Some listeners have tagged Maggies as “opaque” compared to cone-and-dome systems. Whatever the merits of that assessment, I suspect that at least some of it can be laid at the door of the stock crossover. As I’ve indicated elsewhere in this thread, the upgrade leaves the stock configuration sounding constipated and smeared. These are relative terms, of course, but the magnitude of the upgrade’s improvement is far from subtle. The panels sound quicker across the frequency spectrum and more resolving as well as revealing of inner and previously-masked detail. That’s transparency mated with improved musical flow (or, if you prefer, pace, rhythm, and timing). Coupled with a greater sense of top-end air and the fleshing out of instrumental and vocal timbre which results from a far more detailed exposition of partials, these attributes enhance significantly the illusion of reach-into-the-soundstage palpability. And the soundstage itself has expanded (and the listening room walls “disappeared”) to the point where you can suspend disbelief damned near sufficiently to imagine yourself actually in Manhattan Center, Abbey Road, Boston Symphony Hall, the Concertgebouw, or San Francisco’s Warfield Theater on well-recorded material.
Massed choral voices can present a daunting challenge on their own, and when coupled with Leonard Bernstein’s at-times astringent as well as “busy” and raucous score for the 1989 performance of his revised “Candide” on a DG CD, a downright ear-splitting glassy mess if the speakers (to say nothing of the rest of the system) can’t cope with its demands, including the diverse placement of a number of individual male and female choirs (particularly with the grisly celebratory “What A Day for an Auto-da-Fe”). I’d achieved what I considered a fairly satisfactory resolution with the still-somewhat-brash-sounding work when I had my SACD/CD player upgraded some years ago, but it was the 1.6 crossover upgrade that literally opened the stage up, layered it in believable proportions, parsed appropriately the positioning of the choirs and soloists as well as the timbral complexity of the orchestral accompaniment, and rendered the overall presentation grand-scale three-dimensional--without rounding off the intentionally hard edges. A truly “breakout” demonstration indicating what the panels are capable of when the crossover doesn’t get in the way. Not even a passive with relatively moderately priced components.
So much for opacity. And I haven’t even reframed them yet.
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/jimtranr/index.html
