Magnepan 1.7 too bright, HELP

I use anticables with my 1.6QRs. They are not bright at all. I'm guessing it is the room. Treat the corners behind the speakers. It may also be the dennon.

There is a lot of good advice and good ideas here. The take home message is that most of what you have may not be the best match with the 1.7's.

I'm with Macdadtexas on the importance of good clean power. I use CAD 500 MB's with my Maggies. Unfortunately you are not going to spring 3-4K on an amp right now. You are trying to work on the cheap, so here is my hierarchy using mostly suggestions from the threads. Buy used to save money. Each one of these will help.
1) < $200 Deaden the corners, floor to ceiling. Glue Auralex panels to blue insulation pannels. You may be very surprised.
2) < $500 Promethius TVC volume control. I use a Promethius Ref 4 with my Maggies. You will want to watch the length of your IC's and use an amp with a reasonably high input impedence if possible.
3) < $700 I like the Eastern Electric DAC suggestion above. I've had Denon players with Maggies before and they were not a good match.
4) As Macdadtexas points out, you can do all of the above and still not completely fix the problem. But it sounds like you may need to wait a while before you can really get an amp that will do justice to the maggies. Just keep in mind that you are going to need to get the amp replaced at some point.

As much as I love Maggies, it continues to surprise me how they continue to nickle and dime their speakers. I know they want to hit price points, but good grief. It seems like they could be so much better with just a few extra bucks. Well, I'm glad they do what they do, but really. Most of us would not mind throwing another hundred bucks or so at good caps and decent jumpers. Of course, if the 1.7 is too good, who buys the 3.7. And if the 3.7 is too good, who buys the 20.7?