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It seems there's a number of users on this forum that are rather fond of using maggies in their home theaters, myself included. I have had a number of people email me askig my oppinion on their benefits, drawback and the like so I thought I'd start a thread on the subject.
My introduction to planner speakers came a few years ago when I was looking for a more musical speaker to replace my Energy C-2 bookself speaker. I was looking at the DIY kits and asked ThomasW for some help in suggesting a suitable kit. Well one of the paths he suggested was for me to try a pair of magnepan MMG's and see how I liked those. Well of course anyone who's tried a pair can atest to once bitten you'll never look at speakers the same way again. So I kept those as my mains for a while before looking to upgrade once again. This time I found a great deal on a pair of 1.4's which are now my mains moving the MMG's to the rear duty. After that the centre speaker was the only non planner speaker in the system so I bought a set of SMGa's which are now my rears and I'm using a single MMG as my centre speaker.
So now that you have some history of where I came from lets move onto why I like maggies
Well there's the obvious merits of planners for music given their airy sound but how do they do for movie sound tracks? Well IMO maggies are some of the best speakers I've heard for reproducing subtle details. This is evident when you hear maggies being used as rear speakers. There's often a lot of ambience being sent to the rears and maggies have an uncanny ability to generate a truely enveloping sense of "space" behind you. I've found a few movies where things like crowd scenes or bird chips etc can be down right spooky on maggies! Magnepans also do voices very clearly which is a great benefit for the centre channel. I've come to really enjoy dialog through my MMG.
So if maggies are so great why don't we all use them? Well they don't come without some potential draw backs. First off maggies are not effiecent speakers. They are rated around 84 dB/2.83 volt into 4 ohms. Now this is fairly low but its a benign load given that the resistance to the amp does not change with respect to the frequency being played unlike conventional speaker or Martin Logan's that can dip into the 2 ohm range. I'd say all seperate power amps and better receivers should be able to push maggies but my Denon 3300 was running out of steam when I asked it to power all my maggies. My solution was to add a seperate power amp which really helpped open things up. You don't need to spend a ton on a seperate amp since even the $300 (used) HKPA5800 will do nicely.
Another potential draw back is size. Simply put maggies are large panel speakers that might not suit smaller rooms. Now given you can get a wide range of grill covers and trim colous this helps but its hard to hide 6 foot tall maggie's :LOL: That said in dedicated rooms you can do a lot to make them dissapear into the room by going with a solid black grill cloth and using black drapes etc behind them.
You'll tend to hear a lot about how difficult it is to properly place maggies in the room and that they require tons of breathing room around them to sound properly. IMO while its partially true that they do require breathing room so do all quality speakers. Maggies being dipole also radiate in a figure "8" pattern so side wall reflections are less of a concern then conventional speakers which may or may not be a help in narrow rooms like mine. I plan on suspending my mains and centre from the ceiling with a solid black curtain behind them so from the seats they will barely be visible. The rears will either be suspended as well or mounted on the walls with hinges which leaves me with more room behind the listening area for the enterance way etc.
Ok so I've blabbed on long enough lets hear from the other maggie fans...come on burke, david and thomas share your thoughts.
My introduction to planner speakers came a few years ago when I was looking for a more musical speaker to replace my Energy C-2 bookself speaker. I was looking at the DIY kits and asked ThomasW for some help in suggesting a suitable kit. Well one of the paths he suggested was for me to try a pair of magnepan MMG's and see how I liked those. Well of course anyone who's tried a pair can atest to once bitten you'll never look at speakers the same way again. So I kept those as my mains for a while before looking to upgrade once again. This time I found a great deal on a pair of 1.4's which are now my mains moving the MMG's to the rear duty. After that the centre speaker was the only non planner speaker in the system so I bought a set of SMGa's which are now my rears and I'm using a single MMG as my centre speaker.
So now that you have some history of where I came from lets move onto why I like maggies
Well there's the obvious merits of planners for music given their airy sound but how do they do for movie sound tracks? Well IMO maggies are some of the best speakers I've heard for reproducing subtle details. This is evident when you hear maggies being used as rear speakers. There's often a lot of ambience being sent to the rears and maggies have an uncanny ability to generate a truely enveloping sense of "space" behind you. I've found a few movies where things like crowd scenes or bird chips etc can be down right spooky on maggies! Magnepans also do voices very clearly which is a great benefit for the centre channel. I've come to really enjoy dialog through my MMG. So if maggies are so great why don't we all use them? Well they don't come without some potential draw backs. First off maggies are not effiecent speakers. They are rated around 84 dB/2.83 volt into 4 ohms. Now this is fairly low but its a benign load given that the resistance to the amp does not change with respect to the frequency being played unlike conventional speaker or Martin Logan's that can dip into the 2 ohm range. I'd say all seperate power amps and better receivers should be able to push maggies but my Denon 3300 was running out of steam when I asked it to power all my maggies. My solution was to add a seperate power amp which really helpped open things up. You don't need to spend a ton on a seperate amp since even the $300 (used) HKPA5800 will do nicely.
Another potential draw back is size. Simply put maggies are large panel speakers that might not suit smaller rooms. Now given you can get a wide range of grill covers and trim colous this helps but its hard to hide 6 foot tall maggie's :LOL: That said in dedicated rooms you can do a lot to make them dissapear into the room by going with a solid black grill cloth and using black drapes etc behind them.
You'll tend to hear a lot about how difficult it is to properly place maggies in the room and that they require tons of breathing room around them to sound properly. IMO while its partially true that they do require breathing room so do all quality speakers. Maggies being dipole also radiate in a figure "8" pattern so side wall reflections are less of a concern then conventional speakers which may or may not be a help in narrow rooms like mine. I plan on suspending my mains and centre from the ceiling with a solid black curtain behind them so from the seats they will barely be visible. The rears will either be suspended as well or mounted on the walls with hinges which leaves me with more room behind the listening area for the enterance way etc.
Ok so I've blabbed on long enough lets hear from the other maggie fans...come on burke, david and thomas share your thoughts.
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