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RE: That 1.7 review is nonsense

Posted by josh358 (P) on March 23, 2012 at 08:21:53

In Reply to: RE: That 1.7 review is nonsense posted by RGA on March 22, 2012 at 20:00:22:

"I disagree with their take on the sound at the show."

No problem, we all have the right to an opinion. At the same time, you made a blanket statement about their sound that was quite different than what everyone else did, including critics whose ears I've come to know and trust. So you'll understand my personal skepticism.

"Some of the best sound I have ever heard has been under show conditions so I don't buy the "rooms are bad" bit."

Try talking to an exhibitor sometime. Note that the same component can sound good at one show, bad at the next -- same equipment, different room. The general rule with show sound is a bad component won't sound good, but a good component can sound bad. And looking at a picture of a room doesn't allow you to plan setup, not of speakers.

I am not talking about what people own. I am talking about the way people react to the sound of planars, specifically, my planars. And I'm talking about everyone from a construction guy (he bent some metal for my speaker stands, so I figured he should get to hear what he did) to the director of North American recording activities at Sony Classical. For owners of all but the most esoteric dynamic speakers, a pair of properly set up planars is a revelation.

If you've never heard the "magic carpet" effect with a panel, I gotta confess, I don't know what you're hearing. Seriously, this just isn't possible. Line source dipoles have an uncanny ability to transport the listener into a different acoustic venue. Everyone hears this.

Now when you start saying Sound Labs aren't remotely good . . . well . . .

"The only measurement that matters at all is the one at the listening position (at the ear) in room."

I couldn't agree more. Way back when, I said to JA here that I thought the quirks of the nearfield planar measurements didn't matter because people knew enough to read and understand his caveats. Experience has told me how wrong I was. I'm increasingly thinking that if I were JA, I'd leave out the nearfield planar measurements, and send them upon request only to people who know what Fequal is, and why it's impossible to make a clean waterfall plot of a large diaphragm speaker without a tower or an anechoic chamber, and why even then, in the absence of room reflections, the significance of the measurement is somewhat hard to ascertain because of delayed arrivals from the driver's periphery.

[Well, I almost couldn't agree more, the mic doesn't actually quite measure what the ear does, see Toole et al -- they've developed an algorithm that incorporates on-axis and polar measurements to produce an order of merit that correlates well with subjective impressions, up to 95% IIRC.]

In that context, see the second curve here, the in-room measurements of the little MMG:

http://www.enjoythemusic.com/magazine/viewpoint/1199/donibbles.htm

And ditto for the MG IIIa, an early version of the 3.7:

http://www.apogeespeakers.com/reviews/the_flat_response_stereophile_review.htm

Note how well the in-room response of the IIIa's compares to the other speakers measured, the Duetta and the CLS. That right there is one reason people who really know the sound of live acoustical music love Maggies. And in-room measurements are something that any audiophile can understand. I've been meaning to ask JA why we don't see more of them.

However, I can't agree with what you say about rooms. If anything, dipole line sources are more tolerant of bad room acoustics and untreated rooms than boxes, because they excite fewer room modes and reflections. But they are less tolerant of bad placement, and that means that there are rooms in which a box, or one of the on-wall Maggies are the best solution (typically overlooked by audiophiles because they associate them with home theater but according to Magnepan's Wendell Diller of comparable quality in blind tests).

Most box/Maggie comparisons aren't flattering to the boxes. I'm not sure this means anything. Boxes vary widely in cost and quality. If you want to compare $70,000 Magicos to $2,000 1.7's, be my guest, but I'm not sure that that's a particularly meaningful exercise, except insofar as it points out how remarkably close a $2000 speaker can come to the best. The point with the 1.7's is that they punch above their price range, not that they're the best speaker ever made, by Magnepan or anyone else.

I looked up Brian Damkroger's review of the Harbeth's, and here's what he had to say:

"The speaker's midrange beautifully showed what good high-end audio is capable of, and why the industry exists. On the other hand, the P3ESR's lack of low bass and most of the midbass disqualifies it, for me, as a speaker for a main system. With my musical tastes, I'd be better served by a more full-range, ported design—such as the Spiral Groove Anima ($2600/pair and originally Sonics by Joachim Gerhard), reviewed by Wes Phillips in the July 2007 issue; or, if I had the room, the Magnepan MG1.7 ($1995/pair). But neither of those speakers can match the Harbeth's incredible midrange realism."

It's not hard to see why he said that, a glance at the measurements shows that the midrange is ruler flat. However, these speakers will require the purchase of subs of comparable quality and they won't play loud. Harry Potter would no doubt love the Harbeths since they would fit in his room beneath the stairs, but for most of us there's more to life than the midrange.

I'll conclude with something Jonathan Valin wrote about the 1.7's, since it sums up so well something that I perceive:

"They are intoxicatingly realistic. There is something about Maggies that simply sounds like the real thing, particularly in the midrange, particularly on voices. Maggies aren’t the only speakers that have this supreme gift (Magicos have it, too—in spades--and so do CLXes). But some combination of neutrality, coherence, transient speed, image size, dispersion, dimensionality and bloom, and resolution of texture has always made Maggies sound more real than a large percentage of their competition. Here—with the right recordings, at the right levels—that realism (at least in the midband) is very nearly as close as I’ve come to the absolute sound in my listening room, and simply unmatched for a speaker at this price point (or, really, anything even remotely close to its price point)."

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