Magnepan vs polk

fyrn

For those who have heard both, how would you compare magnepan MMG's vs the LSI9's . The winner is?

polkfarmboy

LSI9 because they sound nothing like a tiny maggie.

fyrn

Let me rephrase, I guess what I'm really asking is at what point (model) would a magnepan compare to the LSI9. Or is the technology so different that they really can't be compared

fyrn

Thanks Dskip, I'm new to the maggies technology. I've read great thing about their SQ but can't get pass the construction. They seem too fragile to me. Interesting though.

PSOVLSK

Ironic that you should mention them being fragile to Skip given the unfortunate demise of his beloved Maggies

Mystery

In general, Maggies are better than normal run of the mill models.
The tweeter panel will come undone and need to refurbish often.
I have listened to them and highs/mids are amazingly good but they also make the whole scenery bigger, even than what's realistic.
They need a lot of room and power so that's something Polks are much better in.

audiocr381ve

fyrn wrote: »

Thanks Dskip, I'm new to the maggies technology. I've read great thing about their SQ but can't get pass the construction. They seem too fragile to me. Interesting though.

I've owned both.

LSi9's

-Full-range sound (no need for a sub although you may prefer one)
-Sweet top end
-Can play anything
-Great looking speakers
-Relatively easy to place although they're rear ported
-They don't take up to much real estate
-Not that great for movies IMO. To laid back.

I've owned the Magnepan MG-12's, MG10's, and the 1.7's.

-Absolutely need a subwoofer in my opinion (I've heard the bigger boys don't)
-Huge soundstage, sweet top end
-I found them not ideal for certain genres. Rock, Hip-hop, reggae, etc.
-These things are huge and draw a lot of attention to themselves. For most of us, they have a very low WAF. For those of us who are fortunate enough to a have a room for movies/2-channel, this isn't an issue. If you're married, PLEASE do the right thing and ask your wife if these are acceptable if you're placing them in an area where she spent all of her time decorating. It's borderline embarrassing to see guys with these things setup in a small living room. Make sure your have a space where it doesn't seem like these are dominating the room.
-Not easy to place
-Narrow sweet spot
-Not great for movies IMO.
-Need massive amounts of power. Make sure you have a proper amp.

Are the Maggie's worth the hassle & work if you have the space? Yeah, I believe they are. In my situation, I preferred the LSi9's due to placement and low WAF.

YMMV!

fyrn

Thanks for the info. I keep reading they have a small sweet spot but a huge sound stage. What good is a huge sound stage if you have to stay put in a tiny spot to really benefit from it. Kind of like the first LCD tv's, you couldn't move off axis to much because everything went downhill quick.
Seems to be very contradicting speaker, they need a lot of space, but don't move from that one spot. Defeats the purpose of having space. NOT pet friendly I assume.

ambiophonics

I've owned both LSI 9s and the MMGs. I preferred the maggies with a fast sub (I used a nice velodyne servo sub). The maggies had a very natural and uncolored sound. I really enjoyed the way they sounded with female vocalists like Norah Jones. Also, there mid-bass was incredibly smooth. That being said, they were difficult to position properly and only sounded great in one seat. The LSIs sounded very nice but sounded a bit confined when I compared them to the maggies. The LSIs were much more forgiving of placement and looked great. I ran both with a NAD 7175PE and also tried them briefly with a carver TFM-35 for a bit more juice. In the end I stuck with SDA-2Bs.

ambiophonics

Also, I read somewhere that there is a spray you can apply to the maggies that keeps cats away.

teekay0007

ambiophonics wrote: »

Also, I read somewhere that there is a spray you can apply to the maggies that keeps cats away.

Do tell on that. This would be SO helpful! I have some SDAs and Monitors that I need to keep cats away from.

F1nut

The reason they do so well is that they eliminate the biggest issue most speakers have - a resonant cabinet.

