Apogee Mini Grand Questions

Man, talk about experienced advice, from a prior Apogee dealer no less, falling on deaths ears.
BTW, the cheap Mini Grand "DAX" is the cross over, as referred to in my prior post.
Embarrassing that they call this is a DAX, as to imply it is anything similar in quality of a real DAX.
Truthful advice is not always what one wants to hear, simply it is what one needs to hear, which is the opposite way the bulk of the hi-end audio business is run.
Mini Grands flopped. Why? Subs and the mini DAX are close to worthless, and to make things worse, they had to live up to the standards of the Stages. We used the Stage subs as stands.

I had a pair of Stages on the stands w/o subs for about four years and I loved them.

To this day, some of the best, most fatigue free, uncannily focused midrange I have ever heard. Try Joni Mitchell Blue late at night in the dark for a transcendental experience with the Stage.

I, too, had an Aragon 4004 II which was just fine -- never had a problem -- driven by a Jadis JPL tube preamp. Perhaps they would have sounded even better, but I had them in a relatively small room, about 12 x 18 and experimented with firing across both the long and short walls.

I agree that rear and side wall breathing room is important and I ultimately did not cant them in at all.

Even with the stands, vertical dispersion is limited which creates a slightly squahed image height compared to larger planars or ESLs and is probably the main reason I eventually sold them. So find a low comfy chair.

But it is confusing for me to hear the comments about the subs - I never had them but it was the full mini grand, not the subless Stage that always got the rave reviews and the class A recommendations in Stereophile.

I would have thought that the Mini Grands "flopped" because people in Peoria don't want a tricky to place, physically awkward, and very difficult to drive, esoteric ribbon speaker, not because the subs were "worthless".

But hey, what do I know, I never heard the subs.

In any case, have fun and good luck.

I still own a pair of Mini-Grands and my position is somewhat between
Binaural and Info. The stage section is fantastic; the midrange
is one of the best I have ever heard. The original workmanship
was shoddy, and my dealer had to replace all the velcro inside
the stage sections. The subs made great stands, bringing the height
of the stages to more where it should be, and you do have to
be careful with the tilt because of the famed Venetian Blind
effect. At times on some records the subs would resonate, and
I had to tighten all the screws up in the drivers. My DAX power
supply failed and I have yet to find a replacement because of the
wierd +/- 15 volts (instead of 12V), so I replaced it with a
Dahlquist electronic crossover. Except for the 1 note resonance the
dual 8" subs did do a good job of keeping up with the Stages.
I would hesitate putting a larger sub driver on the Stages as
my Genesis 928 servo controlled sub would not keep up with the
Stage section. With all of this being said, the Stages produce
plenty of bass in most rooms and can be made to run full range
with no compromise is sound. They do take lots of current, I am
running Krell MD-300A monoblocks on the Stage sections and they
soak up the current. They need plenty of room (3 -4 feet to side
and back wall from the Stage section), and tilt is very critical.
They throw and immense sound stage (hence the name), and depending
on your feeding electronics and the toe-in the soundstage may be in front
or behind the speakers. In my initial setup the drummer's cymbals
on a Rare Earth live LP were less than a foot from my face!
Things to look for: Run a frequency sweep on the speakers to
see if they rattle or resonate. Inspect the tweeter ribbon
to see if it has ever been stuck to the front or rear mesh. It
will be wrinkled in that area and maybe still stuck. This
will indicate the speakers may have been over-driven. Also
check the DAX wall wart transformer for damage/overheating.
This is what cratered on my system.
And most of the reviews I saw in Stereophile were on the Stage.
They rated the mini-Grand in recommended components, but the
reviews were on the stages.

Prior to the availability of the subs the 'Stage' was recommended as a class 'B' rating. I believe it was Thomas Norton who wrote the original review. In his words the "midband was as natural as I've heard", I believe were his words.

The 'Stage' imho, does female vocals better than anything on the planet, including other Apogee models.

Please, take note. The midrange and up are so clean, you'll tend to play them louder than you realize. When you see the ribbon do the 'wave', then you need to back it down a little.

They don't run flat, and for that reason alone some folks don't like them, but they are the most fun I've ever heard.

BTW, highly addictive.

A word of caution. If you get the spkr. too far out into the room, they will boom. Too close to the wall they boom also, just like other speakers.

Good luck

Audioworld hosts a lively forum for Apogee lovers over the world.

http://audioworld.com/cgibin/sw/forumdisplay.cgi?action=topics&number=1&SUBMIT=Go

The Pass is wonderful. The 350 is more than you need for the panels/ribbons. Krell is too ss for the Stage. I used tubes on my Stage speakers. The usual set up for Minigrands is to biamp or triamp.