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Post by leonski on Apr 1, 2019 18:13:06 GMT -5
Next time you have 50$ or 100$ burning a hole in your pocket? See if you can afford from the upper end........ www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.htmlthis will drive you NUTS. Enjoy. |
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Post by pedrocols on Apr 1, 2019 18:43:37 GMT -5
Pretty insane. I have that page bookmarked on my home computer 😂
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Post by pedrocols on Apr 1, 2019 18:59:00 GMT -5
Next time you have 50$ or 100$ burning a hole in your pocket? See if you can afford from the upper end........ www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.htmlthis will drive you NUTS. Enjoy. I won't disclose the values of the caps to be safe 😂  |
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Post by bluemeanies on Apr 2, 2019 12:03:25 GMT -5
I would lose that audio dealer in a heartbeat.
I do not have MAGGIES however a good friend of mine does and he loves them.
I did however face a similar story with my audio dealer of over a decade and THOUSANDS of dollars.
I wanted B&Wd2’s and they on short did not treat me right, not even giving me an idea of what I could sell my B&804S series for on the market.
I decided to go go to another dealer where I had to pay taxes however the price they gave me covered the taxes.
They were brand new and in the original cartons with manuals.
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Post by geeqner on Apr 3, 2019 14:48:41 GMT -5
Well Fritz - it's Wednesday.
Did your dealer come-through? I'm waiting to see how this "saga" plays-out and really DO hope that things work out for you with the Maggies.
If I had a proper space for a pair - I'd be scrounging-up new or used. They're supposed to have near-SPOOKY imaging if you set 'em up right.
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Post by pedrocols on Apr 3, 2019 17:42:46 GMT -5
Well Fritz - it's Wednesday. Did your dealer come-through? I'm waiting to see how this "saga" plays-out and really DO hope that things work out for you with the Maggies. If I had a proper space for a pair - I'd be scrounging-up new or used. They're supposed to have near-SPOOKY imaging if you set 'em up right. Yes! Spooky imaging! |
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Post by fritz on Apr 3, 2019 18:01:26 GMT -5
Well Fritz - it's Wednesday. Did your dealer come-through? I'm waiting to see how this "saga" plays-out and really DO hope that things work out for you with the Maggies. If I had a proper space for a pair - I'd be scrounging-up new or used. They're supposed to have near-SPOOKY imaging if you set 'em up right. geeqner, I called the dealer today and he told me they should be delivered by the end of the day. We will see. Hopefully today or tomorrow. Ill believe it when I put them into the back of my truck LOL. As far as the imaging goes, if they preform like the demos I heard at his store ill be happy. I did have a thought about the demos at the store be upgraded with better caps, resistors and coils in the crossovers. I made mention to the dealer about that and he was a little shocked about it. He said he should advertise that they are upgraded even though he said his aren't. We will see, Ill wait a while before I even attempt to take look at them. I will say that with my B&W's after I had them for while I cracked them open and took a look to find pretty cheap caps, coils and resistors in them. I am a firm believer that certain quality component's in the crossovers do make a difference in imaging and overall SQ. Not knocking the manufactures at all. They mass produce with profit margins in mind. Also I will admit that I do like to solder, rewire and tinker with things. Inherited it from my father growing up. Thanks Dad. RIP |
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Post by audiosyndrome on Apr 3, 2019 19:08:54 GMT -5
Unfortunately, PG got his ass Banned from Audio Asylum. He was just a little TOO excitable and angered the wrong person or persons. Agree or NOT, you simply can't draw a line in the ether and expect to get away from it on what is supposed to be a 'civil' site. cheers: Go Active. You could spend a FORTUNE on capacitors and STILL not find the magic Combination. And do you run a ByPass cap or NOT? So you and pedrocols have ACTUALLY heard a pair of Magnastands? Or just going on what you read? Russ |
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Post by pedrocols on Apr 3, 2019 20:10:40 GMT -5
Unfortunately, PG got his ass Banned from Audio Asylum. He was just a little TOO excitable and angered the wrong person or persons. Agree or NOT, you simply can't draw a line in the ether and expect to get away from it on what is supposed to be a 'civil' site. cheers: Go Active. You could spend a FORTUNE on capacitors and STILL not find the magic Combination. And do you run a ByPass cap or NOT? So you and pedrocols have ACTUALLY heard a pair of Magnastands? Or just going on what you read? Russ I haven't heard a magnestand maggie per say. However, I implemented the same crossovers he uses on his modded speakers on my mg12s. You can email him and he is kind enough to email you the crossovers as long as you have the decency not to share them. |
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Post by leonski on Apr 3, 2019 21:06:51 GMT -5
Heard the MMG Magnestand. And another buddy has the 1.6s so modified. They ARE better than my 'stock' 1.6 panels in a few important ways.
