Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?

I'm perfectly happy with my MMGs and B&K EX-442 Sonata setup.

Other than making some custom stands that raise them about 5" off the floor (holding them vertical and stabilizing them), replacing the jumper with copper and replacing the fuse with silver tubing, they're stock. 

I toyed with getting them Gunned and had a pleasant exchange with Pete, but couldn't justify the cost considering the sound I'm getting out of them in stock form.  I feel no need to touch them at this point in time and am supremely happy with the sound:cost value aspect of these speakers.  They're amazing.

@hartf36

I was happy with my Maggie 1.7i, but thought they lacked something, clarity in midrange and highs.

Why would I not want any speaker I buy to sound better than it does, ever?

The interesting thing to try with them is to place them on top of your subs if you have them. Solves the spacing problem. You may also want to try raising them with the radiating panel equidistant from the floor and ceiling, that gives you very nice sound, much better than on the floor; it is sort of the embodiment of the "floor to ceiling line source" view of speaker design.

I will document the entire experiment from beginning to end.

So far I have them depantsed, which is appropriate for No Pants Day, and the the circuit diagramed, it's very simple.

I got GR Research's XO upgrade yesterday, it too is a first order with better components. But with that I'm really not buying parts, I bought Danny's knowledge and research. I am going to put those on a separate board for the time being.

I  may buy top of the line components, at least Clarity Caps and Goertz flat wire inductors to see how those would work, and go up an order on the XOver depending on how GR's work. I'll know buy this weekend, and I'll keep you posted.

This is a game of trade-offs. Every product has them. It’s really pretty foolish to condemn one person’s choices because they don’t match yours. The car analogies are appropriate. You can spend $ or $$$$$, and someone will still declare a part to be crap and want to rip it out in favor of their gold-plated flux capacitor. People who have a history of competence generally have good reasons for doing things. The best way to find out why is to ask. You might learn something. In the event you don’t agree, you have a multitude of options in the market. 

@jfuguay


I asked and did not get a reasonable reply. 

Because the market won’t bear the cost is absurd in a hobby where people spend so much money. It is totally counter-intuitive.

As I said, and upgraded XOver for the 1.7i, I have yet to look up the prices of all of the stock components, would add about $30 total for the pair, cost to the manufacturer. The markup in this hobby is enormous, and the reality of that if extrapolated over the cost to the consumer is in the neighborhood of $1k retail, on the Maggie’s if you follow what the cost of the original parts is.

If your not the kind of person that likes to take things apart and tinker with them, you will never see the difference, only hear it.

When I took my R300’s apart I was blown away by the quality of these not top of the line KEF’s, custom everything and of excellent quality. So it is not a stretch to expect similar quality of components in like costing products. 

I would still like someone to explain to me why a company will not offer the consumer better quality based on the the manufactures terms of costing the parts forward.

But I will say at the end of my experiments whether the quality of the upgrades warrant the cost in my opinion, and I’ll back that up with audio samples. And if the difference is not noticeable on my iPad with under $100 headphones, I will say that I am wrong, that I was fooled by snake oil claims.