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I'm very satisfied with my 1.7i which are in my upstairs living room. The listening area is around 12 by 15 ft. but as can be hopefully seen in the attached photo, the right speaker does not have a full wall behind it and has rooms to the side, back and front. (I deal with the imbalance by adjusting the gain control I have on my amp.)
Thinking about getting a pair of 3.7i available locally but concerned that the crisp lean sound which I currently like so much will not be the same based on the one time I heard the 3.7i at the dealer and the imbalance issue will only be exacerbated by the bigger speaker.
Are my concerns justified? Thanks.
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take a gander
A volume control won't fix room asymmetry. The direct/reflected sound field coming from your left speaker won't be anything like the right one even if both speakers are the same loudness.
Buy or make a stand. Mount a big piece of MDF on it. Put it behind the right speaker as an extension of the front wall. If it has wheels, you can roll it out of the way when not in use. Paint it the color of the room. Maybe your wife will tolerate it. Buy her a present....
This doesn't solve the problem completely, but it'll sound way better. It's a lot cheaper than buying a new house.
Thanks for the input!
I can't reposition the speakers a whole lot as moving them along the wall which is currently the sidewall to the left of the left speaker does not have WAF (and that wall has three glass windows).
I've experimented with rugs but actually prefer the wood floors bare. The walls are all textured and I would describe the room as lively but not harsh- there is no slap echo when I clap my hands.
The speakers are 4 ft from the wall behind them. I keep all the doors to the other rooms on this level of the house open and the bass response seems smooth and deep. As you might expect, the left speaker does seem louder but using the gain control re the left channel of my amp basically deals with that issue. Is there something wrong for using a gain control for this purpose? If I keep the blinds on that left sidewall mostly closed, the tonal balance between the two speakers is quite close if not identical.
As far as my sonic preference for lean and crisp, I can't tell you why that is- I just prefer the sonics of BLONDE ON BLONDE to something Iike Carole King's TAPESTRY, though I feel both are well recorded albums.
My amp is 600 watts into 4 ohms so driving the 3.7i should not be a problem, but am I just opening up a Pandora's Box since I'm pleased with the 1.7i in a compromised environment?
Why a gain control and not a *BALANCE" control (assuming you have one available)? I have a demonstration test CD with a panned stereo test track. A full tone extreme left, sounds mid-left, then dead center, followed by mid right, and then extreme right, and from there going back toward the left. IIRC it told me what I wanted to learn. (I should be able to dig out the CD, and post identifying information if there's any interest.)
I don't have a balance control as I use a Benchmark DAC1 HDR direct to my amp.
I don't have a balance control as I use a Benchmark DAC1 HDR direct to my amp.
My 2 cents: IMO, you're asking the wrong question. If I were questioning my own concerns ...and to be crystal clear on this, I am not... it would be something along the lines of "why do I prefer the crisper, leaner sound to a fuller, richer musical experience?"
Again, to be absolutely clear on this point, based on testimonial reviews, there's nothing wrong with the 1.7i. While I've briefly auditioned 1.7i speakers prior to purchasing the 3.7i Maggies, I didn't spend enough time with the smaller Maggies to develop an opinion of their overall performance. However, I did spend enough time auditioning the 3.7i to prefer their sound by a pretty wide margin.
I can state with confidence that the 1.7 line conveys a good portion of what one expects from the Magnepan experience, but only a portion when compared with the capabilities of larger Maggies. That said, it comes down to one's musical tastes & preferences, and whether those preferences allow for taking the additional steps required to achieve even better performance (i. e., repositioning speakers and/or adjusting the listening environment through treatments or redesigning the room configuration, bass augmentation via one or more powered subwoofers, good after market stands, etc.).
The bottom line is this: If you are indeed satisfied with what you're currently hearing, then you're done. If not, changing the speakers is certainly a start, but probably not a stopping point.
Cheers,
AuPh
I went from the 1.7i to the 3.7i in a 12 x 15 room and I'm very happy that I did. You get a much larger sound stage and unbelievable separation and articulation of instruments. Just be sure your amp is up to the task.
If you're very happy with what you have you may want to stop and enjoy. I moved up as a retirement present.
Joto
YES.
Before changing speakers.....you have GOT to deal with speaker placement and room acoustics. First, put a rug on the floor in front of the Maggies. Then put diffusers on the wall behind the speakers (either Vicoustic or GIK), and, if possible, move the speakers 5' from the wall behind them. Until you do this, neither speaker will sound as good as it can.Also, with the two speakers having differing wall (behind the speakers) situations, the potential of the speaker pair is compromised. Can you extent the wall behind the right speaker, leaving just a narrow pathway by the door? That will put the two speakers on a more level playing field.
Edits: 06/27/20 06/27/20
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Thanks BDP24! You saved me some typing, totally agree! Using the balance control to compensate displacement of speakers, wow! that really hurt my audio soul, thats like using one bad to fix another bad.
