Why don't you like Mageplanar speakers?

It seems to me that all of your ducks need to be in a row if you are to like Maggies. Meaning, issues that come into play are: amplification, location, aesthetics, etc. I only heard one pair of Maggies in my life and it was an awful experience, but more on that later. Amplification: Maybe many people don't pair them with the appropriate amps? I don't know why, with the plethora of information here and other sites, how can you go wrong? Location: Being dipoles, I understand they need to be out far from the front wall with some acoustic treatments behind them. Aesthetics: Let's face it, if the monoliths are not in a dedicated listening room, they look ridiculous. Sorry to all of the Maggie owners who are trying to convince themselves otherwise but let's be real, the marriage to a pleasing aesthetic simply doesn't work here.

So maybe all of these things are factors to someone's overall negative opinion of these "supposedly" great speakers. Oh yeah, the one time I did hear Maggies was a disaster. In an Audio store in NYC. New Maggie 20.7's driven by Mcintosh monoblocks, Mcintosh preamp, and source was top of the line DCS stack. I wanted to beg the salesman to scratch his fingernails on a chalkboard to save what was left of my hearing.

In their defense, the speakers were close to the back wall but, that said, given the reputation of the speakers and the cost of the overall system, that simply was no excuse for one of the worst systems I've ever heard.

Have owned few maggies, including 20.1's. Love, love the sound. What I didn't like is:
-huge, heavy power amp(s) needed to wake them up and get full performance out of them
-poor low level sound
-small sweet spot
-room domination, they're big and need to be way out in the room to sound right
This is why I don't own them anymore.

Charles1dad,

According to Wendell Diller at Magnepan, the reason Maggies aren't more efficient is that neodynium magnets would cost the buyer more than a more powerful amplifier. That being said, they'll work perfectly well for most people with an amp of moderate power. If you want 115 dB SPL's out of them, well, then you'll need a big amp. But most people don't listen at those levels.

Devilboy, Magnepan is one of the largest high end speaker manufacturers, with over 100,000 sold. If so many things had to line up for them to work, that wouldn't be the case. As it happens, few of us have setups that are ideal for Maggies, or for any speaker. But they do quite beautifully even without, indeed, like other line source dipoles, they are less sensitive to room acoustics and require less room treatment (the flip side being that they're more sensitive to careful room setup).

If the 20.7's sounded bad, it was the dealer setup. Period. Nobody who has heard them has had anything but raves. Dealer setups are a chronic problem with Maggies, they almost never sound right.

I suggest you listen under better circumstances. They won't work close to a wall, no dipole will. Those who can't pull them out should get boxes -- most boxes aren't at their best against a wall either, but they do better than dipoles -- or a dipole that's specially designed to be used on a wall, like the Magnepan on-walls or the Wisdom in-walls.