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Post by paintedklown on Mar 2, 2010 1:55:36 GMT -5
Hey everyone. Currently I am building a 2 ch. music only system. Throughout this quest for audio greatness I have read and learned much. I have also discovered new products/companies I never knew existed. One of these new companies was Emotiva and the products they offer, another one was Magnepan. While ultimately I would like to get some B&W CM-9s for this system I feel like I am kind of defeating the purpose of buying this really nice front end, only to run everything to a set of cheap monitors. www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Monitor1mkII/ seems hardly fitting to me. Anyway, as stated I discovered "maggies" and the MMG series line they produce. www.magnepan.com/model_MMGThese seem VERY intriguing to me and I think I would really like to give them a try. I figure $600.00 to get true "audiophile" sound is a pretty good deal. It wouldn't take much saving to snag a pair of these up and would give me a "fix" until I saved up the $3K (plus tax) for the B&Ws. What do you all think? Are these worth getting for a "place holder" setup of sorts? I see that the XPA-2 is commonly used to power maggies. Would the UPA-1s be enough? I am not trying to turn this into another XPA-2 vs. UPA-1 thread, the XPAs are larger, more powerful, AND Emotiva amps. 'Nuff said. Now for the caveats...I am an audio "novice". I do understand that maggies are VERY picky about room placement and have a relatively narrow sweet spot that can be tricky to find. Will it be difficult to properly set these up? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Even if it is advice to steer me away from these? I just want honest answers/advice. Thanks for reading and take care. -Dave
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Post by dotvibe on Mar 2, 2010 7:56:09 GMT -5
This is a tough one. For the Maggies, you gotta have the XPA-2. no questions asked, no issues, just do it, no problem. For the B&W's the UPA-1 would be more than enough, and probably a slightly better fit.
That said, the audio quality difference between the XPA-2 and the UPA-1 on the B&W's should be minor, while on the Maggies it will be rather more pronounced. both should work fine on both speakers at the end of the day.
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kazoo
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Post by kazoo on Mar 2, 2010 12:01:47 GMT -5
I have the MMGs and love them. Its a great speaker and has potential to be greater. I am running mine with the XPA-1s but I know there is someone on here running them with the UPA-1s. The truth is the more power you can give them the better they sound. Also you need to check out the planar speaker asylum and the MUG. They have all the info you need about Magnepan speakers and tweaks. Also check out www.indiespinzone.com/magnestand.htmlThis guy modifies them with wooden frames and xover and takes them to the next level. I will be doing this mod next myself. Buy them and don't look back. Now for the amps that is a hard one. The XPA-2 has more power but the UPA-1s are monoblocks. Now the speaker manufacturer recommends 100 watts min to run them. So you need to decide on that one. John
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Post by strindl on Mar 2, 2010 22:00:49 GMT -5
I've been a magnepan owner and fan for 32 years. I currently own a pair of MMG's mounted on Sound Anchor stands, and a pair of 1.6's. I just auditioned the 1.7's today and put in my order for a pair.
As others have mentioned, Magnepans are 4 ohm speakers and not terribly efficient...they like lots of good clean power. I power my 1.6's with a vintage Threshold S-500 that puts out 500 watts per channel at 4 ohms. My MMG's are powered by an XPA-2. They make use of all of that power.
I have powered the MMG;s with an adcom 555 mk II which has a power rating identical to the UPA-1's, and that sounded just fine as well. Just not as good as the XPA-2.
I'm sure either of those Emotiva amps would do full justice to a pair of MMG's. And you are right, the MMG's are a steal at 600 bucks for a pair. They sound more like real music than anything else near their price.
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Post by strindl on Mar 2, 2010 22:10:10 GMT -5
My experience with the MMG's is that they can sound really wonderful set up properly. They sound best when they have some space behind them...you don't want to place them up against a wall..pull them out a foot or two. The MMG's do have one thing that you have to understand as well. The planar driver used does have a limited vertical dispersion. With the taller maggies, that is not an issue because they are taller than most peoples ears when those people are standing. With the MMG's, if you are sitting listening to music...no problem...they sound superb. However, when you stand up, some of the high frequency sound sort of disappears. The stands that come with them from the factory compensate for this somewhat by allowing you to angle the speakers backward slightly. That helps. What I have found that helps far more is an aftermarket stand, like the Sound Anchors. Here...this shows the difference. The standard MMG on the right, an MMG on a sound anchor stand on the left. and the MMG panel raised to the highest setting on the Sound Anchors. just for comparison...those are Magnepan 1.6's in the background. Note the height difference
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Post by slbenz on Mar 2, 2010 22:28:39 GMT -5
Just so you know, I made my own Sound Anchor style stands going to my local hardware store and purchasing several L brackets. Was able to do the same thing with my Magnepan 0.5s which are slightly larger than the MMGs. Still have those homemade stands but are collecting dust since I use Magnepan IIIa with Mye Stands.
