Thoughts On These Home Speakers

[drc32-0]

Magnepan 1.7,Martin Logan Electromotion ESL,Goldenear Triton 2.

I'm using a NAD C272 at 150wpc so I'm a little leary about the Maggies and ML's.Room size is 15x17.No problem putting the Maggies or ML's three feet off the wall.

Most of my listening is classic rock,blue grass,Grateful Dead,blues and jam bands.

I'll be auditioning these brands plus Paradigm and KEF LS50's tomorrow.

So,anyone have any thoughts or experience with these speakers?

 

[Eric L]

You'll be ok, just don't drive the snot out of them. Maggie's will be hella different from the others and more sensitive to what's behind the. I have a pair if Martin Logans. Same deal. The NADA has decent headroom right?

 

[Liteitup]

Sort of, but not really. I just purchased the Magnepan MMG's and run them with an Outlaw 2150 receiver. I had to do mail order, as the closest dealer was 100+ miles away. I'll be adding a sub soon, bass response is lacking, and that from a listener that listens to guitar and cymbals more than booming bass. They're great on fusion jazz, less so on classic rock.

Yours are in a whole nother class. The MMG's are 4 ft tall and make an instant visual impression. I can't imagine the 1.7's. The GF would have come unglued.

Babylon Sister by Steely Dan is good track to compare speakers IMHO.

Whichever you choose, enjoy!

 

[Warpdrv]

Maggies are pretty power hungry - and watch the off axis with them.... they are direct beaming..... But if your in the sweet spot, which is very small - they are seriously fantastic sounding....

Panels like that over time can accumulate dust on the membrane and loose some clarity, but that is a great period of time.....

I have Paradigm Signature S8's, C5 and S2's for my great room / HT... I love them ---- BUT---- if you have a bright room they can be pretty bright. I have a pretty bright room and sound panels helped but they are still bright to my sensitive ears... if you have hearing loss at the upper range they shouldn't be an issue - the Be tweeters are pretty robust and sound great....

I had the Paradigm Studios for a while but I don't feel that they would match up with the sweetness of the Maggies or the ML's IMO...

I only heard KEF's one time and I thought they were pretty darn nice.... Those ones you listed are monitor's... Are you sure that is what you meant ?!?!

Have you ever heard of Salk Sound.. Their SoundScape Series are out of this world...

I have listened too most of their lineup - they are amongst some of the finest speakers I have ever heard.

https://www.salksound.com/soundscape%20m7%20monitor%20-%20home.htm

Those pictured are actually the speakers I own... No affiliation with the company.... just still to this day can't believe the sound that comes from them...

BTW - they are fully customizable with whatever veneer choices you could possibly imagine !!

Personally I would love to have a set of S8's.....

 

[Eric L]

the single most important thing i did for the MLs was to put drapes on the windows behind them. They beam, especially vertically, but man, are they wonderful for vocal-jazz and blues. I have had so much trouble with box speakers and midrange. I don't know why most speakers irk me so. The ML has no crossover except way down low for the woofer so the mid is seamless with the highs. But I agree, bipolar speakers arent for everyone and they can be a pain in the *** to set up.

I wasn't planning on buying them at the time, but I got a terrific deal on them. Powered by an Audible Illusions tube preamp, a Shanling modded tube cd player, a Sonographie turntable/grado gold, and a pair of 200wpc mono amps.

 

[Bounce]

I picked up a set of vintage (70's) Maggie MG-1s (5'x2') about a year or two ago. I had to get new "socks" (required pulling the panel from the frame... whew) for them but other than that they functioned fine. The trick with them is that sometimes the leads separate from the ribbons (which is why shipping is tricky and costly).

Once you get them home (with a nice sub to deal with the lows), and get them aimed right (they are highly directional), they are amazing! Their stage presence are in a class by themselves. Any of your classical or acoustic stuff (including percussion like claves) will seem like they're in your head. Jazz, Dead, Rock and other stuff sounds good but they do need a sub to fill in the bottom end. Mids through highs are silky and airy because of the design and lack of crossovers.

You need a gutsy amp (or receiver) because they need some current to push them. Chip amps can sometimes be overwhelmed unless they have a good power supply and heat sink. "They" used to claim that Maggies needed a good tube amp (think McIntosh) but I've been running them via my Yamaha receiver just fine.