Maybe you can move the speakers to another wall for symmetrical positioning??
Knock out a corresponding-sized notch behind the listening position, but on the left side. I agree with everyone here, you can't fix a problem with another problem, but what if you balance out the problem by doing the negation of it? Would that not be 1 + -1?
Maybe there already is such a notch. The OP didn't say.
/ optimally proportioned triangles are our friends
LOL, you really had me thinking about that for a few seconds!.......... but no, that won't work, its all about the energy thats fired towards the front wall(behind the speakers), you must have a symmetrical situation there, thats actually THE most important wall of all, side walls + back wall(behind listener) have less influence. But I must give you a A+ for original ideas!
"... but no, that won't work, its all about the energy thats fired towards the front wall(behind the speakers), you must have a symmetrical situation there, thats actually THE most important wall of all, side walls + back wall(behind listener) have less influence."
Long ago, I had some interest and concern about sound emanating from that wall behind my Tympanis, and hung a batch of mattress pads on the backs of the speakers. I was unable to discern any large difference in the resultant sound. I concluded that the front wall is not as significant as many enjoy saying.
I've experimented with absorption behind them. Ended up with pinpoint imaging that was impressive, but after a while I got tired of the unnaturally "dry" acoustic and went back to rear wall reflections.
Mattress pads absorb as opposed to a wall that will reflect, I can only imagine that your Tympani's are placed well away from the front wall which will reduce the influence of reflections, that might(?) explain the minor difference you experienced, or your front wall was already covered with absorbing material?. In normal room set-ups moving speakers towards and away from the front wall will have a large influence on bass volume and image depth, the influence of side walls is much smaller and the back wall basically only comes into play if your listening seat Is in it's proximity.
I actually fire my mg12's across the diagonal, but not a "true" diagonal. I've used speakers that way for years. A reviewer for Stereophile used to always use this approach, and also did his own measurements in that setup. I forget his name. I tried it, and I liked it.
I think it helps I prefer a closer seating to the place of the speakers, like 6 ft or so. I really am just "placing by listening" when it comes to listening spot and speakers. Pure amateur ;)
Also helps to have a decent room that is basically just the speakers and the stereo and the chair. I lucky.
/ optimally proportioned triangles are our friends
Must admit, I've tried all kind of weird stuff with set-up's but never diagonal, but why not? you can still create a symmetrical situation for back firing energy and improve reflections(waves won't bounce straight back as in a standard situation) at the same time.
Seated close is the only way to go, has so many advantages, one being that you're actually listening to your speakers instead of the room! and of course you place by listening, you can measure all day but in the end it's your ears that have the last word on positioning, nothing amateurish about that at all.
You can always check your final positioning with a mono recording, and not just a voice or single instrument but multi instrumental, sit yourself dead centre and dial the speakers in to the point that all players are crammed together in the tightest centre image possible, your centre image should be no more than a foot wide.
Oh absolutely. Mono is the secret sauce for set up. Mono itself makes for a good listen once you get into that mood. I find the mono almost has a depth to it sometimes.
"Today" Jefferson Airplane,mono version is pretty awesome. So is mono Sinatra. His voice makes for a great reference.
Tom Norton was the reviewer. He gave reasons why diagonal is worth checking out, but forget what review he laid it out.
/ optimally proportioned triangles are our friends
I'm of course familiar 'O'l Blue Eyes' but all I know about Jefferson Airplane comes from the Coen Bros' movie, 'A Serious Man'. :-)
Norman, A Serious Man is one of my favorite Coen Brothers films! (another is The Man Who Wasn't There, starring Billy Bob Thornton). If I hadn't been married to a Jewish woman for 25 years (her Father's name was Norman ;-) I would not have understood it nearly as well.
Edits: 07/01/20
I'm also a Coen Bros. fan and have everything of theirs which is on blu ray. The Man Who Wasn't There took ages to get released on blu-ray in the US. (Of course I have on DVD.) I was forced into buying the blu-ray from France, but now have the US product as well.
Don't neglect to watch one of their biggest hits,'The Big Lebowski'! In that movie the character played by John Goodman married a Jewess and then started behaving as if he were a Jew. Naturally the Coen Bros. had a lot of fun with that.
Oh yeah Norman, love The Big Lebowski. I have a lot of their movies on DVD (I'm not a hardcore videophile; DVD is good enough for me, and cheap!). I think O Brother Where Art Thou is their best known movie, and is a lot of fun. It's great soundtrack was supervised by T Bone Burnett, whose Truth Decay album I love. As a bonus, it's recorded sound quality is almost audiophile level, really good. T Bone was a cast member of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue, and has produced a lot of great albums, including some by Elvis Costello and Los Lobos---Eric.
Proof Through The Night.
Mark in NC
"The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains" -Paul Simon
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