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Post by strindl on Mar 2, 2010 23:00:45 GMT -5
Just so you know, I made my own Sound Anchor style stands going to my local hardware store and purchasing several L brackets. Was able to do the same thing with my Magnepan 0.5s which are slightly larger than the MMGs. Still have those homemade stands but are collecting dust since I use Magnepan IIIa with Mye Stands. I've seen some home made Magnepan stands that put those Sound Anchors to shame. My skills in that area are limited..so I went with the pro made ones.
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Post by paintedklown on Mar 3, 2010 1:43:34 GMT -5
The MMG's do have one thing that you have to understand as well. The planar driver used does have a limited vertical dispersion. With the taller maggies, that is not an issue because they are taller than most peoples ears when those people are standing. Thanks for the information and advise strindl. Now, if you don't mind, I will continue to ask you (or anyone who would like to chime in) to share your thoughts, experiences, and knowledge with me with the following boatload of comments, ideas, thoughts, ponderings, and questions. As far as pulling these out into the room, that will not be an issue. I have my current bookshelf monitors on home made speaker stands and pulled pretty far into my living room. What I am concerned about is their "limited vertical dispersion" that you mention. Does this affect the "horizontal dispersion" any? Do these have a large sound stage? Does this make finding the "sweet spot" difficult? And finally, I do not want to add a sub-woofer to this system because I feel that I would never be able to properly set it up, to be quite honest. After reading several threads talking about standing waves, SPL meters, real time analyzers, crossover points, corner loaded, stacked, wave cancellation, sub eq....well you get the point. This list goes on forever on properly tuning a sub-woofer to a system and never in my life have I ever heard a system that I couldn't hear when the sound switched to the sub and I can always localize the sound. Even my own HT is like that and I have tried messing with it and it never quite sounds right, so I just turn it back up to ridiculous mode and leave it. LOL! Anyway, the point of that little diatribe was to illustrate how much I want to avoid adding a sub to a 2 ch. music only system. So...will the MMGs be ok for use without a sub? Is having one absolutely necessary to achieve a "full listening experience"? Is it worth doing all of this for a "long-term temporary" setup? I emphasize "long-term temporary" because if I do this and I really like it then I will buy everything else for this system BEFORE I start saving for replacement speakers. (B&W CM-9s, hopefully) So, realistically these may end up being my main daily use speakers for up to two years, possibly longer if I get the HT bug again and can't wait for some sort of standard to be reached. If it's not worth trying then I will put everything else on "hold" until I can get better speakers. I feel that at this point of building this system I would be doing a great dis-service to the rest of my gear (Emo front end) if I didn't get something else for speakers, weather it be the MMGs or the Bowers & Wilkins. (which are FAR out of my budget, but too good to go the rest of my life without, I will save for months to get them if thats what it takes) Sorry for such a long post and the million questions I am throwing at you, I just like to learn a lot about what I am buying, and for me the HI-FI world is a whole new thing. I hope I am asking the right questions here...please forgive my ignorance if these are silly or improperly worded questions that don't make sense EDIT: Sorry, could you describe how they sound? I know that is like trying to describe to a blind man what the color purple looks like. Even if you could compare them to some Klipsch, Polks, Focals, B&Ws, or whatever that would help. And I apologize if I am being a PITA, but I am just really excited about the idea of getting these because the price is right, and add the fact that I have heard so many great things about them. Seems like they could really be the way for me to go at this time, being on a limited budget.