VERY good achievement with one major BUT. Cost basis is now quite a bit higher AND the market thins out quickly.
IMO? Some version of DIY provides best leverage, less cash exposure AND depending on reversibility may not completely destroy resale.
The MMGs I heard were very nice indeed. Still not the loudness potential of 1.5 / 1.5 / 1.7 UPLINE but they never Could do that.
I'd buy some pre-owned panels and DIY to my hearts content. Given a PRINCIPLED approach you should be able to substantially improve stock sound.
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Post by donh50 on Apr 3, 2019 22:20:17 GMT -5
My involvement with Magnepan began ca. 1979 (MG-I's) and my last set (MG-IIIa plus a CC3 and four MC1s) are in storage since replacing them a couple of years ago -- haven't the heart to part with them. Years ago I was a tech for a store or two and worked on a lot of Maggies including numerous mods of all sorts. Frankly with very few exceptions crossover mods were worthless. The only thing I found that seemed to make a measurable and (very arguably) audible difference was to replace the big inductors with big air-wound inductors with significantly lower resistance. The biggest change by far was to go to an active (or passive, in my case, at times) line-level crossover and bi-amp them. As for stands, a very secure stand actually made a slight but measurable difference in impulse/step response but was effectively inaudible with music playing. That said I learned a lot about panel modes and with large LF signals you can get some doppler modulation that stands can help, slightly. Audible, maybe not, but it made for an interesting science experiment. Like a lot of tweaks, expectation bias made them out to be much more than they really were (as evidenced in blind tests).
Like all dipoles they are wicked sensitive to placement. Damping the back wave can drastically improve the imaging at the cost of losing some of their "ambience" without the reflected waves. Placed in near-field or fairly close they provide an amazing "you are there" experience.
I cannot for the life of me recall if the crossover schematic I had at one time was from PG or the MUG site but it was wrong. I figured out the right one and sent them a picture, don't remember if they updated the site. It was supposedly traced out by an EE (student, maybe?) but clearly there was a mistake in it. IIRC PG is a woodworking guy and not an EE but it has been years since I spoke with him (or visited his website). His stands are gorgeous but the few I've heard I could not swear they made a difference or not -- too many differences (room, electronics, etc.) Owners seem happy (the only folk I recall complaining found out they voided the warranty, which PG was very up-front about, and in one case Magnepan refused to do a rebuild until they were back in the stock frames -- but in another case they rebuilt the PG-modified version so I am not sure what their official policy is).
FWIWFM - Don
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Post by leonski on Apr 4, 2019 0:14:16 GMT -5
Crossover is a 3rd rail Magnepan topic. Do 'better' caps make a difference and at what cost? To bypass or NOT to bypass gets play as well.
One guy uses an inductor / choke on the input and has a large following.
I'm kind of an iductor nerd. The stock piece in the MG1.6 is 3.5mh which is not a stock value, as near as I can tell. It is also iron core, 15ga wire AND has a DC resistance of 0.4 ohms.
The aircore which don references ALL have very much lower DCR than stock which changes the panels frequency balance A LITTLE. I'd guess 1db tops, below crossover.
The other problem with just purchasing such an inductor is they are without exception the wrong shape. A perfect inductor will have the same mumber of turns of wire PER LAYER as
the number of Layers. This gives the coil s square shape which maximizers the self-coupling on which it depends. I ran maybe 20 simulations using a good online calculator and found
that for the MG1.5 inductor, you could make an aircore of 0.38 ohms using (from memory) 14ga wire. It had the same number of turns per layer as layers AND was wound on a standard
size of PVC pipe.....perfect for the ambitious DIY guy. I'd have to get the spsreadsheet out to find exact numbers.....there were a few candidates fairly close but one was very good, indeed.
Backwave damping is REALLY neat for a panel. But you don't need to 'damp' too much, but rather 'diffuse'. And given that both damping /absorption and diffusion differ across frequencies,
you can maybe leave some of the higher, ambiance frequencies alone. You DO lower net output, which isn't good considering the panels already low sensitivity.
