What should I upgrade?

OK, reading through threads like this I always like to check out the systems of the respondents to see if they own, or have owned, the specific gear you are asking questions about.

Here are some of my observations from someone who has owned Maggies for years (and sadly others, but I always come back to the Maggies) and used many different amps and subs with them. Here we go:

1) get a new amp first. You won't know what else you need until you find out what the Maggies can do with a well matched amp. Currently you are just a wee bit under powered. Bel Canto amps sound great with 1.6qr's. I had the BelCanto Evo4 bridged and it was excellent. The best amp I ever used with my 1.6qr's was the Innersound ESL amp. It was absolutely stellar, and woke up the the whole speaker, bass response from my Velodyne DD15 set up program was measured consistantly (in a room about your size with the speakers 4 ft from the wall) at 40hrz. The next I would suggest would be the BelCanto Ref1000 MB that I suggested at the beginning of the thread.

2) Only after you have done that, you may want to try a sub, but a very, very fast sub. Also, it depends on the type of connections you want to make. The JL Audio is a great sub, but you will have to split the outputs of your DacIII to get a line level signal to them, and I think they are pretty expensive. There are other very good subs you can get that you can run the speaker level connection to, that integrate very well, for much less: Velodyne DD series, Rel B series (you can run these for both HT through low level and for stereo through speaker level at the same time, very cool, oh yeah, and sound GREAT), Vandersteen 2wq (great match) are all excellent choices as well.

3) Your 4vs is an excellent cable, especailly since it's copper, and helps mellow out any potential brightness. You could move up to the 8tc for relatively little money, or you could add another set of 4vs and use one strand for each connection. That could be an even better idea.

Good luck, your building an excellent system.

after trying just about every brand of power cables, i'm using the biggest gauge cables for most things now. to me, it seems i get the best sound out of just unconstricting the power supply as much as possible. mostly ps audio 6 and 8 gauge. love my tg audio for less power hungry stuff, too.

and i agree with rich above in general, but i have seen great results in improving bass with power cables on components, which is why i suggested it (though i have nooooo idea why this is). you can't make a component better, but the idea is to at least get what you can out of everything and for what it's worth, i've never NOT seen an improvement in a component with upgraded power cords. hell, i've actually had well shielded power cables reduce hum from things like cable boxes and dvd players. and cables don't need to be expensive to be good at all, my $50 "my audio cables" power cord sounds as good on many things as my $750 cords, better on some things.

so my best idea over all for your system (that is, if i were spending the cash) would be to try a couple of mac cables on your stuff and then get (on demo, if possible) two smaller-but-stereo subs to fill out the sound. i love the sound of maggie 1.6's and i believe that getting more powerful amps wouldn't be as cost-effective as getting two (or one, even) subs to fill out the sound, but again, i've not owned them.

i'd still love for someone to comment on larger gauge speaker cables with the maggies.

Devon -- Some fundamental questions which I don't think have been addressed so far:

1)How far is your usual listening position from the speakers?
2)How far are the speakers from the wall behind them?
3)How far apart are the speakers?
4)What is the distance from each speaker to the nearest sidewall?

Regards,
-- Al

Al,

1. 8-12 ft.
2. 3-5 ft.
3. 5-6 ft.
4. 4-5 ft.

Thanks!

PS. The input has been awesome! Sure is nice to have such an informed helpful community to rely on.

Hi Devon,

As we've seen, a case can be made for many different approaches. But here is my take, and I'll qualify it by saying that my experience with Maggies is fairly limited (several listening sessions at a friend's house, to one of the older, larger Maggies driven by Audio Research tube electronics, and integrated fairly successfully with a Sunfire subwoofer).

Your 8 to 12 foot listening distance leaves me much less inclined to recommend higher amplifier power than I was initially (based initially on the size of the room and the relative inefficiency of the speakers). And consider too that the upgrade you were initially asking about, from 300W to 500W, is only an increase of a little over 2db. I think that the clincher (in terms of not upgrading the amplifier power, at least for now) would be if you are satisfied with the volume you can achieve in the mid-range frequencies.

I think that a significant contributor to the bass shortcomings you are sensing is likely to be the 3 to 5 foot distance to the wall behind the speakers. That will result in a partial cancellation of bass frequencies centered in the area of roughly 70Hz. (The approximate formula is 86Hz divided by the distance to the wall in meters, and the effect is known as "1/4 wave cancellation"). That occurs because the reflection of the sounds at and around that frequency, that are radiated towards that wall by the speakers, will re-arrive at the speakers approximately 180 degrees out of phase (i.e., inverted) with respect to the original wavelaunch, and will therefore subtract from the original wavelaunch at and around that frequency.

Fixing problems in the deep bass region via room treatments is problematical at best, because the long wavelength of those frequencies makes them difficult to absorb. Moving the speakers further from that wall, if possible, would certainly help though, by lowering the frequencies which would be affected. So I would suggest trying that first, if it is practical to do so. Doubling the distance would get most of the affected frequencies below the speaker's 3db bandwidth point, which I feel pretty certain would produce a significant improvement.

If it is not practical to do so, or if doing so does not result in adequate improvement, considering that you undoubtedly have significant attenuation centered around 70Hz due to room effects, and considering that the speakers themselves are specified to be down as much as 3db at 40Hz, my strong instinct would be to add a subwoofer (or two). I would consider things like optimizing cable selection to fall within the realm of fine tuning the system, but I think that the issues I've mentioned are more fundamental and need to be dealt with first.

Regards,
-- Al