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kazoo
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Post by kazoo on Mar 5, 2010 9:38:29 GMT -5
The sound stage is great on the MMGs. The vertical dispersion Strindl was talking about is that the sound changes from your sitting position to your standing position and yes the sweet spot is small on these. Its not hard to find its just small. But once in that sweet spot the speakers are great. What is weird about these speakers is I always heard that normal box type speakers sound boxy. I really did not have any idea what that meant until I got these. I played them for a while and then switched back to my old speakers. The MMGs sounded open, detailed and alive. My old speakers sounded like you had a person standing in a box yelling at you. Its the weirdest thing to hear and explain. The MMGs I think are rated down to 60 or 50 Hz. It all depends what music you listen to but the bass will not hit you in the chest if that is what you are looking for. For that you will need a sub or actually two. Right now I am running mine with the XPA-1s and the bass is real good. I don't know if that is the room or just the power the amps provide. Its good enough now that I put adding subs to them on hold. But I think in the future I want to add two 10s just to reinforce the bass. Also others have reported that the best integration with the MMGs is at about 50 to 55 Hz. Now for the sound. I think I fell in love with the MMGs because of how clean they sound and the sound stage. The voices just sound right. If the recording is done right you think the singer is in the room with you and you can pick out each instrument. So I guess the speaker is very revealing. One thing you might not like is that they will show the weakest link in your system. So as long as you have a good source, pre and an amp you will be good to go. It was a little weird for me to buy $600 dollar speakers and then look at amps in the range of $2000-$5000 for them. But the XPA-1s make the MMGs sing. I really don't have too much experience with the brands you mentioned to compare them to but I do have some older Polks to compare them to and also some Klipsch. The Polks are a great speaker that I use for my HT. They are better than them. The Klipsch I have are way too bright for my taste and the MMGs are way better. For the last few years I have been into Full range speakers. One driver that does the highs to the lows (horn speakers). A lot of these I have made myself and they are great for their midrange. I think the MMGs capture the midrange of them but give you a lot better soundstange. So I went form using a 3 watt tube amp to a 1000 watt SS amp. All I can say is just try them for yourself and see.
John
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Post by maggieuser on Mar 5, 2010 12:41:10 GMT -5
I use mg12s, which are a step up from the mmgs. Right now I'm driving them with an 100 watt per channel Adcom power amp. They play plenty loud but could really benefit from more power. I was considering the upa 1s also.
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Post by paintedklown on Mar 7, 2010 11:04:20 GMT -5
Thanks for the replies all. After reading, debating, researching, ect. I am still up in the air on these. I do think that I would benefit by having an XPA-2 instead of the UPA-1s if I went that route however. I did find a pair of used B&W DM-603 Series 3 at my nearest HI-FI dealer for $600.00, so then I started thinking I could get those instead of the Magggies while I build the rest of my system and save up for the CM series. I also see that they have a used pair of Paradigm Studio 100v2 for $900.00. A lot of people seem to really dig their 'Digms, I figured they were definitely worth an audition if they were still available the next time I made it to Des Moines. I seriously drive myself crazy with this stuff...I am too indecisive all the time.
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Post by briank on Mar 7, 2010 11:13:30 GMT -5
I'd recommend auditioning these speakers as all of the one's you mentioned have very different sound characteristics. You can do tons of research, and that's a great way to narrow your audition list. But in the end, you really need to audition the speakers on your short list to make a good decision. Also, keep your UPA-1's. They have plenty of power for MMG's or other speakers you mentioned.
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Post by funboy on Mar 7, 2010 19:22:11 GMT -5
Wow, everyone seems to think the mmg's need 1000 watts to really shine. I hope not, as I plan on powering them with a UPA-2, which at 4 ohms, should put out more power then they can handle. Or so I thought - I was hoping people would say the UPA-1's would be more then sufficient to the OP...
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Post by strindl on Mar 7, 2010 20:28:19 GMT -5
Wow, everyone seems to think the mmg's need 1000 watts to really shine. I hope not, as I plan on powering them with a UPA-2, which at 4 ohms, should put out more power then they can handle. Or so I thought - I was hoping people would say the UPA-1's would be more then sufficient to the OP... They'll do fine with a UPA-2. Magnepan itself has a pair of MMG's in their lobby being driven by a NAD integrated amp that's less powerful than a UPA-2.
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Post by slbenz on Mar 7, 2010 20:56:52 GMT -5
Wow, everyone seems to think the mmg's need 1000 watts to really shine. I hope not, as I plan on powering them with a UPA-2, which at 4 ohms, should put out more power then they can handle. Or so I thought - I was hoping people would say the UPA-1's would be more then sufficient to the OP... They'll do fine with a UPA-2. Magnepan itself has a pair of MMG's in their lobby being driven by a NAD integrated amp that's less powerful than a UPA-2. And it only puts out 35 watts per channel. As a Magnepan IIIa owner, I don't think you will need 1000 watts to make a pair of MMGs shine. My IIIas already shine with an XPA-5 in my opinion and I used to run them all the time with a Parasound HCA-1205A which was rated at 200 watts into 4 ohms. Most Magnepans are rated from 50-250 watts into 8 ohms. But can they take more? Sure they can but that depends how loud you want to play them. Even with my Parasound, I never had to turn the volume control to max to get enjoyment.
