Why no reviews of the Magnepan 3.7 in Stereophile

Dear Halcro, The logic of your statement imply that you
can rely on Fremers opininons. We all, I think, respect JA
because of his intergrity. As if we are suprised that such
a character quality exist among HI-FI reviewers. Some time ago I had 4 (HI-FI) Magazine subscriptions but only one at present. This is a sad state of affairs for those magazines in my opinion. 'In the other side', as Raul is used to say,
this state of affairs may explain the flourish of our Forums.

Regards,

Dear Nandric,
When it comes to descriptions of the sound pertaining to various components, I always rely on Fremer above JA simply because he seems to 'hear' the way I do as he has steadfastly stuck to the supremacy of vinyl through the decades of contempt in the face of vinyl's demise?

What is better marketing - a good subjective review with a couple of questionable artifacts in measurements, or no review at all?"

James63 responds

"No review at all, I have passed on a few auditions because of bad measurements. Measurements are not everything, not by a long shot but if you listen to enough speakers and also analyze their measurements you can correlate the two with what you like and do not like."

Back to the question by the op. It seems that James63 sees it like I see it. Why risk a review whereby the measurements are going to reflect issues in the design regardless of subjective impressions? If Magenapan is selling speakers faster than they can make them there really is no reason for them to be subjected to measurements that might reveal issues. This might certainly dissuade some, maybe many, from even considering purchase. What could possibly be gained by Magenapan vs what could be lost? minimize risk. This aside from the obvious fact that audition is mandatory before any purchase.

Kal's response seems completely plausible to me as the REAL reason.

There is an article by the famous American phylosopher
Quine entitled 'On what there is'. The question is about
inpenetrable phylosphical issue of 'ontology'. But to know
'what there is' in our hobby we need at least some HI-FI
Magazine. Or so I thought. To know what to check or listen
to we need the names of the products and the names of the manufacturers. This to me is of more importance than the opinion of whatever reviewer. The same apply for me for the forums. If, for example, Halcro never mentioned AT 7V
how should I know what to look for? But in casu even the name was not sufficient. I needed the address of some dealer also. I am glad to have asked for.

Regards,

Tmsorosk, the reviews of the 3.7 that I've seen imply that it has superb rather than poor dispersion, better than the 3.6. The narrow ribbon tweeter inherently has almost perfect dispersion characteristics. I'm guessing that Magnepan improved the dispersion of the midrange using techniques similar to those they used on to improve the dispersion of the quasi ribbon tweeter on the 1.7's. And they don't want to let that technological cat out of the bag. But whatever the reason, I don't have any reason to disbelieve their explanation. Bass extension is presumably going to be similar to that of the 3.6's, and everybody knows that they don't go particularly deep, besides which the subjective reviews have all pointed out the limitations in bass response. So I don't see any reason to hide that; bass slam and extension are one area in which dynamic woofers have a distinct advantage over planar dipoles. That being said, near field measurements of dipoles tend to exaggerate the bass response, sometimes grotesquely. They don't have much of a bearing on what you actually hear in your room.