Is my room OK for Magneplanar 3.6's

That's 3 votes for MMG.

Ld, you are a former timpani owner, eh? Well, you should know you've got your work cut out for you getting large panels into your listening space.

I'd set one panel on side of the listening space. Kind of like HUGE open air headphones. You won't believe what you hear. Detail? yep. Impact at even lower levels? for sure.

Listen in the extreme near-field and you can get away with it....maybe.

Maplegrovemusic,

The general rule of thumb is a minimum of 3' behind the speakers, a minimum of 2' on either side. But 5' is better behind and they keep getting better up to 15'! They really like to breathe.

To put this in perspective, you want the tweeters on an equilateral triangle with you, or a bit less, it will vary with room and preference. And you don't want to be too close to the large ones, because a) it will boost the bass and b) you'll start to hear the angular separation between the woofer, mid, and tweeter.

Another thing you have to consider is that the big ones can make a small room inconvenient and claustrophobic.

Unfortunately, there are no precise guidelines. I think it helps if you can equalize the bass, as the speakers grow large with respect to the room the room starts to act like a sealed enclosure and the bass output goes up. Which can be good or bad depending, but in any case can be tamed with EQ.

What are the dimensions of your room josh358 ? Do you own the 3.6's ? My room is 14' x 22' 8' ceilings. would anyone say this is the right size room for 3.6's? my goal is to upgrade this summer from 1.6 to 3.6 .

I wish! I own a pair of Tympani 1-D's but my new listening room is only 13' x 14', so I can't fit them and I'm temporary using a pair of MMG's that I bought for my home office. I still haven't figured out what I'm going to do -- I'm thinking I may be able to shoehorn in a pair of 1.7's. Also eager to check out the Mini Maggies if they ever show up at stores, some people at the show were saying they sounded as good as the 20.1's.

On the other hand, I'm thinking you could probably squeeze a pair of 3.x's into your room. They'd be happier with more space of course but tat doesn't mean they won't sound good, I ran my 1-D's for years in a room that was too small and there were some compromises as a result but they were still fairly spectacular.

The two most important things in a system, for me anyway, is selecting good performing speaker that I like the sounds of AND that can integrate in to the room very well. If they can't integrate in to the room well, can't be placed in their optimal position, then that's too significant a negative. Speaker placement in a room is that makes are breaks a system. As does good acoustics and treatment. Everything else, electronics, AC power, cables etc is secondary. If you're getting a lot of feedback that says these speakers won't work in this room, you should abandon the idea and find a different speaker.