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Post by strindl on Mar 8, 2010 0:01:16 GMT -5
The MMG's do have one thing that you have to understand as well. The planar driver used does have a limited vertical dispersion. With the taller maggies, that is not an issue because they are taller than most peoples ears when those people are standing. Thanks for the information and advise strindl. Now, if you don't mind, I will continue to ask you (or anyone who would like to chime in) to share your thoughts, experiences, and knowledge with me with the following boatload of comments, ideas, thoughts, ponderings, and questions. As far as pulling these out into the room, that will not be an issue. I have my current bookshelf monitors on home made speaker stands and pulled pretty far into my living room. What I am concerned about is their "limited vertical dispersion" that you mention. Does this affect the "horizontal dispersion" any? Do these have a large sound stage? Does this make finding the "sweet spot" difficult? And finally, I do not want to add a sub-woofer to this system because I feel that I would never be able to properly set it up, to be quite honest. After reading several threads talking about standing waves, SPL meters, real time analyzers, crossover points, corner loaded, stacked, wave cancellation, sub eq....well you get the point. This list goes on forever on properly tuning a sub-woofer to a system and never in my life have I ever heard a system that I couldn't hear when the sound switched to the sub and I can always localize the sound. Even my own HT is like that and I have tried messing with it and it never quite sounds right, so I just turn it back up to ridiculous mode and leave it. LOL! Anyway, the point of that little diatribe was to illustrate how much I want to avoid adding a sub to a 2 ch. music only system. So...will the MMGs be ok for use without a sub? Is having one absolutely necessary to achieve a "full listening experience"? Is it worth doing all of this for a "long-term temporary" setup? I emphasize "long-term temporary" because if I do this and I really like it then I will buy everything else for this system BEFORE I start saving for replacement speakers. (B&W CM-9s, hopefully) So, realistically these may end up being my main daily use speakers for up to two years, possibly longer if I get the HT bug again and can't wait for some sort of standard to be reached. If it's not worth trying then I will put everything else on "hold" until I can get better speakers. I feel that at this point of building this system I would be doing a great dis-service to the rest of my gear (Emo front end) if I didn't get something else for speakers, weather it be the MMGs or the Bowers & Wilkins. (which are FAR out of my budget, but too good to go the rest of my life without, I will save for months to get them if thats what it takes) Sorry for such a long post and the million questions I am throwing at you, I just like to learn a lot about what I am buying, and for me the HI-FI world is a whole new thing. I hope I am asking the right questions here...please forgive my ignorance if these are silly or improperly worded questions that don't make sense EDIT: Sorry, could you describe how they sound? I know that is like trying to describe to a blind man what the color purple looks like. Even if you could compare them to some Klipsch, Polks, Focals, B&Ws, or whatever that would help. And I apologize if I am being a PITA, but I am just really excited about the idea of getting these because the price is right, and add the fact that I have heard so many great things about them. Seems like they could really be the way for me to go at this time, being on a limited budget. Let me see if I can answer some of your questions here. First of all, the MMG's have a nice accurate response down to 50 hz. That's deeper than plenty of other speakers so you don't have to have a sub with them. That being said, I do use a sub with mine, but that's just me. As for how magnepans sound, the description I think is most accurate is...they sound like the music they are reproducing. The strum of an acoustic guitar or the sound of a grand piano playing for example are more realistic on an MMG than anything close to their price. They are incredibly fast and incredibly accurate. The sound is not coming from a 1 inch dome driver or 10 inch cone mounted in a box. The sound is coming from a large flat diaphragm mounted in a frame...no box to color it's sound. Because that diaphragm is so light, and because it is driven over a much larger area of it's surface than any cone or dome, it starts producing sound quicker and just as important, stops producing sound faster when the signal is removed. Because the sound producing surface is much larger than any box speaker, the sound image is much larger as well. The imaging of magnepan speakers is more three dimensional than most box speakers. With my Thiel 3.6's in my main listeing room, I prefer to listen to music with Dolby Pro logic IIx surround active. That helps make the music sound more three dimensional on that system. With the magnepan systems in my living room and bedroom, I don't need any surround sound implementation to get that three dimensional effect. As for the subwoofer integration question you spoke of, I've never really had an issue integrating the right sub with a pair of magnepans. I cross the sub over as low as I can so that it is not producing sound in the frequencies much above 50 hz or so, with the MMG's. I go even lower with the sub in my 1.6 system. Just make sure you get a fast sub...a servo controlled one works well. You don't want to give up the bass quality you have with the MMG for bass quantity in a bad sub.
