Optimal Placement for Magnepan 3.6?

I was just talking about this with a support person at Magneplanar. His comments were that even the 20.1's would work "fine" in a room like mine -- 13' wide wall shooting across the top crossbar in a 'T' shaped basement. The thing to keep in mind is that the farther apart the ribbons are, the bigger the sound stage. Distance from the ceiling isn't an issue with a line-source (very little vertical dispersion), but as others have mentioned, there is quite a bit of horizontal dispersion. The trick, then, is room treatments -- pay special attention to side wall reflections and you should be okay with a "smaller" room. Good luck!

My 3.6s are in a larger room that is irregularly shaped (max width about 18' by 25' long). But my Maggies are set up on the short wall 4 feet from the front wall in the near field (8 feet from the listening chair about 6 feet apart). I really had to work hard to get the 3.6s to disappear. It was quite a long journey (5 years so far), experimenting with different amplifiers, different preamps, surround processors, tweeters on the inside or outside, use of a resistor to pad the tweeter, adding subwoofers, changing crossovers, etc. Biggest milestone in getting the Maggies to disappear was changing to a twin Vandersteen subwoofer setup with the Model 5 balanced high pass crossover to the Theta Dreadnaught II. I might add that getting a transparent disappearing act in the same room was much easier with the Maggie 1.6 which I lived with for 4 years prior to the 3.6s.

fwiw some people prefer the 1.6 to the 3.6 because the QR blends to the woofer better than the ribbon on the 3.6

When I had the 1.6 I felt the tonal balance was nearly perfect

Also when I had the 1.6 I never felt the need for a sub. Set up correctly they go down to the 30s. I am not sure you could achieve that response with your arrangement however...

I know you want this thread to be about the 3.6 but I feel some of this info is pertinent...

You may be better off with 1.6s or 12s. You can make them work into a smaller space. Gotta have the 3.6? Larger spaces are better.

Look up Peter Gunn Magnepan.
He does a rock solid conversion w/real artistic wood frames, getting rid of the MDF and external crossover.

not affiliated in any way. just a fan

>>>Has anyone had luck with this speaker (the 3.6) in a room as small as mine?<<<

I had to put my 3.6's in a 12x14 room (used as home office) when we bought our newest house. I had Apogees and Maggies at the same time and the Apogees got the big room. The Maggies sounded fine in the "new" small room but not as good as in the bigger room. I eventually sold the Apogees and the Maggies got the big room and all was well.

But here's the deal. I then tried to find a set of more reasonably sized speakers to go into the smaller room. Compared to the Maggies even B&W 802's look small so I tried out some floor standers and stand mounts, some up to $8000, but they all sounded broken compared to the Maggies in that room. I dubbed it "the room from hell" because so many speakers sounded good at the dealers but when they went in there, not so much. The blessing in disguise for me was that what finally worked in there were SET's driving single drivers. It had it's own charm and I still had the Maggies in the big room.

What I take from that is: It might not be the right or best sized room for them but they sounded better than a great many others at almost twice the Maggies price. Like you said, "the price-to-transparency factor is about as good as it gets."

What about your future? Do you see moving to a place that has a bigger room? Buy now/enjoy now/enyoy even more later.

If you have a Good amp you will get plenty of Bass. The cardas method works. You will need a room at least 14 x 18 to start to get the most out of them. If not don't bother

If this is the consensus of experienced Maggie 3.6 users, then I do not have enough room. My room is 13x17 and I place the speakers on the long wall - which means they can only be placed 3 feet from the rear wall (wall behind the speakers), with the listening position at nine feet from the speakers. This method allows for plenty of room away from the side walls and works pretty good for dynamic speakers.

Has anyone had luck with this speaker (the 3.6) in a room as small as mine? I hate the aesthetics of these monolithic panels, but the “price-to-transparency” factor is about as good as it gets. I suppose I’ll need to rethink my game plane.

If you have a Good amp you will get plenty of Bass. The cardas method works. You will need a room at least 14 x 18 to start to get the most out of them. If not don't bother

I owned them and ran them with a PASS X250 in a 14 x 24 room and they were about 6' from the front wall and 2.5 feet from side walls tweeters on the inside was best for me.

Also I had mye stands and bi-wired them. If I would have kept them I would have saved for the PASS 600 amps

Best of luck, they are great deal when bought used for $3K or less

I moved on to dynamic speakers for the time being, mainly because of aesthetics. I could not stand the monolith look

regards and good luck

What is your room size?

I found with my Maggie 1.6 that the Cardas method worked well and the rule of thirds better but was too intrusive.

You can go to the Cardas website to see their formula for speaker placement

on a 15 x 21 room the rule of thirds is: speakers 5 feet apart (15 divided by 3 =5) and 7 feet out in the room (21 divided by 3 = 7)

good luck

A big room is nice. Maggies work well if placed well out in the room. 12 feet from the back wall is not too much, 4 or 5 feet from the side walls. Toe in speakers and find the sweet spot. Bass is OK with the 3.6 but a good sub system will really perk them up. My brother uses Infinity bass towers with good results. Maggies are a lot of work but worth it.

Thanx, Russ

P.S. Do you have the power to drive Maggies? You'll need a few hundred watts into a difficult load unless you play softly.