You also need to be able to place them with about a foot or two of clearance with a hard wall behind them. It's even better to have someone else aim them while you're in your favorite spot. 2" off one way or another and they are okay, but get that last little tweak just right and you'll melt into a puddle of pleasure.

If you can swing their demands, they should please you and amaze your friends.

 

[Warpdrv]

Man - I have heard so many systems and there are endless amounts of combinations out there, its really hard to narrow things down.

I really do a lot less critical listening then I used to.... and am more into HT, but there are times. I really tried to balance my needs based around that scenario... But in all honesty, there just were no speakers out there that really had the powerful room filling clean bass I was looking for, and the preamps for 2 channel rarely if ever had a bass management system to xover to a subwoofer/s or they were limited at best.

In the end for both my rigs I ended up running Integra 80.3 preamps for SQ and Xover capabilities + Wyred4Sound Ice Power amps and custom built 18" LMS subs...

I love hearing about other peoples journey to find some great audio systems, and I wish you luck on your auditions drc....

That was a fun part of finding what I have today...

 

[majicmaker]

One Word, Boys..... BOSE!

 

[HotRodZilla]

One Word, Boys..... BOSE!

That's what I was thinking. With a Bose or Yamaha driver. Maybe I'm not hip enough??

 

[Greg 03]

I've had Paradigm speakers with a Marantz system for about 15 years and I'm still amazed by the sound quality. Never had any issues at all.

 

[majicmaker]

One Word, Boys..... BOSE!

That's what I was thinking. With a Bose or Yamaha driver. Maybe I'm not hip enough??

Nope! I think I'm not hip enough either, Zilla. I've had BOSE speakers since I was in my 20's. They are the ultimate speakers. Just about all the concerts that I've been to has had two walls of BOSE 901's interlocked together about 30 feet high and 30 feet wide. There is nothing on this earth made to this day that can blow them out. I have a set in my family room at the house as we speak. I run mine through my Onkyo 150wpc receiver and the room vibrates when in watching my Harry Potter Movies! )

 

[Bounce]

I'm gonna make some people unhappy here, but Bose are mostly marketing with high prices and hyped claims for mid-level performance (at best). There are better speakers out there for the same price or less. While a Stereo Review might pitch them up, and Audiophile Magazine wouldn't. The old saying was, "No highs, no lows, it must be Bose."

On a different note (heh), I also have a set of Klipsch that I've been running since replacing my mid-70's era Sansui system some time in the early 90's. They are wonderful with great "oomph" (and tons more efficient than the Maggies). Mine are the Forte II with a passive 15" woofer facing rearward and the front looking like this web shot.

I went back to them after having the Maggies for about a year and talk about sounding "muffled". They are still excellent speakers with good off-axis delivery but, when in the sweet spot, the Maggies just can't be beat for clarity and stage presence.

 

[majicmaker]

Bounce, I hear you, Bro. But! BOSE are indestructible. They sound exactly the same as they did when new (and that was a loooong time ago). They have NO sweet spot. BOSE speakers make the whole the sweet spot. I'm sure you've gone to many, many concerts in your life. What's the percentage of BOSE speakers to anything else at those concerts? There's a reason for that.

 

[Bounce]

I'm sure you've gone to many, many concerts in your life. What's the percentage of BOSE speakers to anything else at those concerts? There's a reason for that.

Zero.

And I agree. There's a reason for that. The concerts I go to have Marshal stacks.

I guess, if given the choice, I'd choose sound quality over ease of setup. Being able to just slap a speaker down and let it bounce around doesn't make up for intermediate performance.

 

[Top_Speed1]

I'm sure you've gone to many, many concerts in your life. What's the percentage of BOSE speakers to anything else at those concerts? There's a reason for that.

Zero.

And I agree. There's a reason for that. The concerts I go to have Marshal stacks.

I guess, if given the choice, I'd choose sound quality over ease of setup. Being able to just slap a speaker down and let it bounce around doesn't make up for intermediate performance.

Well owning a sound and stage lighting company I must chime in.

Marshall stacks have nothing to do with 'the mains'. They are guitar amp/speaker combo's and used for stage volume for the performers.

