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Sideways Maggies are an interesting tweak

Hi Joerg,

The normal position for Maggies is facing the listener, perhaps with some toe-in. There is usually a choice of whether to place the tweeter sections towards the side walls or towards the center, and it comes down to trying them each way to see which gives the better overall balance and sound-stage.

However, there is another way to use them. Turning them so they face towards or away from each other can give a very interesting performance improvement in some rooms.

This topic has been discussed in this forum a few times. I learned about the trick from Liz and David Hare at Stereo Unlimited in Walnut Creek, CA (a Bay Area city about two hours from my house), who are the Magnepan dealers in this area. I then found out it has been posted here before.

The Hares do this with true-ribbon MG 3.6 speakers, and mine are MG-20s. There is one user here who does this with quasi-ribbon Maggies. The only requirement is that your listening position has to be within the dispersion arc of the tweeter sections of the speakers. This is easy to do with the ribbon models, as their dispersion arcs are nearly 180 degrees. By sitting closer to the center line through the speakers, you can be within the tweeter dispersion arc of the quasi-ribbon speakers. You can tell where this is by simple listening.

Having the speakers face away from each other allows use of shorter speaker cables, and is the only way mine would work with the cables I have. This means I am hearing the back wave of the tweeter first, so I reverse the polarity with my Wadia 861 (unless I have a disc that I know has reversed polarity in the recording, but that is another topic). Reversing the speaker cable leads accomplishes the same thing.

As long as you are moving the speakers around, I suggest giving this method a try. It gives a better balance between direct and ambient sounds on most of my recordings. If you hear too much ambience, then the method may not be suitable for your room, or you may have a mechanical resonance in your equipment (this happened to me, and I got better sound after I found and fixed that problem). It is important to treat the first reflection areas on the side walls with this method. These are the places where you would see the reflections of the tweeter sections if the walls were covered with mirrors. Dispersion and absorbtion are both important for these areas. It is still important to treat the section of the wall in front of you where you would see your reflection if that wall were covered with mirrors, but, with the sideways speaker position, it seems to require less of this area to be treated.

Good luck.

-Al


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