Thinking of Magnepan ... finally!

A few things from a many Maggies owner since 1977:

There is a conspiracy in White Bear Lake MN. Audio Research guys collaborate with Magnapan guys in the depths of winter when there's nothing left to do. therefore; one must drive a Maggie with a pair of  ARC tube amps. It's the alchemists law. :)

Maggies will bend your perception of sound. Maybe literally- they are so very different that there aren't words. You will either love them or be selling them in a few months. 

If you like acoustic music there is a transcendental event as you listen to it on a properly placed set of Maggies. If you like to rock out with your socks out buy something else. They don't have the capability to replicate the big speaker distortion gear Uncle Ted or Neil Young like to play through.  If you want to use them for home theater you will be sorely disappointed. 

A properly treated listening room, proper placement with TUBE amplification and lots of watts in reserve will change your HiFi arc. For the better. Every time. 

One last thing:  Try them at home before you buy them. A good retailer will allow a qualified buyer to do this, Also, treat your retailer right. He needs to make a fair profit on them so he can bring you the atelier services you are seeking. Don't be a dick and wring him out then shop for used ones. That's manifestly selfish and unfair. Moreover it will help eliminate retailers who in this hobby are essential. (no I'm not a dealer or broker. Just a realist) We are loosing the great enthusiast old school retailers. They are going broke while selling some of the best knowledge, experience and  gear out there. Support them. 

sorry but i snorted my morning coffee through my nose... laughed so hard at the earlier post

omg -- we idiots have all been listening to complete crap before dannie richie came along, and made all walks of speakers listenable -- no doubt that jim winey and wendell diller have been lost souls with cotton balls in their ears for 40+ years - if they only had mister speaker savior danny r as a childhood mentor 🤣😂😁

i had to get that lick in... no offense to @bdp24 -- but this danny richie stuff gets me going... so never mind me, back to your regular programming...

So @jjss49, did you watch the video? I’m guessing not.

Danny Richie is not the only one who has taken a close look at the Magneplanar’s and done some serious modifying. Members of The Magnepan Group on the Planar Speaker Asylum have gone much further than Richie, who changed only the crossover and speaker wire connectors (everybody knows the Magnepan connectors are junk. I replaced the stock ones on my Tympani T-IVa with Cardas binding posts, and bypassed the fuse blocks, very common in the DIY speaker community.).

Bruce Thigpen of Eminent Technology was impressed with the early Maggies, but was not fond of the single-ended design of the drivers. So he took Jim Winey’s basic design and set out to improve on it. His LFT drivers are all push-pull, and constructed quite a bit better than the Maggie diaphragms (imo), except for the wonderful Magnepan ribbon tweeter. Whereas Maggies have conductive wire glued onto the Mylar (the wire causing the Mylar to move in response to the signal), a vapor-deposited conductive film is applied to the Mylar of the LFT’s, the film then chemically-etched away in all areas except for the grids of conductive traces. The result is lower moving mass drivers.

There are longtime Tympani owners who have replaced the midrange driver in the T-IV and T-IVa with multiple NEO drivers (also a planar-magnetic), creating a line source with them. Another "mod" (not really) is to brace the Tympani panels to the wall behind them, which increases bass output and clarity (those big panels can really move when pumping out low frequencies). For single-panel Maggies the Mye stands are a must.

And then there is "Peter Gunn" (a pseudonym) who takes the Maggie drivers out of the stock MDF frames and installs them in solid hardwood frames, as well as completely redoing the crossover. I’ve never heard a pair, and his work is highly controversial. Danny Richie’s crossover is designed in accordance with well-established engineering principles, nothing radical at all.

It’s been a long time since Jim Winey did any design work at Magnepan, and I have no idea of Wendell Diller’s engineering education and background (his longtime position at Magnepan has been head of marketing). I eagerly await his upcoming dipole woofer system, a great idea that has already been put into production at Eminent Technology. The LFT-8c differs from the -8b only in having a dipole woofer (the 8c) in place of the monopole (the 8b), as well as power for the woofers and DSP for signal management (as will the Magnepan dipole woofer).

@arafiq , if you have problems with set up feel free to message me.

@bdp24

i sure did watch that d-r video, as well as others... thank you

i wonder what danny could do with a set of eminent's in his hands!!??  😂