I find that a somewhat interesting argument. At rock, blues, country and jazz venues one will likely find amplified sound coming from speakers in resonant cabinets. Even at the symphony at great deal of the music is made by instruments that use resonating cabinets, so to speak. So, it would seem that a resonant cabinet is not necessarily a bad thing.

Personally, I find speakers such as Maggies to sound a bit artificial compared to a live performance or a good box speaker.

F1nut

teekay0007 wrote: »

ambiophonics wrote: »

Also, I read somewhere that there is a spray you can apply to the maggies that keeps cats away.

Do tell on that. This would be SO helpful! I have some SDAs and Monitors that I need to keep cats away from.

Pet stores sell a number of sprays for that purpose.

deronb1

I read where Totem actually designs their cabs to resonate. Like a stringed instrument does, vital for the sound. But speakers reproduce all different types of sounds so...........

polkfarmboy

fyrn wrote: »

Thanks for the info. I keep reading they have a small sweet spot but a huge sound stage. What good is a huge sound stage if you have to stay put in a tiny spot to really benefit from it. Kind of like the first LCD tv's, you couldn't move off axis to much because everything went downhill quick.
Seems to be very contradicting speaker, they need a lot of space, but don't move from that one spot. Defeats the purpose of having space. NOT pet friendly I assume.

First maggies are pet friendly, non pet friendly would be referring to the dust and hair that fly off the little critters. My martin logans are non pet friendly because they constantly need vacuum cleaning and need to be covered up when not in use otherwise they die a slow death.

When it comes to off axis they still sound great when guests are over etc. If you do critical listening with any speakers you will be in that sweet spot regardless of the speaker tech. With planars they throw off a very accurate tone more so than most speakers and they can give off that larger than life soundstage that is artificial but in a highly addictive way. The reason I pick planar tech over cones is because of price. To get that same effect from planars from a cone speaker in todays arket its going to cost alot of money.

AsSiMiLaTeD

I love my 1.6QRs. I've owned lots of speakers over the years, some costing much more than my Maggies and have even bought a couple pair to replace my Maggies, the 1.6 are still here and everything else is gone. Here are some of my thoughts:

• They do like good clean power and they tend to prefer that power to come from a solid state amp, though I've heard a couple on really good tube gear that sounded great.
• They are picky with placement and need lots of room. However, there is a misconception that they are difficult to set up and get dialed in. It's not difficult to figure out how to set them up, you just need to have the right space. They need 3 ft of clearance on every side, which is challenging for most people. I keep mine 2ft from the wall, but when I want to sit down for a long listening session I drag them a couple more feet into the room.
• They are large but I like that, they always make excellent conversation pieces whenever someone comes over and sees them for the first time. I'm not 'embarrassed' at all with having them in our living room and even my wife secretly likes them.
• The size of the ideal sweet spot depends on how you have them set up and the room you're in. If you give them proper space and set them up with the tweeters on the outside you've got a good range of ideal listening positions. If you have less space and have to set them up with the tweeters on the inside the sweet spot is much smaller.
• Maggies do a very good job of projecting sound. If I walk down the hall or into another room I can still very clearly hear what's playing on them. You get this with all speakers obviously but it is noticeably better with Magnepans, so they're also very good with background music.
• They are very revealing speakers, they will shred really bad recordings. This also means you need to have good gear upstream, the amp of course but your source and preamp also need to be good.
• They have a very large soundstage. It may be a little bigger than life and some people may not like that, but it's not ridiculous or anything and I think it makes for a very pleasing sound.
• They do classical, jazz, blues, folk, country and a lot of rock music very well. Their weak point is with music that's very dense or has a lot of distortion, or poorly recorded albums as mentioned above. If you're a metal head or have an mp3 collection or a bunch of poorly recorded music these speakers are not for you.
• What they do REALLY well is vocals, I've yet to hear another speaker that does vocals as well as a Magnepan at a given price point.
• They don't really have much impact and will likely need a sub. The bass has good low end extension but doesn't have that impact like you get with a box speaker, so having a good quick sub in the mix is important. I have not tried the Magnepan sub nor I have read reviews on it.
• I actually think they're very good for movies because they do vocals so well, but again you'll need that sub.

