Electrostatic-vs-Planar strength, weakness

I hope you don't mind a dealer's $.02. I'll try not to be too partisan here...

I've owned Maggies MMG, 12, 1.6, and 3.6. I've owned electrostat/dynamic hybrids made by Martin Logan and Sound Lab (I'm a dealer for the latter). I've owned full-range electrostats from Quad and of course Sound Lab.

Your question focuses on electrostatic/dynamic hybrids vs full-range planar magnetics (Maggies), and as you could probably guess each excels in different areas. Electrostatic elements in my opinion usually give superior resolution of low-level detail. Some electrostat hybrids give you a small sweet spot (InnerSound), some a medium sized sweet spot (Martin Logan), and some a fairly large sweet spot (Sound Lab). Maggies are capable of giving you you a fairly good sized sweet spot.

The bass of a good box woofer (such as InnerSound's transmission line system) will go deeper and have more solid impact than a dipole bass system (like the Maggies), but dipole bass in my experience does a very good job with pitch definition.

Now the achilles' heel of a hybrid system is the difficulty in blending the point-source woofer with the line-source (and sometimes narrow-pattern) panel. Not only to they have very different sonic signatures, they actually propagate sound differently! That's right - the sound pressure level actually falls off more rapidly with distance from the woofer than from the panel. So either you want to be able to adjust the relative levels of woofer and panel for your room and listening distance, or you want to do a very good job of choosing the right hybrid speaker for your room.

Once I had a pair of Maggie 3.6's side-by-side with Sound Lab Dynastats in my living room. So I had the chance to do some in-depth comparisons. One thing I quickly noticed was that I really had to do a good job of dialing in the controls on the Dynastats, for the overall tonal balance of the Maggies was very nice. The Maggies were the more forgiving speaker, but they did give up some harmonic richness and texture to the Dynastats, and the Dynastats were more lively at low volume levels. The Dynastats went quite a bit deeper as would be expected, but the Maggies were more coherent. Unfortunately (for me as a dealer), you could hear the discontinuity between the Dynastat's woofer and panel. The Maggies had no such issues. So there wasn't a clear winner - each did some things better.

I'm not sure what your price range is, but you might consider Quads as a possible alternative to hybrids or Maggies.

Best of luck in your quest!

Duke LeJeune
AudioKinesis

I have a pair of Innersound Eros, I just want to know what others think, I have heard Maggies before, and I even have a Maggie Center channel...but have never heard a big full range Mag to hear bass, thanks for both posts..Duke you gave me some excellent details and thanks a bunch

I can relate so much to what Duke has shared here. I owned Maggies for nearly 6 years, first the 3.3 and then 3.5. The tonality and dimensionality of the music is what won me over compared to box speakers. But the need to crank it up to get the system to boogie was the ultimate downfall of the Maggies for me.

The Maggies are such incredible performers. Even with people throwing huge SS amps at them, I only heard the Maggie magic with tube amps. There is so much focus here on power to drive Maggies but I had enough experiences with these speakers to know that this was only part of what it takes to get these speakers to perform.

The price of the Maggies is a great deal but you have to spend a lot for amps to do them right. This makes for an expensive setup for someone who would think they could get the same sound they heard at the dealer but with a less quality/expensive amp. Unfortunately, it's just not that easy with these speakers.

I heard several Martin Logans, "full-range" and hybrids, at a dealer vs. the Maggie 3.5 and everytime, I found myself back at the Maggies. The ML's were just too analytical for me vs. the full and rich Maggie sound. The Maggies filled the space between them like nothing I had heard before. It was so impressive. And they were easily 12' apart at the dealer. The ML's did have an incredible see-through quality that clearly showed the Maggies' mediocre resolving abilities.

The Sound-Lab speakers are a different beast altogether. The A, M and U series are awesome. They do bass like the Maggies could never come close. And the same is true for low-level resolution and dynamics (wooo hooo). In my room, the Maggies had a sweet spot of a couple feet wide. With the Sound-Lab A1s, the sweet spot is across the room. I never could have imagined another speaker having the Maggie magic without giving up something else. The Sound-Lab convey the 3-dimensionality and decays like the Maggies but without the emphasis in the mids that gave the Maggies that overly-rich sound. The Sound-Lab really converted this long-time Maggie fanatic.

And as tough as some people may claim the Sound-Lab might be for an amp to drive and control, they appear to be less demanding of an amp than the Maggies. I play the music much lower now as I don't feel the need to crank it up to compensate for lack of dynamic contrasts. Truly impressive.....but so are the Maggies.

So there's my experience with Maggies vs. some Electrostatics.

John

Thanks Jafox..learned alot from you also

how is the sound lab for reliability ??? i have never owned a pair, but the local dealer stopped carrying the line due to horrible /slow/rude service..

maggies are pretty relaible and easy to repair if needed..