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In Reply to: Re: Magnepan Magneplanar MG12 Speakers posted by Hugh M. McElroy on January 06, 2000 at 07:04:58:
B) first. No, they are not too big. My room is about 14x24 and they work great, if you can live with a couple of "doors" in your room. Might get a few corner reflections if you put em near one of the short walls and toe them in a bit, but I found a cheap remedy that does the job and actually looks good... just get a couple of fake potted trees for the corners. They look good (especially with a slightly oriental looking decor) and tend to tone down the appearance of those two stark white panels somewhat.A). That quite depends on what you drive them with. Some like to drive them with big old Brystons, others wax philosophical about driving them with small tube amps. I had a set of MG-12s for about a month and my little Yammie rx-v995 drove them quite beautifully. The Yammie is a bit bright as an amp in stereo mode, but the midrange and up was so smooth that I quickly became addicted to them. They can use a sub, but it has to be a good fast one or you'll find it lacking... I quit using my sub for music because it just sounded flabby by comparison (ok for HT though). Soundstage on the MG-12's seemed a little low, but you can experiment with the angle and boosting their height with stands of some sort. Traded up to the 1.6qr's about a month later. They are very similar sounding to the 12's only the soundstage is at the proper height, deliver more sound and have better bass (don't think these need a sub). Noticed an improvement in clarity when switching from "large" to "small" which cut out frequencies below 90Hz, so the 1.6's could use a bit more oomph than my little 100 watt reciever could deliver so I tried a 130 watt amp (using the yammie as a pre-amp)and was amazed at the increase in bass response when driven full-range.... unfortunately, this amp was a cheap mid-fi and was a bit weak on the high end so I lost some of the treble extension. I have a feeling that a good hi-fi amp, say 100 to 150W/channel (that won't wimp out driving 4 ohm speakers) should drive them marvelously well. Since I was already bi-wiring the 1.6's, I left the bass connected to the second amp and connected the high end back up to the Yammie and much to my amazement, it worked out exceptionally well.... nice smooth mids and highs and excellent bass (fortunately, the 2nd amp was an integrated because I even had to turn the bass down a bit on bass-heavy recordings like Enigma for fear the neighbors would complain). Surround mode is also great because there is less of a strain on the Yammie since it only has to drive the tweeters (my rear speakers are an old set of full-range dynamics, only because I couldn't afford to keep the MG-12s as well)and it eliminates the slight drop in clarity when switching from stereo to DTS or AC-3 modes. I've heard this pseudo bi-amping arrangement can cause hum and phase problems, but I have a feeling the interconnect I'm using has good enough grounding that I'm not getting a ground loop between the amps (DIY RG-214 coax...you could wire a stove with that stuff) and I lucked out with the phasing. So, this arrangement will serve until I trip over a used Bryston or something.
Some one asked about speaker cables? My old speakers were wired with 14ga zip and then I somehow wound up with a roll of Poco 12ga so I just ran that in parallel with the existing 14ga and this worked just fine. Then I tried bi-wiring the maggies using these:
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/ubyte2e.html for the tweeters... imagine it would work quite well for a single-wire arrangement too (besides, why spend gobs of money on esoteric brand-name cables when you can make them for next to nothing). Anyway, If you've got a good sub, then go for the MG-12s, If you don't, then go for the 1.6's Both image well enough that you don't need a center channel for most HT setups either... just run the center in phantom mode. If you absolutely need a center, someone mentioned that B&W made one of the few that could match well with maggies. (HTM1 perhaps?)
Pam, Thanks for the info.. I bought the 1.6's, the ? is when will I get them? 8-20 wks? quien sabe. The next thing that comes up is a Amp, pre and tuner.I can afford about $1500. any new stuff out there for that kind of money?.. also what is the burn in time? do I run them on FM? feed them a special diet of busy music? any input ???
RegardsHugh
Well, if I had the money to be able to afford separate music and HT systems, I'd probably get a tube pre-amp and a SS power amp. Since space and $ prohibit this, I haven't really looked into reasonably priced pre-amps. Maybe someone else can suggest a nice pre/power combo. I thought of trying to find an integrated amp to drive them but most don't seem to pump out too many watts so I'm looking into pro equipment at the moment (could use another tape loop and have some stuff with XLR-style balanced inputs so thought perhaps there might be something in the line of a studio near-field monitor amp that might work). Otherwise, I might just try a vanilla power amp... Acurus, Rotel or something.Burn in? Well, most people seem to think maggies are a bit shrill right out of the box and take a couple of weeks to burn in. I really don't know since I took the ones off my dealers floor and don't know how long they've been running them... probably not long since they seem to sell well. I suppose part of burn-in involves stretching out the membrane and the amp electronics settling down to a stable operating point with their new loads. A good portion of it is also between your ears (brain takes a while to train to accept the new sound as natural), so I don't bother doing anything special... just play music and let my ears burn-in with the equipment.
thanks for the time, expertise and effort. I'm looking forward to getting the panels home. I'm a total tree stump when it comes to shopping for the amp, preamp & tuner. because of the limited amount of money I have to spend($1500). do you recommend going for used equipt? when I talk to people about a good receiver, they laugh. How about technic Amp. parasound etc? while they will never be confused with Conrad Johnson, krell etc. As you can see I need some sound (pun) advice..
Thanks
Hugh
Well, if you have a dealer who won't rip you off, or at least will give you a 30 day trial, then buying used equipment can be a very good way to go (audiophiles tend to take good care of equipment and if they have the $$$ they often tend to swap new equipment into their systems fairly often so some very good equipment can appear on the used market at much better prices than new... if you have an audio shop that seems to do a fast business, they might get in a lot of stuff in on trade-ups... occasionally something good might show up at a pawn shop, but not very often). Might also be good to look up the model numbers on used equipment (probably don't want something so old that it needs all the capacitors replaced, though I am using my 25 year-old Yamaha CA 610-2 integrated to drive an old set of mini Advent's as a computer sound system and it still sounds better than the plastic junk computer speakers at Best Buy). Technics? Probably not the best unless you're looking for a pro DAT/MD recorder or something. Parasound seems to have made a few nice amps. Hafler and Crown made some good and some bad amps (can never keep straight which model was good though). SAE made some good amps but they are out of business so repair could be a problem. While not audiophile, Yamaha did make some fairly decent AM/FM tuners and Dynaco made some nice tube pre-amps (my brother still uses one). You might check http://www.playitagainsam.com/ I've never dealt with them but you might get someone to wax nostalgic over various pieces of equipment to get some advice even if they don't have anything you might want at the moment. People here would probably be able to give some good advice too.
Thanks again, I'm in NYC and we have some pretty reputable dealers for used equipt, but then again, if its really good, its selling for close to list.
There is still some "new" carver amps available, I'm tempted for several reasons. Years ago I added an old c9 to a fisher (made in Brooklyn)receiver 504, and i use to driver people crazy when I played it thru a couple Ohm 8's. BC's ribbon speakers were pretty decent Now with my 1.6 maggies I don't want to underpower and I have to stay within a $1500. budget. The Carver A760 & CT 28 might be good for ME.. what do you think?
Hugh
Not familiar with Carver's so I can't help you there. I know a lot of people run HT systems with them hooked to Nak-AV10s, Yammie DSP-A1's, Denons and Rotel surround recievers, so, depending on how loud you want to play them, you could get by on something that is stable with 4 ohm loads and pumps out 150+ watts should work. Some people drive them with 40 watt tube amps and love them.... best just to make sure the amp can drive 4 ohm loads and try it out.
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