My first panels were ALSO MG-1, bought from a guy at work who was a stereo nut. I sold my RSL (Rogers Sound Labs) JBL L100 / 4311 copies the NEZT DAY for about 1/2 of what I spent on
the panels.
As for a new crossover? Line Level is the obvious way to go, agreed. a PASSIVE setup can be constructed in an Altoids can. But has the disadvantage of not being able to drive long interconnects
and you MUST keep an eye on input / output impedance to make it work properly......Construction can be done on a circuit board probably the size of 1/4th of a playing card.
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Post by pedrocols on Apr 4, 2019 7:58:59 GMT -5
Personally, I think it isn't cost effective to buy a MMG speaker and then spend over 2k to "improve" the sound when you can get a brand new and potentially a very good used 1.7i which arguably is a better speaker all around.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Apr 4, 2019 9:47:01 GMT -5
There's something else you need to consider when modifying a crossover... which is simply that, if the original crossover was designed by a competent engineer, then ALL of the parameters should have been taken into account. Leonski's example inductor was properly calculated; you end up with an air core inductor with the same inductance and DC resistance as the original. This should result in performance that is identical to the original except for lower distortion at high signal levels.
However, I've seen many cases where someone replaced parts with "better" ones that weren't electrically identical, which can result in unintended changes. One example would be replacing that inductor with one that had the same inductance, but a DC resistance of 0.2 Ohms instead of 0.4 Ohms. The problem is that, while an inductor with a lower DC resistance is in principle "a higher quality inductor", the designer probably included the 0.4 Ohm resistance of the original in the overall design.
Therefore, by replacing the original inductor with a "better" one, you have altered the overall operation of the circuit. Rather than being "a flaw", that high DC resistance may be "an important part of the design", and changing it could cause your speaker to sound worse rather than better, or just slightly different.
Does it really make sense to spend a lot of money on a "better quality" inductor; then spend more money on a separate high quality resistor to add back the "flaw", so the circuit works like it is supposed to? If you study crossover designs, you'll see that many incorporate various series resistors.... whose value is based on the value of the DC resistance of a neighboring coil or capacitor. If you substitute an inductor with lower resistance, you end up increasing the value of the resistor so the total adds up correctly, and you end up right back where you started.
And, if you don't do so, then you risk attributing a difference in sound to "a better quality inductor" - when it may really simply be due to the difference in overall resistance. (And, if that's the case, you could have achieved the same difference simply by substituting a much cheaper resistors of slightly different value.)
(This is only really important because high quality coils can be expensive - and large - so you don't want to purchase them unless they actually improve something.)
Another common example of this is when people "upgrade" an amplifier by replacing the power supply capacitors with new ones of higher value. Under some circumstances, adding more capacitance to the power supply in an amplifier may in fact improve performance. However, in other circumstances, it may cause the design to be unstable, or it could cause a failure upstream because of the increase in inrush current necessary to charge the bigger caps.
Crossover is a 3rd rail Magnepan topic. Do 'better' caps make a difference and at what cost? To bypass or NOT to bypass gets play as well. One guy uses an inductor / choke on the input and has a large following. I'm kind of an iductor nerd. The stock piece in the MG1.6 is 3.5mh which is not a stock value, as near as I can tell. It is also iron core, 15ga wire AND has a DC resistance of 0.4 ohms. The aircore which don references ALL have very much lower DCR than stock which changes the panels frequency balance A LITTLE. I'd guess 1db tops, below crossover. The other problem with just purchasing such an inductor is they are without exception the wrong shape. A perfect inductor will have the same mumber of turns of wire PER LAYER as the number of Layers. This gives the coil s square shape which maximizers the self-coupling on which it depends. I ran maybe 20 simulations using a good online calculator and found that for the MG1.5 inductor, you could make an aircore of 0.38 ohms using (from memory) 14ga wire. It had the same number of turns per layer as layers AND was wound on a standard size of PVC pipe.....perfect for the ambitious DIY guy. I'd have to get the spsreadsheet out to find exact numbers.....there were a few candidates fairly close but one was very good, indeed. Backwave damping is REALLY neat for a panel. But you don't need to 'damp' too much, but rather 'diffuse'. And given