[SteveFord]

JRC was kind enough to forward this article to me:

http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/magnepan2/1.html

I'll be following this series with interest.

P.S.
I just went over to Magnepan's web site and check out this We'll pay you to try out one of these Magneplanars? link:
 
http://www.magnepan.com/dealer_direct

[josh358]

Damn, so much for my plan to install a DWM in the refrigerator!

[medium jim]

Steve:

Nice review, especially about which amps for them.  More interesting is that he felt the small NAD to be the best bang for the buck amp and is only 50 watts in 4ohm load.

Maybe reviews like this will start to dispell the idea that it takes mega watts or current to drive them or to flesh out the detail.

Jim

[Rclark]

it doesn't. It takes mega power to get the most out of them. A small amp is what I started with and, yes, it produced sound. The article about small budget amps was correct. A small amp will work.

[medium jim]

it doesn't. It takes mega power to get the most out of them. A small amp is what I started with and, yes, it produced sound.

I see that you didn't bother reading the review.  I especially liked where the reviewer commented about the forum chatter about those espousing big amps...

Jim

[Rclark]

It's not chatter, it's experience.

[Letitroll98]

Precious little.

Sorry, cheap shot that was just too easy to take, forgive me.

I actually have a NAD 3020B, the original to the newer 3020i, that I can try out, maybe tonight.  The difference you're looking for is nuance and tonality over slam and dynamics.  If you get enough of the former you might forgo some of the latter, personal tastes of course.  For myself I go back and forth between wanting one or the other more.

[SteveFord]

I was given a 3020B by a buddy and have used it with the MMGs.
It's not a bad combo but a little too bass heavy for my tastes.  It has that warm and wooly British sound.
It now gets used to drive a pair of Stax Sigmas and that's a great combination.

[medium jim]

Precious little.

Sorry, cheap shot that was just too easy to take, forgive me.

I actually have a NAD 3020B, the original to the newer 3020i, that I can try out, maybe tonight.  The difference you're looking for is nuance and tonality over slam and dynamics.  If you get enough of the former you might forgo some of the latter, personal tastes of course.  For myself I go back and forth between wanting one or the other more.

Then there are the exceptional amp(s) that can deliver the finesse and dynamics all in one package and this too doesn't require mega watts, and this is what experience has thought me. 

The best amp for Magnepan's is the one that puts a smile on your face, and not how many watts it has under the hood. 

Jim

[Rclark]

let's see, I've had three different amps, one with three variants, five different power supplies among them ranging from linear, smps, battery, PI and Triode power cables, different caps, all within a year and a half. For MMG's I am very experienced in power thank you.

[SteveFord]

If I were to set up an MMG system for stereo use for myself I'd probably go with a moderate output tube amp. 
Maybe one of the Dynaco ST70 based amps which I think would be a good match. 
Having said that, I'm using SS for the wife to leave running for days at a time. 

Moving right along, I did speak with Wendell today and was surprised to see that they're just going to call the new MMGs the new MMGs and then they'll just be known as the MMGs once some time has elapsed.
I wonder about those guys sometimes.

[Maritan]

 

Ooh... I'm going to keep an eye on this one! 

[pdaddy]

Emotiva A-100 mini-x perhaps?

[jarcher]

Will be interesting to hear back from the reviewer as to what amps he reviews / likes for the MMG.  Sorta surprised that the Sansui wasn't considered better as that AU-719 is considered one of the more "hi-fi" vintage Sansui's. 

As for power requirements for maggies - I kept quiet in the previous thread, but after running some experiments of my own, felt obliged to chime in.  Since last summer I have a pair of MG 1.7's that I bought off another AC member.  Have been running them for home theater w/ a Krell Showcase amp that puts out supposedly 250w into 4 ohms and bought expressly because I thought I needed a lot of power to run the 1.7's successfully.  Lately I've been testing a Conrad Johnson MV71A1 vintage tube amp that's rated at 75WPC.  Been considering it as an alternative to the Krell for two channel music, especially for less than perfect digital tracks where the Krell can be too revealing / uncomplimentary.

Even running the CJ with a Bel Canto 1.5 preamp / DAC, which is basically a passive preamp (digital attenuation only), I've found that the Cj MV75A1 has plenty of grunt to successfully play most material to a satisfying level (even though I'm at 90-100 on the volume).  Trying it out with active pre-amplification not more than 50-75% on the knob reveals even more than sufficient volume for my needs - and I like to play it loud (90db), though not at ear bleeding levels.

Doing an A/B of Krell vs CJ on the basis of volume & dynamics, I don't really feel that I'm loosing that much w/ the CJ vs Krell (on other SQ basis there are obvious differences).  The main difference re: volume is on the Bel Canto I'm at 80-90 on the knob for the Krell vs 90-100 for the CJ to achieve similar loudness.  Measuring by ear - I do have a radio shack SPL meter but have been to lazy to break it out & measure more scientifically.

So in sum, I think some folks claims that you need hundreds of watts - the more the better - to really make maggies happy, is perhaps over claimed.  Assuming you really hit them with megawatts, I'm suspecting that they perhaps couldn't even effectively use them without the mylar starting to slap against the magnet poles & otherwise screwing up the sound.  Just speculation though.

IMO - I don't think it's too off to run MMG's w/ +35WPC tube power or +75WPC w/ the the 1.7's. 

[Rclark]

SPL isn't even the issue. Of course a small budget amp will make sound, yes, at normal levels, even loud levels, but has nothing on the SQ of a big refined amp. Loud, or quiet enough to hear a pin drop, there's no contest. And I did run an extremely highly regarded small amp on them, the Millennia, just didn't want to say anything because I beat up on that thing enough and people really love that amp. Yeah, the killer of $6000 SET amps, that one. 32 watts, 87 watts, neither of them come close to my big amps at any volume level..