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Post by kazoo on Mar 8, 2010 9:15:04 GMT -5
Wow, everyone seems to think the mmg's need 1000 watts to really shine. I hope not, as I plan on powering them with a UPA-2, which at 4 ohms, should put out more power then they can handle. Or so I thought - I was hoping people would say the UPA-1's would be more then sufficient to the OP... I never said you need 1000 watts to run them, but it has been mentioned a lot, the more power you can give Magnepans the better. I actually ran them for a while with a 6 WPC tube amp and they sounded good just would not go too loud. I never had mono block and wanted to try them and don't regret it. But if they had the UPA-1s at the time I would have probably went with those. I like the idea of mono blocks. It is in the plans to get the MMGWs for the surrounds for my HT and use the UPA-1s to run them. I think the UPA-1s will have plenty of power to run them. John
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ntrain42
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Post by ntrain42 on Mar 8, 2010 10:35:46 GMT -5
Hey everyone. Currently I am building a 2 ch. music only system. Throughout this quest for audio greatness I have read and learned much. I have also discovered new products/companies I never knew existed. One of these new companies was Emotiva and the products they offer, another one was Magnepan. While ultimately I would like to get some B&W CM-9s for this system I feel like I am kind of defeating the purpose of buying this really nice front end, only to run everything to a set of cheap monitors. www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Monitor1mkII/ seems hardly fitting to me. Anyway, as stated I discovered "maggies" and the MMG series line they produce. www.magnepan.com/model_MMGThese seem VERY intriguing to me and I think I would really like to give them a try. I figure $600.00 to get true "audiophile" sound is a pretty good deal. It wouldn't take much saving to snag a pair of these up and would give me a "fix" until I saved up the $3K (plus tax) for the B&Ws. What do you all think? Are these worth getting for a "place holder" setup of sorts? I see that the XPA-2 is commonly used to power maggies. Would the UPA-1s be enough? I am not trying to turn this into another XPA-2 vs. UPA-1 thread, the XPAs are larger, more powerful, AND Emotiva amps. 'Nuff said. Now for the caveats...I am an audio "novice". I do understand that maggies are VERY picky about room placement and have a relatively narrow sweet spot that can be tricky to find. Will it be difficult to properly set these up? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Even if it is advice to steer me away from these? I just want honest answers/advice. Thanks for reading and take care. -Dave The UPA-1's would be a perfect match for the MMG's........Id take a set of UPA-1's over the XPA-2 any day of the week. The XPA-2's only offer about 1.5db more headroom over the UPA-1's, the UPA-1's though will have all the advantages a monoblock has over a 2ch. amp.
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Post by monkumonku on Mar 8, 2010 10:42:15 GMT -5
The UPA-1's would be a perfect match for the MMG's........Id take a set of UPA-1's over the XPA-2 any day of the week. The XPA-2's only offer about 1.5db more headroom over the UPA-1's, the UPA-1's though will have all the advantages a monoblock has over a 2ch. amp. I understand why you recommend the UPA-1 over the XPA-2 because you are looking at the specs on paper. But I would be interested in your findings from making a real world comparison between the two. Because as I'm sure you would be the first to point out, specs don't necessarily mean anything and while a design may look good on paper, it doesn't always translate to better performance in the real world. For example, the problems you've been having with the UPA-7 would not have been forseeable from looking at the specs or schematics. Hey, spring for an XPA-2 and put it up against your UPA-1's and then tell us the verdict! You have a 30-day trial period! ;D
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ntrain42
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Post by ntrain42 on Mar 8, 2010 11:37:09 GMT -5
The UPA-1's would be a perfect match for the MMG's........Id take a set of UPA-1's over the XPA-2 any day of the week. The XPA-2's only offer about 1.5db more headroom over the UPA-1's, the UPA-1's though will have all the advantages a monoblock has over a 2ch. amp. I understand why you recommend the UPA-1 over the XPA-2 because you are looking at the specs on paper. But I would be interested in your findings from making a real world comparison between the two. Because as I'm sure you would be the first to point out, specs don't necessarily mean anything and while a design may look good on paper, it doesn't always translate to better performance in the real world. For example, the problems you've been having with the UPA-7 would not have been forseeable from looking at the specs or schematics. Hey, spring for an XPA-2 and put it up against your UPA-1's and then tell us the verdict! You have a 30-day trial period! ;D The problems Im having with my UPA-7 could very well be due to a bad ground since it wasnt prevalent when I first hooked it up. And again Im using a MULTICHANNEL amp that now shows crosstalk issues, whether its defect or by design really doesnt matter. It just furthers my point about using dedicated monoblocks. You wont have any chance of cross talk when you run 2 individual amps which will give much better channel seperation and an improved soundstage.
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