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I got a good amount of research about the M8N done on this forum, so I thought I would share my fruits.
Magnepan MMG-W
HiVi M8N
75 Watt plate amp on each M8N.
0.75 cubic foot Parts Express Cherry cabinet (sealed)
The MMG-W's run full range, but honestly they play very little below 100Hz. The plate amp has a 24db low pass crossover for the M8N....its set probably somewhere around 80Hz.
Initially I used Dayton 8" Quatro's. They were ported, but the only thing I could fit comfortably was a 2" pipe, but at moderate levels the port simply became overwelmed with turbulance. So I decided to try the M8N since I read good things here.
The M8N does pretty good in the sealed enclosure. Admittedly it did better than I wanted. I now had a problem with the driver bottoming out from over excursion. I added a capacitor to the input of the plate amp which gave me -6db at around 45Hz. Although the woofers could benefit from 4th order high pass at about 20Hz, this is good enough for just about all listening.
Just by themselves they sound really good. They cost about $900 to build....which isn't bad if you've always wanted a commericial design like this. I've spent a little more though, since this is actually version 2.
I don't listen to alot of bass heavy music. I tried Bullet Proof Soul By Sade (Love Delux Track 8 ) and it held up to that pretty good. Handles Enigma and Vangelis great too. I'm still playing with placement issues and adjusting levels. SOme of the newer movies and Xbox games are starting to throw heavy bass effects (Halo 1/2, Battlefied 2)
I think the problem was that I was so use to the regualr MMG's needing about 3 feet from the back wall that I pulled these out too far and as a result the bass sounded really weak at the listening position. I moved the speakers to maybe 18" away from the wall and the bass at the listening position filled in much better, so I was able to lower the gain....which gave me more headroom before the woofers have problems.
Another reason I chose the M8N, was because I new the color combination would look striking :B
Here they are next to a pair of regular MMG for comparison
Heres a rear shot. I modified the plate amp to just have one input, and thats all.
Heres Version 1.
Heres a better view of the plate amps inputs
These actually sounded really wierd to me as this was my first time using MMG-W. The panels had some wierd phase issues (sound terrible at 7 feet and farther) and really didn't have much high frequency extension (even for Maggies). Well it turned out when I dissasembled these for Version 2, that I had one of panels backwards
ops: . In my defense though, its actually kind of an easy thing to do with the MMG-W because of the way they are made....they don't have an obvious "front".
Hope you like
Magnepan MMG-W
HiVi M8N
75 Watt plate amp on each M8N.
0.75 cubic foot Parts Express Cherry cabinet (sealed)
The MMG-W's run full range, but honestly they play very little below 100Hz. The plate amp has a 24db low pass crossover for the M8N....its set probably somewhere around 80Hz.
Initially I used Dayton 8" Quatro's. They were ported, but the only thing I could fit comfortably was a 2" pipe, but at moderate levels the port simply became overwelmed with turbulance. So I decided to try the M8N since I read good things here.
The M8N does pretty good in the sealed enclosure. Admittedly it did better than I wanted. I now had a problem with the driver bottoming out from over excursion. I added a capacitor to the input of the plate amp which gave me -6db at around 45Hz. Although the woofers could benefit from 4th order high pass at about 20Hz, this is good enough for just about all listening.
Just by themselves they sound really good. They cost about $900 to build....which isn't bad if you've always wanted a commericial design like this. I've spent a little more though, since this is actually version 2.
I don't listen to alot of bass heavy music. I tried Bullet Proof Soul By Sade (Love Delux Track 8 ) and it held up to that pretty good. Handles Enigma and Vangelis great too. I'm still playing with placement issues and adjusting levels. SOme of the newer movies and Xbox games are starting to throw heavy bass effects (Halo 1/2, Battlefied 2)
I think the problem was that I was so use to the regualr MMG's needing about 3 feet from the back wall that I pulled these out too far and as a result the bass sounded really weak at the listening position. I moved the speakers to maybe 18" away from the wall and the bass at the listening position filled in much better, so I was able to lower the gain....which gave me more headroom before the woofers have problems.
Another reason I chose the M8N, was because I new the color combination would look striking :B
Here they are next to a pair of regular MMG for comparison
Heres a rear shot. I modified the plate amp to just have one input, and thats all.
Heres Version 1.
Heres a better view of the plate amps inputs
These actually sounded really wierd to me as this was my first time using MMG-W. The panels had some wierd phase issues (sound terrible at 7 feet and farther) and really didn't have much high frequency extension (even for Maggies). Well it turned out when I dissasembled these for Version 2, that I had one of panels backwards
ops: . In my defense though, its actually kind of an easy thing to do with the MMG-W because of the way they are made....they don't have an obvious "front".Hope you like
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