I caught the audio bug when my older brother brought home his first component stereo in 1969. Three years later I did the same. When I became so captivated by the Magnepans that I bought for my 60th birthday, I realized that I was simply done with all the persistently audible artifacts of cones and domes bolted into boxes. Yeah, I know that there are speakers that overcome these obstacles, but all the ones I know of are 5 figures and above in a quest to build a truly resonance-free cabinet, to come up with pistonic tweeters that are fast and don't overshoot (price a diamond or beryllium tweeter lately?).
At Magnepan prices, some bass shyness strikes me as a small sacrifice for all the things they do right:
o Phase coherence (1): All sound emanates from a single flat plane; no cones of various depths, no need to slant or stair-step the baffle
o Phase coherence (2): With cones, the various masses of the cones practically guarantees different rise times for each of the drivers. Maggie drivers are all of the same material with a grid to control the motion. Unfiltered, the Magnepan DWM has a frequency response up to 7Khz. Try finding a standard woofer that has a 40-7Khz frequency range. That's some serious speed that will definitely keep up with the midrange and up into the tweeter range.
o No baffle diffraction: There's no baffle, really, only a frame that floats the voices and instruments in space without baffle bounce.
o Automatic room correction: Something I'd never realized before owning them is that the dipolar radiating pattern is my friend; it produces a near void to the sides, minimizing the influence of sidewall bounce, and even better, it keeps the bass clean when things get loud because the self-canceling nature of the backwave helps keep big room resonances from forming. When Maggies get loud (at least, mine in my room), the bass doesn't excite room modes and swallow the overall sound.
o Scaling up and down: Play a good mini-monitor and you'll be captivated by the intimacy and imaging of soloists and small acoustic ensembles. Play big band and 20th century orchestral and it often sounds like little speakers straining to give you all the notes. Do the same with Maggies and you get that transparent imaging at both ends. There's something about line sources with 400+ sq. inches of radiating area that keeps the busy parts sorted out. It also energizes the listening area more realistically.
o Detail, clarity, *and* uncommon smoothness. Engineers and audiophiles go to great lengths and expense to find a tweeter that is fast and transparent that doesn't set your teeth on edge. Many people on this forum categorically have ruled out any metal dome tweeters. Yet ribbon tweeters often add $700 to the cost of speakers, and diamond and beryllium domes run into 4 figures. Conversely, the Maggie treble is extended, airy, and detailed without beating you over the head with detail, oil-canning resonances, or other glare. I really got my record collection back with these things; there are so many records I had--a capella quartets, string quartets, lead vocals--that had too much upper midrange/treble glare for me to enjoy. The Maggies gave these recordings back to me, but with no sacrifice in treble extension or detail.
o Detail: While we're on the subject, Maggies give you a lot of detail--ambience of the venue, fingers on strings, glottal stops, instrument body resonances, etc. Yet it is always in a musical perspective; the detail serves the musical message rather than overwhelming it.
I could go on but I think you get the idea. As for the bass, the DWM panels are a relative bargain; you can buy as many as you need to properly pressurize a given listening space. And contrary to what some proclaim, there *are* conventional subwoofers that can keep up and add meaningful synchronized bass below the Maggies' lower reaches. A pair of Magnepan 1.7s plus a JL E110 have a total retail price of $3800. You would be *very* hard pressed to find a conventional speaker at that price that combines the bass speed, power and reach of a JL with the transparency and artifact-free presentation of the Magnepans.
