Magnepan, Best midrange?

At this price and whatever the model you consider (1.7i, 3.7i or 20.7...), there are no better loudspeakers on the market in each category for reproducing Vocals and acoustic instruments such as guitars.
Timbres and soundstage are just incredible.
You need an amp with current to provide dynamic... but the Maggies will  take it all.
A few tubes in the chain of components to add warmth.
Two good subwoofers to take care of the bass if you go for the 1.7i and the 3.7i (though these ones will also do the job with no subs).
No special need of sub with the 20.7s... but it could help.
You can play them loud during hours without feeling any fatigue.
Music and emotion will surround you.
Listen to Joe Cocker's "You are so beautiful" or George Michael's "As" or Stacey Kent's "What a wonderful world" with the Maggies and you'll get right away what I am trying to say.


 

@bdp24 , you were humming with the Tympanies but lost it with the ET LFT 8B. It has the same problem as Doug's Aspen Acoustic's speakers just lower down. Have you listened to the 20.7's ? IMHO I think they are Maggi's best speaker ever. I just wish they had made them 8 feet tall. As an aside the pipe for a 16 Hz tone would be around 30 feet long.

I think a lot of the point was lost throughout most of this thread. The OP was originally referring to the quality of midrange in the little, less than $1K, Maggie LRS and we end up talking about $8K - $25K speakers. In my opinion, for less than a thousand dollars, when it comes to incredible midrange, a large realistic stage, great imaging and impeccable detail there isn't anything under 2K that comes anywhere close.

As far as bass and the perceived amount of power that it takes to drive the LRS - Hogwash. They will do mid base down to 100 Hz very well, with a moderate amount of power, unless you're trying to drive them to 110db. For bass below 100 Hz, when set up properly, any decent sub will integrate very well. As frequencies fall below 100 Hz they become non directional and are anything but quick and punchy - more like deep and throby and integration is way less of a problem than made out.

I have the Maggie 1.7s and drive them very nicely with a 100W Rogue integrated tube amp. Most of my listening is at less than 80db so lack of power is no problem. Augmented with an ADS sub with the filter set at 60Hz and they sound incredible........Jim

Oh, I see, this is supposed to be the Maggie Fanboy Club Thread!  "At this price...No better speakers on the market..." What nonsense! That's only IF you think the character of the sound is perfect with a panel. We're supposed to fawn over the little Maggie and pretend it's all that, as though nothing else comes close in midrange. Please, give me a break. A fine bookshelf dynamic speaker can be every bit as enthralling. Magnetic planar is one expression of speaker, with plenty of shortcomings. And that from a guy who owned the 1.6QR and the MMG, and uses the MGMW o the walls of the listening room for HT purposes.

Of course this thread was about midrange; I didn't realize it was to promote cheap Maggies as though they're the end all, be all in inexpensive speakers. Forgive me for mentioning midrange in better speakers - and better technologies/genres such as the DLT of the Aspen Acoustics Lagrange L1. 

Note well, community, the panels have problems of their own, and the character of the midrange is typically, shall we say, flat? Yeah, flat, along with the rest of the presentation. Dynamically flaccid. You will NOT get away from that; anyone who actually does comparisons to horn and better dynamic speakers hear it. We have defenders like mijostyn who are so beholden to panel sound that they will try to tell owners such as myself what the Lagrange L1 speaker sounds like when they have never heard it. He heard one hack system with an add on ribbon that seemingly was not integrated well, and he thinks he knows the genre. Wrong. 

Great, wonderful, the little Maggies have inordinately good midrange in the mind of some for the money. I can concur with that. There are also speakers that have midrange that makes the little Maggies sound pathetic in all respects, midrange, too. Let's see, the title of the thread was, Magnepan, Best Midrange? I addressed that, and the answer is a resounding NO, we can't discuss that! Magnetic planar and ESL is one type of midrange/presentation with its own issues. Horror, we can't have that conclusion, can we! Summon the dipole die hard fans! Rally the troops to do battle to preserve the notion that Maggies and Sound Lab speakers are unassailable! 

It's a situation like the old Quad speakers. We're talking a seriously compromised sound quality compared to contemporary speakers. Really poor. The focus on them is the midrange pretty much because that's all they can do. That they fail at many other things is disregarded; they are given the same kind of pass as the magnetic planar technology in small builds. They are simply not all that when put on the spectrum of all speaker performance. If that offends some, so be it. 

The irony of all this is that the OP has a track record of inordinate obsession with his favored genre of speaker. He also obsesses about FR. He remembered panel speakers, then in a pirouette decided that was the Great Solution to his disdain of bass, where midrange is the only big deal. He was going to inform the world about Maggies! He was going to put the speaker brand, "on the map". The inexpensive dipole became THE great expression of sound - all of this unheard, except for his method of assessment of speakers by watching youtube vids. Yeah, so this thread topic was written during his Magnepan phase. Of course, now that he has under $1K because he had no idea what he was doing and didn't realize the combo of gear he bought wouldn't be ideal for a Maggie, he has soured on the speaker and is back to FR! 

It's a circus, but I wanted to add general info about the DLT genre represented as far as I know only by the Aspen Acoustics speakers. So, we have our Sound Lab defenders and our Maggie saviors come running to try to preserve the integrity of the perception that the dipole is the end all, be all. All because a poster with ignorance and under $1K to spend flips opinion nearly as fast as you can flip a coin. 

Jim, you have no idea what you could get out of those speakers. 100wpc is insipid and while you may like it tonally, you're hearing a compromised sound quality from your 1.7i speakers. Listening level has no bearing on that; you're fundamentally under powering them for what the genre of speaker needs to sound good. Now, if you can't accept that input from someone who has owned Maggies, reviewed the .7, reviewed the Sound Lab Ultimate 545 (at the time U4iA), and owns the King III electrostatic, then I'm not going to argue with you about it. 100wpc is cheap, but not nearly what it takes to make any Maggie sound as good as it can.   :) 

Sorry to offend Doug. Just pointing out that, regarding the OPs original post on the Maggie LRS, I am in agreement with him that there are not many, if any, that will do as well in the mids and overall performance at that price range.

While I do like the Maggies (ribbons and electrostatics in general) I also have a particular liking for open baffle speakers and over the years have owned and enjoyed many different speakers. Just keeping it straight - I am a member of no ones "fanboy" club......Jim