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In Reply to: RE: 30.7's at Fairless Hills, PA - WOW posted by dhayden on February 28, 2019 at 10:02:33
I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more. I thought it was a strange and disappointing demonstration.
As Wendell explained to me the speakers were set up to have big dispersion for a large crowd. There was a distinct hole in the center with most of the sound coming from each side. Of course, as with most planars, the sound was big and had depth and height but sounded bright to me with the Parasound amplifiers and not convincing. The bass was not particularly deep nor did it have good definition (probably a room acoustics issue).
I generally don't seriously listen to speakers walking around the room but the demo purportedly was trying to show the power response as its primary feature. I was very familiar with all the musical selections. Just didn't work for me.
I was really anxious to hear them and have been a planar fan for years but I wouldn't buy them based on this particular evening's sound. I hope and suspect that they really do sound better and would be delighted to get another crack at them.
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Too many delusional Fan Boys present at these demos, that just want to brag they heard the 30.7s.Listening, standing up, and moving around, you can not judge the sound IMO.
Maybe they will have a good "sit down" listening demo sometime.
Does anybody know anyone that bought the 30.7s?
There is a photo of one owners setup with 30.7s on Magnepan's website, and no other known owner on any other forum that I have visited.
Can the 30.7 be considered a successful product after being on sale for almost a year? Not IMO.
Edits: 03/02/19 03/02/19 03/02/19
Wendell termed them a marketing exercise and not a commercial product although he would sell you a pair if you really wanted one. I thought it was strange.
I think what he meant by that is that a flagship is intended to promote the brand rather than become an economic mainstay of the company. The IRS V is the famous example that Wendell mentions. A flagship product gets the company press, but sells in small quantities because few people can afford it.
In the case of the 30.7, they didn't know whether they'd make money off it, or whether it would just be a branding exercise. In fact, it did sell well (by flagship standards -- these aren't MMG's), so they're delighted since they'll make some money off it.
However, the tour itself is not a money-making exercise -- as Wendell put it, it's a very economically inefficient way of selling 30.7's. His goal isn't to sell 30.7's, but to get Magnepan's name before the public.
And it seems josh that if the goal is to create talk about the brand - essentially a marketing tool - it has succeeded.
It just seems to me that magnepan takes its foot off the gas when it comes to their top of the line speakers. The 20.7 - really tough to hear them anywhere. I got lucky and was persistent enough to travel 5 hours to Evanston to hear them. Mind you - I couldn't BUY them in Evanston because I lived out of state. So I got to deal with someone who had never heard nor seen the 20.7. Lol. So it almost feels like it's wizard of oz marketing. You can't see it or hear it but the reviews say you must want it. Then you can't hear them at a trade show. Then for the 30 - it's almost like poor Wendell is in a rush rush job to try to set them up. So you get this mixed bag of the online reviews.
I just can't imagine these NOT sounding good - but certainly understand the difficulty of trying to dial them in over a 4 hr time span. Even for an expert.
Magnepan's problem is that dealers don't show the high end models like the 20.7 and 30.7. So unless you're in a couple of big cities, they're out of luck.
With the 20.7, they even offered people who were serious to fly out to the factory to hear them, but apparently few people took them up on the offer.
I don't know what the solution is. I've mentioned shows, which with fewer audio dealers are increasingly the way many of us get to hear equipment. but the acoustic conditions in shows are even worse than the acoustic conditions on tour, and they tend to attract a core group of audiophiles.
And as Wendell says, fewer people today will buy a speaker on the basis of reviews in The Absolute Sound. A lot is by word of mouth, but look at what's happening with the tour -- people are comparing them with their carefully set up Maggies at home, apparently not realizing the degree to which they're suffering from bad acoustics and other issues. Those of us who have been to shows know how hit and miss the sound is, but I'm not sure that everyone does.
So is not showing the 20.7 a dealer decision or a magnepan decision? It appeared from their site that it was their decision. Dealers used to have 20.1s then when the .7 series came out...no 20.7. So I found that odd.
When I listened to the 20.7 in Evanston it was in a well treated room hooked to boulder electronics. Gave really great sound.
Re: shows. If I go to a show - I want to hear the mbls, Logan renassance series, Wilson's , Sonus Faber , among others. But what I'd really like to hear in that same setting is a 30.7 from my favorite speaker manufacturer. No tri speaker setup ... no stacked mmg. The real deal.
It's entirely up to the dealer. Sadly, dealers have fallen on hard times and have had to close and downsize, and are surviving on custom work. Fewer people are buying large speakers, as well. So it seems that fewer have the resources or market to show a large, expensive speaker.
I've talked to Wendell about shows, and he says there's no way he's going to show his flagship at an audio show, because he's heard how below par the competitor's flagships sound at them! He says that there aren't many good rooms available, so it's very hard to rent an acoustically decent one.
Giving people a chance to hear Maggies in good circumstances is one of their main problems right now -- the only way people are going to buy giant panels is if they hear what they can do.
I love my giant panels. :)
:-)
Having been to shows and to listening sessions at local dealers (including the 30.7 last week), I have a kind of cynical interpretation of the dealers' perspective: snake oil sells! They have no incentive to make people believe they need a really well-treated room to hear the best sound, because most people will never have a well-treated room. So dealers try to convince people that what they hear in the dealer's badly constructed room ... is excellent sound! They focus on playing old vinyl records on $10k turntables. They have 200lb aluminum chassis amps connected with fire hose cables. And in the end ... they play low-fi source material into poorly constructed acoustic space. None of this is Magnepan's fault.
