had a similar experience at my Maggie dealer's showroom in that the more expensive McIntosh gear just didn't grab me. In fact, lesser gear sounded at least as good on some of the material I brought along. What impressed most was how much better my music sounded over the 3.7i regardless of the gear. I figured with careful selection of amplification the Maggies would deliver in ways my old Gallo Reference 3 speakers never could in my home system. To make a long story short, this turned out to be true in every way.Cheers,
AuPh
Edits: 06/05/15
You were missing a large orchestral piece like a Brahms symphony or a Rachmaninoff piano concerto in your review repertoire.
Not surprised that the Ayre are a bit limp on the maggies. They are low feedback designs and will not deliver as much current as their ratings would indicate if you actually tap their power as one would with a maggie. The W4S is 500 into 4 ohms and doubles again into 2 ohms so has more power available for transients than the Ayre can muster. If the setup were combined with a sub then the Ayre would have it on mids and highs.
Keep your IIIa around for a while so you can do some wing experiments or setup a second system.
You are right I should have grabbed some large multi-instrument music. I almost did grab a Brahm's but you know the guy only wrote 4 symphonies and after awhile they become a little stale (at least to me) so I decided against it. I am not a fan of Rachmaninoff so I think I only have one recording (LP) buried somewhere. Probably a Tchaikovsky (5th or 6th) would have been a good choice. Oh, well. OTOH most of what I listen to today is small groups - string quartets, small jazz combo's, etc.
I should mention that the 3.7 maintain good realism and detail at lower volumes. With all the Maggies I have had, I always had turned the volume up to the level I would expect in a concert/nightclub setting in order to get the full detail but as I said the 3.7 did very nice at low volumes which should make the wife happy.
The low SPL performance improvement in the .7 series is often noted by reviews. I wonder what it is that did it. That was one of the problems I had with the original mids in the T IV, below a certain volume things just disappeared.
I am a big fan of the Tchaikovsky Rachmaninoff Stravinsky Prokofiev line and the less popular Russian romantics.
I hope you have as many years (or more :) of pleasure listening to them as you did your IIIAs.
He told me that Wendell felt that the $500 upgrade (plus about $500 in shipping costs) was not worth it.
Hmm, that is interesting, or was the 'not' a typo?
It never ceases to amaze me how good those original IIIa's are for a 25 year old speaker (though I think you have heavily mod'ed them). Also very nice to see the demo music.
I would keep the IIIa's and run them purely for bass reinforcement for fun. I expect it would be more a curiosity than something you would live with, but given you have all the pieces to do it, could be fun.
Your idea occurred to me but the wife already told me that they have to go. She really would prefer that I have speakers that are no bigger than a shoe box. I thought of inviting her to the audition of the 3.7s but feared she might see the mini-mags.
Your IIIa's did go through a lot of changes but at heart they are still IIIa's and a tremendous speaker capable of competing with a host of speakers that are much more expensive.
The dampening tape over the mid-section on the back side is part of the "I" and the other pic is of the 3.7 stock x-over not the "I"...you can compare when you do surgery on yours...
I have many posts on this forum describing the differences between the 3.7 and 3.7i's...More coherent, better detail, smoother, bouncy round bass and play much bigger...
Did not surprise me to hear your W4S out played the Ayre. My old Bel Canto EVO 200.6 , (the original class T), did a really good job with Maggies, also the Gilmore Raptors is another sweet-spot class D amp that works well for Maggies.
The Sanders Magtech is just a beast. It grabs those Maggies by the throat and just does not let go...it just pumps extremely neutral great sound...(this is just a public service announcement), this amp will show you EVERYTHING upstream...the good the bad and the ugly...
I look forward to reading your journey as you transform them...
Congrats again your purchase...
Thanks
Mark
Ps. 200 hours for them to really settle in...they will go from bright to dark to slightly smeared at times during the break-in...also I would "try" the Rel Sub...My Monitor Audio FB-210's, (I had a pair), did NOT mate very well with the 3.7i's so I got rid of them...I am guessing the Rel would do a better job...in my room the 3.7i's go down to 35-37 kHz...fyi...
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Great break in's Any of Harmonia Mundi organ records/cd's and the lower notes on the Bach Walcha old mono set are mind blowing...The most dramatic organ pedal notes come from the Oliver Vernet Bach set. The Dolphy Blue Note OUT TO LUNCH' will put the speakers through their paces. You are going to have a great ride. I have heard them in NYC.
IMO Wendy Carlos' synthesized Bach would do the trick even better.
I am very happy for you!
For some reason, I have yet to really like any Maggies being driven with Ayre gear. At first, I blamed the 1.7s when I first heard them with the Ayre at our local Magnepan dealer. Long after, I heard the 3.7 with Ayre at someones place. I never said anything -- to not make the owner feel bad -- but with a Sanders Magtech, a set of not-even-fully-broken-in 3.7 had sounded monstrously better even at our dealer's place. I guess our dealer makes more money out of selling Ayre than Sanders...
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