planar speakers....

TroyD

I have been giving some serious thought to setting up a 2ch stereo rig (damn George) and I have been thinking about planar speakers. Specifically the Magnepan's. What I can find on them is pretty positive, the drawbacks being power hungry and bass shy. Both are things that I have solutions for....Anyway, just checking to see if anyone has any inputs or experience with ribbon speakers.....

and no, the Polks are not going anywhere ....

Troy

wangotango68

i thought about getting the magnepan mmg's last spring for $500 you can get them factory direct with a 60 day money back guranteee if you do not like them. me and the wife have some friends in columbus,ohio they have a set of the mmg's and they sound "amazing" sound seems to come from all over the room
just need a lot of clean power. i would defentily give them a try
a small sub would be nice as they do not go that low.

scott:cool:

RuSsMaN

Well worth the money. Planar-magnetic beauts. The MMG's are the smallest of the bunch, $550 direct.

Only real **** I have heard about Maggies, is 'dialing' them in. Some have no problem, some swear the sweet spot is on the small side.... (I personally have found this NOT true with Maggies, and very true with Electrostat ML's....)

A placement consideration, these act as multi-pole speakers, so they tend to work best about 2ft+ out from the rear wall....

I dig em, and plan on adding a pair to the collection one day.....

Cheers,
Russ

TroyD

I'm heading over to Peachtree Acoustics this afternoon to kill two birds with one stone, get a Maggie demo with some Marantz monoblocks.......I was talking to the guy on the phone and he said that the MMG's are very cool and are a steal at 550.

My biggest problem is that I don't yet have the room and all the resources to put together a mini He-Man rig, yet. So, they would have to double as fronts in the HT, not that I have a serious problem with that.....

Troy

RuSsMaN

I take it the DQ10 deal fell through?

Just curious.....

R

TroyD

The guy never got around to having the amp fixed, which now is no big deal with the Carver but he doesn't want to sell them separate. I told him fine but I'm not paying the long price for broken equipment.....plus he has been kind of wishy washy, I was supposed to meet him twice, both times he had an emergency, yada yada....I would still buy them but I have yet to listen to them and I'm not going to chase him down to do it....

Troy

gidrah

Russman is right. They do sound best with more power and pretty far from the back wall. If you go with a stereo only rig, you could pick up and older Marantz, Pioneer or Sansui for a decent price. Lots of clean wattage to be had.
There's a guy near Cleveland that builds electrostats that appear to be similar to some Martin Logans. One day I'll take that 3hr. road trip and give 'em a listen.
One thing that worries me is that on E-bay I am always reading about how this pair has just been fixed and that pair needs something.
Some people love this type of speaker, some hate 'em. Personally, if I had the room, I would definately have some sort of ESL.
I hope that DQ10 deal comes to light. It's been a few years, but if my memory serves me correctly, very sweet.

TroyD

thanks buddy,

Power, I got, 350 wpc of Carver power. IF the DQ-10 deal fall through, what I would probably do is buy a pair of MMG's through Magnepan.

I went to Peachtree Acoustics yesterday and he has a bigger pair of Maggies, SOO SWEET. He said that the MMG's are a hell of a deal and that the performance of those rivals that of the next two models up, really.

BTW, RonP I checked out the Marantz monoblocks, very sweet.

Troy

alpha-7

I recently picked up an older set of maggie SMGAs (got them real cheap) and tested them out as the "B" speakers on my receiver, with the "A" speakers being a pair of Polk RT800s. To my very great surprise -- mostly because of the vastly different technologies behind the two types of speakers -- their sound/voice characteristics were almost the same! (After matching volume, of course; the maggies are much less efficient.)

The maggies weren't positioned with any great care, and I'm sure the sound could be improved with better room placement, but i was surprised at how well the Polks stood up to them. The Polks have tighter, deeper base, of course, and the maggies a somewhat smoother soundstage, but the two sets of speakers otherwise sounded very similar -- so similar that with some types of music it was hard to tell them apart!

Now i don't get the chance to A/B speakers often, but the differences between the Polks and the maggies were much less than the differences between, say, Polks and Infinity or Klipsh that you can A/B at the Good Guys.

Having gotten used to the sound of the maggies over the last month or so, i must say that i probably prefer the punch of the Polks for listening to most types of music. And the Polks do indeed have very good imaging for speakers in their class.

Ray

TroyD

Thanks for the input.....

I went back yesterday to do a little more listening to the demo pair of Maggies, man, I can't say enough about how much I dig them.

IF (and that is a big if) I get a pair, most likely it would be a new set of Maggies. I am pretty leary of buying a pair from ebay to be honest. (same thing about a pair of DQ-10's) Essentially, I am looking to start putting together a 2 ch rig and I really like the sound of the ribbons.

Having said that, you are right about the Polks , IMHO, my RT7's sound better, have a more impressive soundstage than they have any right to. The difference, that I percieve is the clarity and definition in the higher frequencies. I was listening to some Christmas music and to hear a guy hit a xylophone (sp?) on the Maggies was SOOOOO cool.

Troy