The discrepancy you heard between what the Maggies are doing in the bass region, and what the subs is doing, is primarily an acoustic room-interaction issue.
A single monopole subwoofer will produce a peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position, and these peaks and dips will be far enough apart that they will be audible even if you don't consciously identify them. Now you can move the sub or move the listening position and that will shift and re-arrange the peak-and-dip pattern, but will not eliminate it. You can equalize it and improve the smoothness over a small listening area, but that will likely make it worse elsewhere because the inherent peak-and-dip pattern will be very different in other locations, so instead of cutting peaks and boosting dips you'll be boosting peaks and cutting dips.
Instead, suppose we have two monopole subs, preferably places fairly far apart, and non-symmetrically. Each will produce a unique peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position. The sum of these two dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be smoother than either one alone, and because of the time it takes for the ear to register low frequency waveforms the two will be heard as one even if the path lengths to the listening position are somewhat different.
Now the output of a dipole is smoother than that of a monopole because a single dipole can be thought of as two monopoles with one of them displaced 180 degrees in phase rather than physically displaced in space.
My suggestion for achieving similar in-room bass smoothness to a pair of dipoles is to use four small monopole subs, scattered asymmetrically around the room. The result is significantly smoother bass not only in the sweet spot, but throughout the room. This will have in-room smoothness comparable to the bass you get from the dipoles, but with the ability to pressurize the room ("slam") that dipoles inherently don't have. Credit to Earl Geddes for the asymmetrical multisub concept.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer
A single monopole subwoofer will produce a peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position, and these peaks and dips will be far enough apart that they will be audible even if you don't consciously identify them. Now you can move the sub or move the listening position and that will shift and re-arrange the peak-and-dip pattern, but will not eliminate it. You can equalize it and improve the smoothness over a small listening area, but that will likely make it worse elsewhere because the inherent peak-and-dip pattern will be very different in other locations, so instead of cutting peaks and boosting dips you'll be boosting peaks and cutting dips.
Instead, suppose we have two monopole subs, preferably places fairly far apart, and non-symmetrically. Each will produce a unique peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position. The sum of these two dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns will be smoother than either one alone, and because of the time it takes for the ear to register low frequency waveforms the two will be heard as one even if the path lengths to the listening position are somewhat different.
Now the output of a dipole is smoother than that of a monopole because a single dipole can be thought of as two monopoles with one of them displaced 180 degrees in phase rather than physically displaced in space.
My suggestion for achieving similar in-room bass smoothness to a pair of dipoles is to use four small monopole subs, scattered asymmetrically around the room. The result is significantly smoother bass not only in the sweet spot, but throughout the room. This will have in-room smoothness comparable to the bass you get from the dipoles, but with the ability to pressurize the room ("slam") that dipoles inherently don't have. Credit to Earl Geddes for the asymmetrical multisub concept.
Duke
dealer/manufacturer