Planar Speaker Asylum

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RE: I am looking for guidance in setting up my Tympanis

Posted by josh358 on February 27, 2017 at 09:35:31:
OK, so --

I used to own 1-D's and the jumpers between the panels are always flaky. I'm sure Magnepan tested them but that's just they way they are -- they should have used better connectors. For now, Deoxit should work but you might want to consider either better connectors (you'd have to find something that fits) or just doing away with them and soldering the wires. There's really no reason to have jumpers there anyway, how often do you take them apart?

The tweeters in the 1-D's beam so the tweeter panel must be aimed at the listening seat. Then you can experiment.

Get hold of the manual. It was written by one of the foremost experts on speaker placement. Use his guidelines as a starting point. In general, you want the tweeters facing you as I said and then you want to fold the woofer channels a bit, so you get a bit of a zigzag.

The 1-D's have a very wide separation between the acoustic centers of tweeter and woofers, so to get the best imaging they're best listened to at a good distance. However, as with all planars (and really most speakers), you'll get the most depth as you pull them out from the front wall. 3' gives OK results, 5' is even better. The further out you pull them, the better from that perspective but you have two things you're working with here so it's going to require trial and error.

The tweeter panels will have more effect on imaging than the woofer panels, so put them at the normal stereo position (60 degrees) and then experiment. I like them best at 60 degrees, but a lot of people prefer putting them closer together. You can experiment with tweeters in and tweeters out. With Tympanis, this will depend a lot on room size but I'd try tweeters in first because woofers in will tend to block the backwave. But try it both ways.

Proximity to side walls is less important with planars. Two feet or more is fine.

Best position for bass will depend as with any speaker on your room. However,

Consider trying HP's rule of thirds -- speakers 1/3 out into the room, seat 1/3 into it. With a large speaker like the Tympani, if you sit at the same distance from the rear as the speaker is from the front you'll cancel the first bass wave reflection! Try it, it worked well for me.

Unfortunately, the best position for bass never seems to be the best position for imaging. The universe is perverse that way.

Be prepared to experiment a lot! That's one of the charms or annoyances of planars, depending on how you look at it. I became adept at moving the 1-D's by grabbing the wings. Furniture sliders can help.

Re power, that depends entirely on how loud you listen. 200 watts should give you roughly 106 dB peaks at your listening seat, but amps differ very much in their peak power delivery and recovery and with a good amp you'll typically get several dB of peak reserve above that. That's pretty loud. The 1-D's will likely play louder, though, given the chance -- they're very robust speakers, and with their big woofers and low midrange panels are cleaner than other Maggies at elevated levels. I used to blow the fuses periodically in my irresponsible youth. That being the case, bi amping could net you something *if* you listen at that kind of level but most audiophiles don't.