New Magneplanar Bass Panel DWM

Bbro, Magnepan suggests the DMW might be used to augment bass, depending on the main speakers and the room. In many situations the 20.x or 3.x may be adequate by themselves. But in some cases improvements may be realized by the addition of one or two DMWs. After all, the CES demo was made with 3.7s.

I think it was coincidental that the DMW may have been designed as part of the Mini-Mag system and later found to benefit floor standing Maggies as well.

The key seems to be in finding the appropriate amount of woofer driving area (number of square inches) for a given room.

I like the concept but a larger panel option would be nice.

They also suggest the DWM to be on the same plane as the speakers but 12 inches closer to the listener. I cannot see any WAF in these as it looks like you would have to have a dedicated room to be able to pull this off.

I'm excited about the DWMs and will be buying them, probably in 2014. I have well-reviewed ported powered sub in my Maggie system and I think it sucks, frankly. I also don't think subwoofers are an important part of the musical experience, but am interested in trying the DWMs to see if my opinion is based on flawed system synergy. Anyway, this is an exciting development and the DWM is pretty affordable.

Bbro,

The DWM's are usually used against a side wall or another barrier and that provides significant bass reinforcement. Acoustically, it doubles with the width of the baffle, which lowers Fequal, the point at which the 6 dB/octave dipole rolloff begins. You can hear the same effect by moving any Maggie up to touch the wall. In addition, if they're close to the main speakers, there should be some mutual coupling of the baffles. So the DWM's can be smaller than the floor standers for a given amount of bass.