FWIW your 45 watt tube amp should be roughly equivalent to my 87 watt Virtue and that thing runs out of gas hard (CLIP LIGHT. If you don't have one, you don't know what's really going on) on the Maggies at high volume and never gets to full potential. Not just just full volume, full SQ potential. Does it sound good? You bet. Does it get loud enough? Sure? Is that the point? No. If I didn't have a clip light on my Virtue I would have never thought there was a lack of power to deliver all the transients cleanly. You need a big amp for that.

Just to remind everyone, the Virtue is a powerful amp that grunts hard off the two 5amp batteries and was designed to run large floorstanding speakers. That was the whole point when they came out, look at that little amp running those big ass speakers, and wow it sounds great. It is not a toy, it was one of THE budget amps to have just a few years ago. Budget is a relative term, my setup cost almost $1000 with batteries and mods, and several power supplies. I was not suffering at all with that amp... on my MMG's...

But if you want both maximum sound quality and most SPL and most dynamics without clipping the amp you need a big amp. Period.

The article was for small budget amps, it wasn't a treatise on the ultimate mmg amp. And was just one guy's opinion, just like this is my own opinion. The prevailing opinion on the internet is that mmg's and maggies like power and respond greatly to bigger and better amps. I can attest to that fact.

Thread readers can figure out their own needs, as did I and everyone else. I don't care what anyone else runs on theirs. Most posters here are older and kind of set with their systems, and want to feel what they have is more than adequate and that's fine, I don't want to argue, do what you want, believe whatever you want. I chose state of the art, large amps, and reap the sonic results daily.

[SteveFord]

Not clipping is a good thing but I believe that most people overestimate the amount of power they're using.
I know that I did.
Oftentimes I'll look at my amps and wonder why I have such giant things when they're just loafing along.
Many years ago I had a modified Carver M500t amp with analog meters and I was using it with Magnepan IIIAs. 
Here's what I found on the peak readings:

5 - 10 WPC: you can talk over the music
10 - 40 WPC: you can talk loudly over the music
40 - 75 WPC: you can talk REAL LOUD over the music
75 - 100 WPC: this is starting to get rather loud
100 - 150  WPC: if I lived in an apartment my neighbors would strangle me
150 - 175 WPC: Even I think that this is stupidly loud
175 - 250 WPC+: I wonder why my neighbors swerve their cars at me

I had similar readings from various SS amps with LED displays.
My average listening level was using around 50 WPC on the peaks, when I had the house to myself and I was blasting it I'd probably be in the 125-150 WPC range.
I think I saw a peak of 300 once and that was more than enough for me.

The most I ever pumped into an MMG was around 175 on the peaks before I started to worry about blowing them up.
That was at door gets kicked in, irate neighbor punches you in the mouth volume levels.

[goingsolo]

Moving right along, I did speak with Wendell today and was surprised to see that they're just going to call the new MMGs the new MMGs and then they'll just be known as the MMGs once some time has elapsed.
I wonder about those guys sometimes.

Is there anything physically different between the new MMG and old MMG.  If I were offered a used pairs of MMG in the future, how could I know it was a newer version other than finding out the production date? 

[SteveFord]

That's a good question, I'll see if I can get that answered.

It looks like they let Wendell out on Sundays (?!) so next week he can check to see if it can be done visually with a flashlight or do you have to go by serial number.

[rollo]

AVA Synergy line or 600R if budget allows.



charles

[josh358]

Not clipping is a good thing but I believe that most people overestimate the amount of power they're using.
I know that I did.
Oftentimes I'll look at my amps and wonder why I have such giant things when they're just loafing along.
Many years ago I had a modified Carver M500t amp with analog meters and I was using it with Magnepan IIIAs. 
Here's what I found on the peak readings:

5 - 10 WPC: you can talk over the music
10 - 40 WPC: you can talk loudly over the music
40 - 75 WPC: you can talk REAL LOUD over the music
75 - 100 WPC: this is starting to get rather loud
100 - 150  WPC: if I lived in an apartment my neighbors would strangle me
150 - 175 WPC: Even I think that this is stupidly loud
175 - 250 WPC+: I wonder why my neighbors swerve their cars at me

I had similar readings from various SS amps with LED displays.
My average listening level was using around 50 WPC on the peaks, when I had the house to myself and I was blasting it I'd probably be in the 125-150 WPC range.
I think I saw a peak of 300 once and that was more than enough for me.

The most I ever pumped into an MMG was around 175 on the peaks before I started to worry about blowing them up.
That was at door gets kicked in, irate neighbor punches you in the mouth volume levels.

What happens I think is that the ear determines loudness on the basis of short-term average levels. The ballistics of VU meters were designed to emulate this, so that engineers could match levels subjectively. Most meters miss the actual peaks. And so audiophiles think their amps are loafing when in fact they're clipping. Roger Sanders maintains that he's measured audiophile systems with a scope and they're typically surprised to see how often their amplifiers are clipping.)

With the typical meter, you have to add 10 dB to the reading to approximate the actual peak levels (with typical unamplified acoustical music -- in some cases, e.g., piano, peaks can be 20 dB, and in heavily compressed stuff like "loudness wars" pop they can be only a few dB). (There are real peak hold meters and peak hold clipping detectors, but with consumer stuff, it's hard to tell whether they really are.)

While I haven't gone around measuring home systems as Sanders has, my sense is that most consumer systems suffer from peak clipping and dynamic compression. You really hear that when you've spent time in the studio, where you're listening to uncompressed tracks with amps and monitors that can do 130 dB SPL. It isn't a matter of volume, but of the sense that there's a dynamic blanket of sorts on the sound -- distortion of various kinds, loss of steam.