2. speakers
  3. 1034865870

Why do Maggies need a lot of power?

It has been genearally accepted that Maggies (i.e. 1.6s) needs a lot of power. Why?

Mathematically, any 86dB speaker should need only 64W of power to reach optimum listening level (104 dB). Why it's not the case for Maggies? One may say that b/c it has only 4 ohm, but there are tons of low sensibility 4 ohm speakers in the market and they do not seem to have any problems like Maggies. Again, one may say that they need current. I think most of the amp is cappable of 20 Amp and wonder if that 's still not enough? If so how much current are we talking about?

I have seen a few recommendation and review of low power amp to drive maggies (i.e. Cary Rocket amp (40W), or Bel 1001 (50W) and a few more class A amp with range around 50W) sucessfully.

For the one who recommend the high power amp (>200W), how lound do you listen to them? I can't imagine myself sitting next to the speakers that have 200W of power fed into them. It muust be awfully loud to me. On the other hand are we talking about reserve power (head room) that Maggie may need at a cirtain time, not the entire period?

Has anyone really been happy with the low power amp with Maggies, either SS or Tube?

Thanks a lot for the thoughts,

Ake
ake
blw
147 posts
 
I dunno about this "needs a lot of power" thing. I seriously auditioned Magnepan 3.6s in this last round of speakers. They were poewred by a Conrad Johnson MV55 power amp and while the room was bright it was also huge (20,000 cubic feet, or around that). They played plenty loud enough for me, and they sounded excellent, too. The MV55 delivers 50-60 wpc, so it is NOT one of the earth-shattering ones.

I really ended up not going with them only because the center channels were terrible, and also that the setup (CJ LS16 + MV55 + 3.6s) is also VERY unforgiving of poor recordings, of which I have plenty. But power consumption wasn't one of the issues at all.
tireguy
1,964 posts
 
I can confirm the fact that 3.6's need POWER to come to life. I tried a few amps of lower power before stepping up to a 450 watt per channel high current amp and now I have much better low level dynamics and much quicker lower bass, before the bass was barely noticeable now it actually feels like it is moving some air. I was skeptic when I bought these things and I tried using my 60 watt per channel tube amp and thought it sounded good till I tried more power and then I realized the bass and dynamics these speakers are capable of- they will produce good sound with vitrually any power but don't come to life till they get LOADS of power and current to spare. It would only make sense to assume that the 1.6's don't need as much power as the 3.6's after all they are a little smaller but I wouldn't try anything under 200 watts into 4 ohms and I wouldn't hesitate to try a lot more power. I am not a technical person I just know what works from my experience with these speakers, so I won't even try to explain why, I'll let the much smarter people before me due the splainin'
blw
147 posts
 
Hmm... one of my issues with those maggies was the obviously lacking lower bass. It didn't really bother me because I knew that if I bought them they 'd have to double duty in HT, where I'd have a sub anyway. But for some reason I didn't figure in that the amp might not be supplying the juice, and of course with a 60wpc amp that's quite possible...
sean
6,231 posts
 
I think that a lot of what people mean by speakers "opening up" when being fed by a measurably bigger amp is actually related to the lack of dynamic compression that the bigger amp doesn't have to deal with. Not only does the sound improve in terms of spl capacity, it sounds far more liquid, natural and suffers from far less grain and grit. Loud actually becomes LOUD, yet it does not sound as loud because the amp is not "straining" ( rhymes with "graining" ). You can listen louder AND suffer less fatigue.

This is also one of the reasons that active multi-amping can sound so much better i.e. the strain has been taken off of one amp and divided amongst two, three, four, etc.... The system picks up more dynamic headroom and each amp benefits from less strain and a smaller amount of reactance to deal with in a limited bandwidth. Sean
>
zaikesman
3,017 posts
 
Blw, that was undoubtedly the case. As an MV-55 (45wpc, BTW) owner, I can assure you that this amp is not up to driving Maggies (which I used to sell retail) to realistic levels in large rooms and cannot pump out the bass current the speakers demand (although a stack of Krells driving a wall of Maggies would probably sound bass-shy in the room you describe!). In fact, my guess is that if the sytem seemed over-bright on poor recordings, it was likely due to the mis-match with the amplifier. If one were to go C-J tubes with that set-up, I think you'd be talking Premier Eights or nothing at all.
More to discover