Now, Floyd Toole's research at Harmon confirmed that the best speaker still sounds best whether it's in a good room or bad room. And the 30.7's sounded great ... but also partly because I have a lot of experience listening to 3.7's (and 1D's before that) in a good room. I know the 60Hz resonance and vague soundstage in the dealer's room, was not the fault of the speaker. I could hear that the bass from the 30.7 had extraordinary definition and impact, which would have been even better without the room resonance.
"I know the 60Hz resonance and vague soundstage in the dealer's room, was not the fault of the speaker."
Exactly. Wendell has had some critics at the demos, and they reassured him that they could "listen through the room." It's a matter of experience, if you've heard speakers in various acoustics as they have you get a feel for what the room and setup do to the sound and can separate it from the sound of the speaker.
I've heard by the way that dealers say that bad showroom acoustics are an advantage, because when the customer gets his speakers home they sound better and he isn't dissatisfied!
Well. I'll tell you. If I went to hear a pair - I'm not really interested in walking around the room with a bunch of people. Anyone that was interested in buying wouldn't want that. Everyone who hears them is basically doing a mental compare to their own system and then making a value judgement against the price tag. You can't do that walking around the room and standing up. Do you think the reviewers did that? No. They dialed them in and sat in the sweet spot. I'd probably rotate people in and out so everyone can hear in the sweet spot. Hopefully that is what is happening along with the walk around.
As I recall, one of the reasons Wendell chose the walk-around strategy was that at the typical seated demo, most people don't get to hear the speakers at the sweet spot, so he wanted people to be able to rotate into it.
Of course, that's compromised by poor acoustics at many dealers, and the fact that he has to optimize the speaker for off-axis listening which detracts from imaging. Wendell was so upset by poor acoustics at the start of the tour that he almost called it off. As I recall, his wife commented at one of the early demos, in a particularly bad space, that even properly set up 3.7's sounded better!
This is a frustrating problem for Magnepan. Few dealers will be showing the 30.7. They'd love to have every potential customer hear it set up properly in a good room, as the critics hear it and as the speaker would sound at home. But they can't do that. Wendell won't even take the 30.7 to shows, because as he says he hears flagship products from other manufacturers sounding terrible at shows and doesn't want to do that. Those manufacturers are showing the flag and letting people ooh and ah, but people who go to shows know that speakers typically don't sound their best there, it's too hard to get a good room (there are only a few at any venue) and even if a manufacturer scores one few people will hear them from the sweet spot.
So basically, this tour is a branding exercise, getting the Magnepan name out there. As Wendell puts it, it would be a very economically inefficient way of selling 30.7's! If someone is really serious about considering a purchase and needs to hear them properly set up first, it seems to me that they should talk to their dealer or to Wendell and see if something can be arranged.
That said, knowing my old IVa's as I do and the improvements that they've made to the 30.7 -- every single driver and the crossover as well have been improved -- and having read reviews by JV and others, I have no doubt that they're spectacular. It must be frustrating to Wendell to see people responding to poor dealer acoustics when it's a given that no speaker will be at its best in such circumstances (we know how much work it takes to "dial in" dipoles even in a good room).
In any case, most reactions from showgoers have been positive -- we're just a fussier crowd, since we already know what Maggies can do when properly set up. This is a frustration to Wendell since we're also the ones who write online reviews. :-)
This "walking around the room" is getting blown way out of proportion. Wendell had us walk around the room for less than five minutes at the beginning of the demo. This was, imho, a waste of time. The remaining 10+ minutes were spend with everyone pretty much standing still. If you stayed later, you got to make requests and sit in one of the many chairs set up near the sweet spot. I listened to a few tracks sitting down and standing up between the speakers and noticed no soundstage width or depth. Most of the sound appeared to be coming from the speakers. They made good sound, but there was zero magic. When I got home, I immediately fired up my modest rig with 3.6Rs and the presentation was so much better.
In Wendell's defense, he usually has only a few hours to set up the speakers on this tour. Most of us spend years perfecting speaker placement and room acoustics.
He's also at the mercy of dealer acoustics, something about which he's spoken here at length. In fact, he practically cancelled the tour at the start when he realized how acoustically awful some of the spaces were.
The 30.7's are similar enough in configuration to my own IVa's that I know that if there's no width or depth and the sound seems to be coming from the speakers, there's something wrong with the setup!
Wendell also told me that he's optimized the setup -- tweeters out rather than tweeters in -- for a crowd, rather than for the best imaging. He discusses the reason for that in the 3.7 manual:
"Depending upon the acoustics of your room, the imaging and sound stage may be better with the tweeters on the inside for listening only in the "sweet spot". For a larger audience or listening off to one side, tweeters on the outside will keep the image centered for those listening off-axis."
These have been problems for Wendell on the tour, since everyone who has Maggies compares the demos to their carefully tuned setup at home! But sadly, there doesn't seem to be a way to arrange an ideal demonstration given practical constraints. It's like going to a show -- the speakers there almost never sound as good as they do at home.
After the "walkabout", I grabbed a chair and put it in the sweet spot! But at the demo I attended, it quickly drifted into folks going through the dealer's vinyl box looking for their favorite record. I then got up and moved a few times to see how the image and bass changed ... and it did.
Important to point out that in Wilmington it was the dealer's 30.7's set up by them. Wendell just tweaked by adding the inductor to smoothout the bass.
When I bought my 3.7's from this dealer, I booked a couple hours on a Saturday and had the room to myself and listened to 1.7's and 3.7's with my reference music. I was satisfied that I achieved what I needed. And that room happened to be a better room than where they played the 30.7.
Yep, it isn't practical for Wendell and Galina to carry all the equipment with them, so basically what you hear is going to depend on the dealer's choice of source and amplification.
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