I've got around 2500 albums and I'd say these do very well with probably close to 2300 of those. There are more, but I'll give some examples below of specific artists or albums that don't play as well on the Maggies and a quick explanation:

AC/DC - Lots of distortion throughout and the couple albums I have are pretty compressed
Arcade Fire - Dense music, not recorded all that well
Dream Theater - Some distortion, not particularly well recorded, but mainly just too dense and too much going on and the Maggies can sound confused at times
Megadeth - Same as above
Muse - With the exception of all but one album, really poor sound quality on their albums which is a damn shame
Trombone Shorty - Highly compressed dynamically crippled albums

Some of my favorites off the top of my head are Vince Guaraldi, Take 6, Steely Dan, Porcupine Tree, Patricia Barber, Mark Knopfler, Keb' Mo', Gotye, The Doors, Dire Straits, Crash Test Dummies (yes, THAT Crash Test Dummies).

Anyway, there's my $.02

[Deleted User]

Not to derail the thread but for the ignorant,
Maggies rule over any Polk then space, WAF, ect being =?

AsSiMiLaTeD

Agree with Skip and I'll also respond by saying that when I think of great sound a concert venue is not the first thing that comes to mind. I've been to well over a hundred concerts and only a small handful had what I'd call great sound. Those places are generally designed for volume, not superb sound quality.

I didn't think it was any secret that cabinet resonance is a big issue with speaker design, up there with cone breakup and port distortion. Maybe I'm wrong though.

fyrn

This might be a stupid question, but I"m not familiar with their construction. Is the mylar one piece or different pieces for the tweeters, mids, etc

fyrn

thanks, I need to find a tutorial on how this things work vs a traditional cone speaker.
Their web site is no helpful.

AsSiMiLaTeD

It's not that complicated, basically a giant fancy piece of saran wrap in a magnetic field. The signal gets converted to a charge in the magnetic field which then moves the mylar which in turns creates sound.

fyrn

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

It's not that complicated, basically a giant fancy piece of saran wrap in a magnetic field. The signal gets converted to a charge in the magnetic field which then moves the mylar which in turns creates sound.

And that one piece of mylar produces all the frequencies, from highs to bass simultaneously?
That's the perplexing part to me.

tonyb

fyrn wrote: »

Thanks Dskip, I'm new to the maggies technology. I've read great thing about their SQ but can't get pass the construction. They seem too fragile to me. Interesting though.

That's because they are fragile. Dust, smoke, humidity, kids, pets....all concerns you should have. Not to mention they are picky on placement, don't do all genre's of music well, and the WAF isn't exactly off the charts.

That said, in a climate controlled dedicated room with proper placement and a good sub....they can be darn good. However, how many are willing to go into all that is necessary to accommodate nice Maggies ? Hence why you don't see their name thrown around much. Same goes for a lot of planers or electrostats.....though some are more durable than others.

audiocr381ve

tonyb wrote: »

fyrn wrote: »

Thanks Dskip, I'm new to the maggies technology. I've read great thing about their SQ but can't get pass the construction. They seem too fragile to me. Interesting though.

That's because they are fragile. Dust, smoke, humidity, kids, pets....all concerns you should have. Not to mention they are picky on placement, don't do all genre's of music well, and the WAF isn't exactly off the charts.

That said, in a climate controlled dedicated room with proper placement and a good sub....they can be darn good. However, how many are willing to go into all that is necessary to accommodate nice Maggies ? Hence why you don't see their name thrown around much. Same goes for a lot of planers or electrostats.....though some are more durable than others.

