Broken hearted...magnepan and vandersteen

I had a pair of Maggie MG-IIs coupled up with a Vandersteen 2 sub-woof, got all of that stuff for <$1,000 It was a great match except it presented a pretty complicated load, i.e. 1.0-Ohm in some spots, so you need a Bedini or similar big hurky s/s amp to run it.

Audioman is right about true Maggie sound (several posts back).  About a year ago, I auditioned the 1.7's and while they were good, moving up to the 3.7i's with the terrific tweeter took the listening to a whole new level !  Some of the best treble response I've ever heard !  What I couldn't believe though is that the audio store had them connected to (IMHO) mid-fi equipment.  When I asked them to move them to hi-fi equipment, they reluctantly did but of course, what a difference !  Why an audio store wouldn't demo a great speaker with comparable equipment is beyond me !  

I have heard most of the Vandersteen speakers at both dealers and at shows and wasn’t that impressed. The Quatro’s, 5’s and 7’s sound very good but not for the money when comparing to other speakers. I’ve met Richard at a private dealer showing and he demoed a few pairs of his speakers up to the 5’s so they were setup properly and used quality components.

I’ve also listened to all the higher end Maggie’s including the 30.7’s at 1 of the tour stops, at friends houses with the 20.7’s and 3.x’s and wasn’t impressed. The best Maggie I have heard was the 20.1 at a dealer friend of mine, it could have been because of the Mcintosh source equipment.
I prefer the Revel’s, Ushers, Wilson’s, Raidho, Totem, Magico and a few others.

Richard Vandersteen has spent his whole professional life perfecting use of first-order crossovers to get exactly that unmistakeably musical voicing out of his designs. I had (still have/in storage) his flagship model from the 1980s, the Vandersteen 4s. I heard plenty of other speakers (a few in my home, many @dealers), but these were the ones that most approximated real, live music. Everything sounded so "right," so realistic.

Yes, first-order crossovers trade that last lick of ultimate dynamics & punch; and yes, they force drivers to work hard near their band-limits. But he chooses drivers & crossover points that work best with those cross-overs, and the man obviously knows what he's doing. 

IMO it's lunacy to form a grudge against this or that design based on some theoretical prejudice. 

I love mcreyn's comment .... I don't claim to be an expert on why a speaker is or isn't great, but you can't argue with success, that includes respect from the industry itself, not only music critics, which we all know, are like opinions ... you know the saying. So when I read comments that say someone, like Richard Vandersteen, is doing it "wrong", I have to wonder.

kenjit,

You should let Richard Vandersteen know that he has been doing it all wrong for the lasts 40 years and several hundred thousand pairs of speakers. Maybe you can show him how to design a proper cross-over while you are at it as well as what he is doing wrong in designing his drivers.