that both damping /absorption and diffusion differ across frequencies, you can maybe leave some of the higher, ambiance frequencies alone. You DO lower net output, which isn't good considering the panels already low sensitivity. My first panels were ALSO MG-1, bought from a guy at work who was a stereo nut. I sold my RSL (Rogers Sound Labs) JBL L100 / 4311 copies the NEZT DAY for about 1/2 of what I spent on the panels. As for a new crossover? Line Level is the obvious way to go, agreed. a PASSIVE setup can be constructed in an Altoids can. But has the disadvantage of not being able to drive long interconnects and you MUST keep an eye on input / output impedance to make it work properly......Construction can be done on a circuit board probably the size of 1/4th of a playing card. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2019 10:22:56 GMT -5
Personally, I think it isn't cost effective to buy a MMG speaker and then spend over 2k to "improve" the sound when you can get a brand new and potentially a very good used 1.7i which arguably is a better speaker all around. I agree with respect to spending an extra $2K, but for me the DIY cost of $400 (~$200 for wood and hardware and ~$200 for crossover parts) was certainly worth it, my time of course being worth nothing. |
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Post by leonski on Apr 4, 2019 13:26:08 GMT -5
I can't remember the calculation right off the top. New inductor can be as low as 1/2 the DCR of the original. Given the bass panel is about 4 ohms or so, DCR, the boost to the bass is probably <1db. Just at the threshold of 'notice'.
OTOH, the other changes which typically go along with this kind of mod might have a larger 'voicing' difference than simple 'part values' might admit.
Every one of those modified crossovers turns into an Artifact.
I STILL think the best approach is an Active LL X-Over (ALLXO) You should be able to duplicate the transfer function of the original crossover or go out on your own. FIR filters, an advanced technique, have NO PHASE SHIFT thru the
passband. Hooking your amp directly to the sp\eaker drivers sure SOUNDS like a good idea.
If you have the woodworking skillset? Go For It. Think out of the box. And you can make some beautiful frames to your exact wants.
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Apr 4, 2019 14:21:05 GMT -5
An active line level crossover is certainly the most flexible way to go about it. And, if you're into experimentation, you can buy something like a MiniDSP, and program exactly the response you want into it. (Or you can buy an entirely free-standing unit, with its own programming interface, and knobs, like the Behringer.)
With normal dynamic speakers, there is also a significant benefit to having the amp connected directly to the speaker driver, in terms of improved damping. However, I don't think the coupling between the panels in a Maggie and the amp is nearly as tight as the coupling between the amp and the motor in a conventional speaker, so that may not make nearly as much difference. (But it certainly couldn't hurt  .)
I can't remember the calculation right off the top. New inductor can be as low as 1/2 the DCR of the original. Given the bass panel is about 4 ohms or so, DCR, the boost to the bass is probably <1db. Just at the threshold of 'notice'. OTOH, the other changes which typically go along with this kind of mod might have a larger 'voicing' difference than simple 'part values' might admit. Every one of those modified crossovers turns into an Artifact. I STILL think the best approach is an Active LL X-Over (ALLXO) You should be able to duplicate the transfer function of the original crossover or go out on your own. FIR filters, an advanced technique, have NO PHASE SHIFT thru the passband. Hooking your amp directly to the sp\eaker drivers sure SOUNDS like a good idea. If you have the woodworking skillset? Go For It. Think out of the box. And you can make some beautiful frames to your exact wants. |
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Post by leonski on Apr 4, 2019 14:32:08 GMT -5
Right you are.....Maggies don't store much energy. But doing away with all that parasitic resistance of the crossover nets a gain in sensitivity.
Also? restricting the bandwidth fed to each 'way' of the amp also gains as much as 3db apparent power. Maggies LIKE power.
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Post by fritz on Apr 4, 2019 19:25:32 GMT -5
Well Fritz - it's Wednesday. Did your dealer come-through? I'm waiting to see how this "saga" plays-out and really DO hope that things work out for you with the Maggies. If I had a proper space for a pair - I'd be scrounging-up new or used. They're supposed to have near-SPOOKY imaging if you set 'em up right. Yes! Spooky imaging! Well Guys, Finally got them and did a quick setup. Heres some pics. Thanks for all the support and comments! Only been listening for about half hour now. First impression, these suckers are smooth for lack of better explanation.     |
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Post by creimes on Apr 4, 2019 19:43:12 GMT -5
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