Followup-Magnepan 1.7s in a 10x13' dedicated room?

I also think it is extremely important with Maggie based systems to address RFI/EMI issues in the entire system. It is my belief that Maggies somehow reveal the high frequency grunge caused by these issues to a greater extent than most other speakers, resulting in high frequency related listener fatigue. This can, I think, sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing. If something is wrong in the high frequencies, you are going to hear it.

One probably does need to treat the room for Magneplanar speakers but it's for the wrong reasons - the reason that these speakers appear to have an "overly aggressive top end--too bright" & "The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing" is that, basically, Magneplanar speakers are not time-coherent speakers.
This is very clear from the measurements Stereophile has published for the MG3.6/R - see Fig 6: step response:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/magnepan-magneplanar-mg36r-loudspeaker-measurements-part-2
and for the MG1.6/QR - see Fig 5: step response. Here even the published text clearly states the speaker is not time-coherent:
http://integracoustics.com/MUG/MUG/reviews/stereophile_mg16qr.htm

Non time-coherent speakers have the (very) bad habit of letting the listener hear the high frequencies before the mids & the mids before the bass. As a result the sonics are tipped towards the high frequencies & you get these sort of comments: "sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing".
Making Magneplanar speakers time-coherent would resolve the issue but this has to be done at the design/factory level & not in the listener's room after the fact they are purchased by the user.

I stated this in your other thread concerning the Magnepans. When I tried the MG12s, I could not tame the aggressive treble energy. Resistors helped but not enough.

Bombawalla, thanks for sharing this info. I had not heard this idea, and I must admit it makes perfect sense and is probably a contributing complication. I have used Mye stands with both the 1.6s and 3.7s, and have found that the ability to tilt the panels in order to align the center point (vertically) with a perpendicular to the listeners ear when seated, substantially improves the overall performance. What this does is achieve the best possible time alignment of each panel or ribbon with respect to itself, if you catch my meaning. In other words, not only are the speakers not time aligned in the conventional sense, but because the panels and ribbons are so tall, the arrival time to the listener's ear from each individual panel is smeared more than would be the case were the sound to emit from a single point.

On the other hand, there are many non time aligned speakers that are not perceived as bright, just as I suspect one can find time aligned speakers that are perceived as bright.

If there were a perfect speaker design, everyone would be using it and life would be much simpler. Maggies, like any other speaker, have their strengths and weaknesses. I used them exclusively from about 1991 to 2014 for a reason. Up until April of this year, I could not find a single dynamic speaker under 16K that I thought I could live with. I picked up a pair of (time aligned, it turns out) Coincident Triumph extreme IIs, and I have just fallen in love with these little monitors. As expected for monitors, they don't do everything, but for what they do, they do as well or better than speakers I have heard costing much more. It would seem that at long last, I have found the speaker that could induce me to move on from Maggies and not look back.

I am still a fan of Maggies, because they can do wonderful things when implemented properly. But, for me, at long last, it is now time for something different.

I'd like to emphasize that "some" recordings were a "little" bright, but far from unlistenable. I think it was more the recording than the speakers. These speakers just show you what's in the recordings more than I'm used to. If they didn't, genuinely good recordings wouldn't sound as good as they can through these speakers.

I put the Athena LS500bs back into the system last night and that actually showed in stark contrast what I was hearing with the MG12s. Or rather what I was no longer hearing with them gone. The last day that I had them I had just received a new CD by Keiko Matsui named Soul's Quest. I had not listened to this disc through my speakers. Track six on this CD, "Antarctica--A Call To Action" has some really dynamic percussive transients that just blew me away exclaiming WOW by the end of it. Literally raised goose bumps on my arms. I could feel the drummers sticks hitting his snare drum and toms. I could hear and feel his foot pedal mallet hitting the bass drum skin, not just the boom of it. I was actually afraid the speakers might hurt themselves. So now that the speakers are gone I go to listen to this really great recording again through my Athenas and when I get to track six, I'm left wondering if I'm remembering the track number correctly. It literally sounded like a different song. The drums were recessed way in the background with no impact and puny, as if the recording engineer intended for them to barely be heard. There was actually more low frequency energy from the bass drum but none of the transient speed and slam. It's as if the speaker box and damping inside are just soaking up all the energy, even though they are five db more sensitive. If I hadn't just learned that the MG12s are soon to be upgraded to .7 with the full QR drivers I'd put an order in right now. It's going to be hard to wait, but I think I'll just continue accumulating funds until they are released and if it takes more than a couple of months I'll just get the 1.7s.

07-23-14: Brownsfan
Bombawalla, thanks for sharing this info. I had not heard this idea, and I must admit it makes perfect sense....

Brownsfan, yes, what I'm finding out is that a lot of people are quite unaware (& perhaps even ignorant) about loudspeakers needing to be time-coherent. Time-coherence in loudspeakers ensure non-fatiguing sonics & a very realistic & natural playback of the music.
Time-alignment is just one small aspect of time-coherence in loudspeaker design. Time alignment merely aligns the acoustical centers of the drivers such that the sound from each driver reaches your ear at the same time but does not deal with the phase of the various frequencies that comprise a music signal. So, a time-aligned speaker can distort the phase of the music signal & destroy one's listening pleasure.
You get a time-coherent loudspeaker by using an acoustically insert cabinet, time aligning the drivers & ensuring that the phase of the various frequencies that comprise a music signal is not touched.
We are having a long discussion on this topic right now in the thread "Sloped Baffle".

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?cspkr&1403209611&&&/Sloped-baffle

It's got some 195 posts! If you start at the beginning of this thread, I have provided 3 links to prev threads on Audiogon discussing time-coherence in loudspeakers. Plus, as you go thru the thread concentrate on posts by "Royj" - Roy Johnson is the owner/designer of Green Mountain Audio in Colorado Springs & he designs only time-coherent loudspeakers. In this thread he answers questions from other members & clarifies the concept of time-coherence & why it's so important.
There are a few loudspeaker manufacturers that build time-coherent speakers & I think that these people are the smarter ones.....