99% of the Bands do not own their Sound & Lighting. It's a leased show, mostly custom designed for the venue sizes and bands needs/wants.

These Concert Production Sound Companies do not use Bose either (I am a fan of Bose and their R&D however, it's just not marketing as someone said). Chances are if you've been to a large concert from Classic Rock to HipHop, it's been a ShowCo or maybe Claire Bros (who actually started all this Sound Company business back in the 50's). Both companies were always one upping the other. I believe in the year 2000 they joined forces. Most 'Mains' are not commercial brands as we know it, but rather custom made to/for the industry. Klipsch & JBL is the exception. Now, I have seen Bose Arrays at a few smaller venues, Bose is more common in small pub gigs for the local bands. It's just not for the big boys is all.

In the business, we call these "Line Arrays" and deemed or slanged by us as just "Mains" (vs. the Monitors that point towards the musicians).

This is old school, maybe mid 80's early sound array technology. I had to put it in here because they used Yamaha hi-end drivers.

 

[wfooshee]

Nothing to do with the original question, and more drift into "Well, what I had was...." Sorry.

I had a roommate in college with a pair of JBL L100s, the consumer version of their 4310 monitor. In the day (mid-70s) everyone was either JBL or Altec-Lansing. The best music we had to listen with was Sheffield direct-to-disc LPs. The clarity of those JBLs was unmatched by anything else I ever heard, although the deep bass lacks compared to others. Also, very efficient ported design compared to the acoustic suspension that was widely used elsewhere meant they worked well with a smaller amp.

Nearly 20 years ago a friend of mine was "upgrading" his sound system and offered me his L100s for 200 bucks the pair. I went and had a listen, they were everything I remembered, and they worked, no noises from the X-over adjusts or anything, so I forked over the cash. They still sit in my living room today! The cool foam covers were long gone, and he'd had them done with a good acoustic cloth by someone.

And finally, just for laughs, these are the speaker used in the old Maxell blown-away poster:

These speakers were what low filters were made for. They may not put out much super bass, but they still respond down to a few Hz. You can watch the woofer respond when the cartridge tracks a warped record! And that sucks up amplifier power. So low filter ON.

 

[Bounce]

Good info. Thanks.

 

[drc32-0]

Well I made it to the store that had the Goldenears,Magnepans and Martin Logans,but spent so much time there that I didn't get a chance to hear the Paradigms or KEFs.I really have to hand it to Audible Elagance in Cincinnati,nobody hovered over me like a hawk,they just handed me the remotes for the amps and cd player and let me have at it...for about three hours!

After listening to the three speakers I listed in my original post,I'm leaning pretty heavy towards the Goldenears.I was realy surprised at how good the imaging and sound stage were on these tower speakers.I went in expecting the Magneplaners and Martin Logans to easily beat the Goldenears in these catagories.They were all very good,but the Goldenears just seemed to have a more pin point accuracy and more depth.The one thought I kept having as I switched back and forth from the Magneplaners and ML's to the Goldenears was that the planers sounded like I was listening to the string of the instrument whereas the Goldenears brought in more of the resonances of the wood of the instrument.I really noticed this difference on Garcia/Grisman's version of "The Thrill Is Gone",both instruments sounded natural,full,and well placed in the soundfield.I used Natilie Merchant's "Diver Boy" to get an idea of how the three would handle the low end.The Magneplaners didn't give me a good feel of where the bass was located,it just seemed to appear throughout,the ML's were much better but still lacked the definition of the Goldenears.With the Goldenears I could close my eyes and point to where the standup base was located.Neither of the planer speakers had a sub-woofer,so it's to be expected for the Goldenears,with their built in subs, to easily win in the bottom end,but their definition and an imaging were impressive.

They were all good on male voice,female voice probably went to the Magneplaners,but they were all close,and all very good.

I know that comparing the planers,without a sub woofer, to the Goldenears isn't really a fair comparison,so I'll probably give The Magneplaner one more go with a sub.But then you have the cost of the sub,I'll need more amplification,another box in the room....Like I said,I'm leaning heavy towards the Goldenears,but I do want to listen to some more options.

 

[Bounce]

What's a sub between friends?

c'mon.... ya know ya wanna. (jk)