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).
