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RE: Heard a reference level planar speaker last Saturday

Those Maggie curves are Stereophile's Patented Meaningless Planar Woofer Measurements, made at the diaphragm and guaranteed to confuse the hell out of anyone who doesn't know that you can't measure planar woofers at the diaphragm:

To illustrate, here's Stereophile's measurement of the 3.6/R:



Contrast with Home Theater's pseudo anechoic measurement, conditions unspecified:



http://www.hometheater.com/content/magnepan-mg-36-16-cc3-surround-speaker-system-measurements

And finally, the measurements that matter, made by somebody appropriately named Mike at the listening position in his treated listening room (note divisions are only 1 db):



According to Mike, "Except for a bump at 100 Hz, they are flat within 3 dB from 30 Hz to 20 kHz, and from 150 Hz to 20 kHz flat within 2 dB. That 100 Hz bump is a room mode. My tube traps shrank it but could not eliminate it."

http://mclements.net/Mike/audio/Onkyo-Adcom-Mag.html

The same thing is true of all planars -- you can't measure the woofers up close without getting a huge bass boost that doesn't exist in the far field (or rather is cancelled out there). They have to be measured in the listening position of a room, and then you have to take the specific room into account, e.g., by showing the curves of some other speakers of similar design measured in the same room (e.g., they can't be omnis and dipoles, since they interact with rooms differently).

That's true in part of the Diva graph, it's measured at 1 meter so I'd expect it to exaggerate the bass to a certain extent, unless they corrected for proximity. So the Diva's woofer may be flatter than it seems. Either way, I noticed the same thing you did when I saw that graph yesterday, the resonance is distributed. It certainly doesn't look like it would suffer from one-note bass.

In the case of the Signature, I was looking at the room-averaged response. The 1 meter response doesn't mean much. So I'd accept his "at 30Hz the Signature moves into higher gear, with an undamped output rising 7dB or so above the adjacent bands. It didn't sound as bad as it looks, probably due to the low incidence of genuine 30Hz in programme; such effects placed at 40 or 50Hz are distinctly audible. The effect of the room must also be taken into consideration, and a larger space may well moderate this 30Hz effect." Above that, performance seems to be excellent.

So, better extension or 30 Hz peak? That's why I said pick your poison. I'd take the peak myself, because I'm all digital and could just equalize it away. But most people seem to be adverse to bass equalization. So in this case they'd have to choose between the smooth Maggie bass or the extended bass of the Apogee. And of course that's just one of many things that could drive the decision. As I said, I wasn't disputing your conclusion, since I've only heard the 3.7. Just pointing to a problem in the bass, just as one might point to the limited extension of the smaller Maggies or that puzzling 2 kHz dip in the 3.6/R (has anyone figured out why that's there yet?).


Edits: 05/15/12 05/15/12 05/15/12
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