Magnepan 1.7

It has been a week since adding the Magnepans to my main system.

My initial impressions are as follows: It takes a day to get used to their size. Even though I was aware of their height/width, they look far smaller in the dealer's showroom.

I had to move them over four feet from the rear wall mainly to deal with extreme boominess in the mid-bass. I have pretty much run out of real estate to deal with positioning them out any further. Adding a subwoofer helped cancel out most of the mid-bass problem.

The speakers present a huge sound stage. More details in recordings are heard. These speakers in this system and room, etc make my secondary audio system in my family room sound small in comparison. Part of this may be due to the fact that my family room is far more damped/deadened than my living room. My living room is more lively/reverberant.

I listen to mainly jazz in all forms, contemporary gospel choirs, some rock and classical. I was listening to a choir recorded live and I ended up with the same feeling you get as if actually present at the event. Very moving.

My only real gripe with these speakers are with the attention to detail during the manufacturing process. The craftsmanship/workmanship on these are not done with precision and exactness.

One other issue concerning powering these speakers: After reading the post here on Agon I wondered if my amp would be sufficient. It is more than sufficient and the sound is spectacular. Of course there are always better products but I see no need to purchase another amp. The only reason for me to purchase another amp for these speakers would be for the sake of curiosity only.

personally i like the older maggies

This past weekend, I just tried some 96 kHz / 24 bit downloads from HD Tracks.com and I was blown away. The detail, depth and lack of harshness is unbelievable. You can easily hear the limitations of CDs when you switch back from the high res files. You also get a sense of unlimited dynamic range with an almost analog sound. WOW!

This is what I have always enjoyed about owning Magnepan loudspeakers. Everytime you improve the front end, whether it be the amp, preamp, DAC or, in this case, digital quality, you can easily hear the improvements through the Magnepans. The 1.7s just keep sounding better and better.

I use a Netgear 9150 linked to the Wyred 4 Sound DAC1 via Xindak cable. The clarity of the high res files will spoil you for anything else. I am going broke downloading new albums!

Just listened to the Magnepan 1.7 with $20,000 of Macintosh tubes in a high end sound room and I was very disappointed. I listen mostly to folk and piano and they did not grab me. I definitely would not buy them if I listened to hard rock. I previously owned Apoggee Stages and ET 111 and can say those speakers brought me into the music. I did ask if they had been broken in and the salesman said they were.People saying you would need to spend many more thousand for a box speaker to compete, seem to be lying. My epos m12 with ASL 300b's were a lot more involving(better midrange and soundstage). It also seemed to me that they were eating up the Mcintosh mc275 amps.

>It also seemed to me that they were eating up the Mcintosh mc275 amps.

The speakers were woefully underpowered. Maggies will play loud, but they're only 83 dB efficient. They also rarely sound their best in a dealer showroom, since as I'm sure you know having owned the Apogees and Eminents, they require careful placement and have different acoustical requirements than dynamic speakers. That's not to say that they're the speaker for you -- I haven't heard them yet myself -- but to point out that the people who have praised their bang for the buck probably aren't lying! Though I have heard some complaints from people who say they don't like them as much as the 1.6's.