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Re: OK ... What's "Better Bass" on a Maggie?? :-))

Posted by gymwear5@hotmail.com (M) on March 23, 2007 at 12:56:36

In Reply to: OK ... What's "Better Bass" on a Maggie?? :-)) posted by andyr on March 23, 2007 at 04:41:20:

OK. I'll jump in - objectivist as I am.

Most of us use two signals to define the quality of bass. A kick drum and a plucked string bass. A bowed bass, contrabassoon, struck tympani, complete drum kit and organ (big ol' pipe organ) are also audio enthusiast favorites to evaluate bass quality. All these instruments, with the exception perhaps of the pipe organ, even when reaching down to their lowest fundamentals produce harmonic and timbre components stretching upward well into the upper midrange (above 1KHz) and often into the treble frequencies.

An eon or so ago, as an about to leave teenage years audio salesman, the Advent folks came into the store to demo two new products - the "Large Walnut" and the "Advent Powered". Now, the "Large" Advent was already known for its cohesive bottom end so I was excited to see what these newer speakers could do. They set Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" on the platter and we started with the Walnuts. The extra thick walls and more braced cabinets toppled my recollection of the "Large" base quality. Then we switched over to the powered (the drivers were identical) and the cabinet sizes similar. The Advent engineers had gain-matched the speakers and we could switch between the two easily with a switch box - but immediately I could tell the difference. The timbre of the bass "thuds" seemed to be so much more together. It took almost no effort to visualize the drum kit setting behind Mr. Simon's vocal - a bit to the left.

33 years ago, and I can bring the memory up - just like that.
We offered other speakers, KEF to cr*p, in the store - including a smattering of JBL and a "BOSE ROOM". When a customer came in and wanted "good" bass - not loud bass - we steered them to the Advents. The other speakers did not have that "cohesive" quality - or if they did (KEF105's for instance) the cohesiveness would break down when the bass was a little softer.

So: Def: "better bass" - when a loudspeaker's lower registers blend more realistically with the upper timbres and or harmonics."

A speakers design, including crossover points and slopes, impedance, and dynamic linearity along with room acoustics and placement are most key...

The MMG - stand alone - for me rates about a "C+" on bass. The 60Hz bump before the low frequencies drop off into the abyss is noticeable and annoying, and the dynamic limitation of the planar driver show up any time you choose to challenge it with bottom end material (heard in "Kodachrome", for example). On the plus side - the design minimizes room response interactions (partially because to set up the speakers for the "sweet spot"), and the crossover - even standard one - seems to produce a reasonably constant sound power as the drivers pass from lower to upper registers. AND there are not many speaker - anywhere - that could do much better at the price when you lock in a good sub and roll the mmg's bottom end off starting at 80Hz or a bit higher.

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