My sentiments exactly.

nooshinjohn

I hope I can simplify things a bit... First off, the Magnepan, within it's performance envelope, is the most coherent speaker, top-to-bottom, that you will ever find, especially for the price-point the MMG's come in at. I have owned MMG's, and the MG20's, and I miss both of them.

I used to build Maggies at the factory, and I am more than capable of taking a damaged pair and making them as new again.

The mylar everyone is talking about is not as delicate as it has ben made out to be. It can be reworked, cleaned up, rebuilt and even repaired in some cases where a small hole might develop. The bass portion of the panel has a thicker wire and in some cases the wires would be doubled up to increase the mass of that area of the diaphragm.

the midrange section uses a different gauge to lighten the mass, and run in a single run rather than doubled up. Until a few years ago, the wire used for the midrange was the same as that used for the tweeter in the lower series, but later models now use a ribbon foil instead.

The newer speakers have proven themselves to be quite trouble free, especially since they changed the adhesive used to bond the wire to the mylar. Yes that do get dusty, and I would not touch them with a vacuum or compressed air. I used a damp micrifibre cloth and gently wiper the fronts and backs of them.

As said by a few others, they play 90% of all music out thre either very well or ASTONISHINGLY well. Female vocals, piano, string instruments, and woodwinds and brass all sound convincingly real, but if you are into death metal or some other extreme, they will not be for you.

The WAF because of placement is very low... so low that mu wife chose to let me keep my 1.2TL's over the MG-20's... personally I wish I had them back, but with full mods on the TL's, I don't think I got a bad deal at all.

Get them and enjoy!

tonyb

nooshinjohn wrote: »

I used to build Maggies at the factory, and I am more than capable of taking a damaged pair and making them as new again.

The mylar everyone is talking about is not as delicate as it has ben made out to be. It can be reworked, cleaned up, rebuilt and even repaired in some cases where a small hole might develop.
!

If you used to build them John, of course it's easy for you. Just like my mechanic can build a car from scratch.....but not something everyone is capable of. Rebuilding the mylar will cost some coinage for the average joe.

Replacing a driver on most conventional box speakers is about as easy as it gets for most with limited handyman skills. Don't get me wrong, I like Maggies.....just too high maintenance for me, too picky on placement, and not dynamic enough to accommodate all genres of music.

AsSiMiLaTeD

The disadvantages of Maggies are being overstated a bit in this thread. They're not THAT picky about placement and they're not THAT difficult to maintain. They're more difficult than many other speakers, but the responses in this thread would have you believe that they're a nightmare to live with, and that's just simply not the case.

I've had mine for a while now and neither of those has been an issue for me.

fyrn

after reading all the different opinions, as much I would like to listen to them, they are not for me. In my situation they would have to be moved constantly out of the way.

F1nut

AsSiMiLaTeD wrote: »

Agree with Skip and I'll also respond by saying that when I think of great sound a concert venue is not the first thing that comes to mind. I've been to well over a hundred concerts and only a small handful had what I'd call great sound. Those places are generally designed for volume, not superb sound quality.

I didn't think it was any secret that cabinet resonance is a big issue with speaker design, up there with cone breakup and port distortion. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Went to a show last night, excellent sound. Reminded me of my SDA's.

AsSiMiLaTeD

Obviously I can't argue that, my only response is that the vast majority of venues I've been in didn't have great sound. Maybe that's just a Texas thing and you guys have only acoustically tuned world famous venues wherever you're at, but my general experiences have not been that great.

The best gear to replicate what I've heard in most venues would be Vegas driven by one of those pro amps :-)

tonyb

It's been my experience that the bigger the venue the worse the sound. Most big venues here at least are horrible for sound but are the only places to hold such mass amounts of ticket holders.

But on occasion, you can catch some great acts at smaller, better sounding, "theater like" settings. We have a lot of theaters which are pretty darn good acoustically. We even have a fairly good outdoor venue in Ravinia up on the north shore...nestled into tree's.