I have a pair of 26 year old MGIIIa's that are still capable of excellent sound staging, pretty good low bass, and great mid and upper bass. The problem is that they are not capable of producing the very best sound staging, low bass and mid/upper bass at the same time in the same position in my room. For sound staging and low bass, the best set up is to have the Maggies way out in the room -- nine or ten feet out from the front wall. However this creates a severe dip in the mid and upper bass. Thus I have had to settle for listening to them closer to the front wall. This gives decent depth and sound staging, very good mid bass, but no low bass. Tradeoffs.
After reading the reviews of the 3.7s with the addition of DWM bass panels, I wondered if this might solve my problem. Here is what Chris Martens of TAS wrote:
"The result was simply breathtaking—nothing short of near state-of-the-art sound, but at a comparatively sane price. With the DWM modules pitching in, Magnepan’s full-range 3.7 panels were spectacular, offering very high levels of resolution, compelling 3D soundstaging, and bass that was at once deeply extended and full of impact and punch, yet also tautly controlled with remarkable speed and pitch definition. Who says Maggies can’t make potent mid-bass?
In all candor, I felt the Magnepan demo represented one of the three best sounds I heard at CES/T.H.E. Show, which is pretty amazing when you consider that the other two contenders were systems well north of the $200,000 mark."
Based upon this and several other glowing reports, I began to explore adding a pair to my full range Maggies. This summarizes my journey.
First, about my system. The below experience relates to my tastes in my system in my room which is a carpeted and sheetrock-over-concrete 20' by 14' basement with an 8' ceiling. I drive them with Emotiva mono blocks putting out 400 watts into four ohms. Source is usually a Mac feeding a Benchmark DAC 2 used as a preamp. For analogue I have a Benz Ace in a Rega, going through a tube Sonic Frontiers phono pre. Cables are all Transparent Audio.
The effect when first adding the DWMs to my originally-positioned system is not subtle. I got a LOT more bass, of the quality I would expect from Magnepan. This is supposedly the same woofer they use in the 20 series. The improvement is obvious in even the briefest listen and easily measurable. The DWM panels add significant, clean bass from 50 or 63 Hz up to about 300 Hz. The increase can easily be between three and four db and substantially more (up to 8db) when filling in a bass valley. These babies can rock. Whether listening to kick drum, bass guitar, or Kodo drummers, you get a heck of a lot more lower end output.
They can both increase and smooth the bass. I can set the DWM's so they are different distances from myself and the various walls compared to the main speakers. Peaks and valleys can totally disappear when done properly.
Here are some tricks...
1). If set in the same plane as my main speakers, I get a huge boost in the lower mids (200 Hz plus). To counteract this, they need to be placed on a plane toward the listener about one foot ahead. This smooths the mids and is exactly what Magnepan recommends. My room and I agree.
2). To get more mid bass, I moved them toward, or preferable right-up-to, my side walls. That said, in my room these speakers have never made any appreciable or measurable difference at under 50 Hz. Perhaps this number will lower with break in. These are woofers. Not subwoofers.
3). A Radio Shack SPL meter and correction/adjustment chart is extremely convenient. I tried a massive number of locations, and the measurement becomes critical. That said, my ears were more important, and part of what I listened for wasn't frequency response but integration, timing, sound staging, imaging decay and smearing. The timing has to be perfect, and the only way I could judge this was through long term listening.
4). I used the supplied resistors to reduce the output of the DWMs. In my room I found they were mandatory. Magnepan can also mail you attenuators which reduces output LESS but roll off the upper frequencies FASTER. I found the attenuators worked best at suppressing the upper mids and lower treble and the resistors were best at reducing excessive bass boost. Oddly, the resistors did not fit as originally equipped. I had to modify them by adding a piece of speaker wire.
So, what were the results of adding two bass panels in my initial position (five feet out from the front wall) in a 14' by 20' room? My verdict was too much mid and upper bass. The effect is pleasing. Powerful bass. But it muddies up the sound and makes male vocals too prominent. It was not worth the tradeoffs. As a warning, this is what one is likely to hear if testing the DWMs in an audio store.
Using DWM's to supplement a pair of full range Maggies is -- as Magnepan suggests -- probably best suited for a really large room. My room is not large.
But read on....
The breakthrough came when I started over with a clean slate on my positioning. I had to optimize three factors: my listening position, my mains, and the DWM's (and to a lesser extent the angle of the four speakers).
I started with my chair about a third of the way into the room, speakers out about five feet from the wall, firing longways into the room, tweeters in, toed in slightly ahead of me with the speakers 24 inches from the side wall.
The optimal location, after untold trials, was the speakers 9 feet into the room, 21 inches from side walls, tweeters in with the seating location between 2 and 3 feet from the back wall. The optimal DWM location was with them outside and about 16 inches forward of the mains (about ten inches closer to me than the mains). The DWMs are exactly parallel to the front wall. This gives me substantially more low bass from my mains and a deep sound stage to die for, indeed, the entire front half of the room comes alive. The DWMs then fill in the mid and upper bass and add immense and effortless power across the lower half of the frequency spectrum.
With these positionings, I can get flat frequency response and phenomenal bass. It is powerful in a way which I would never have imagined possible from a 26 year old three series panel. Currently, I have the setup so that the speakers are within +/- 2.5 db across the spectrum with the following exceptions... 63 hz is down 4.5 db, 32 hz is elevated 3.5 db, and 25 hz is down 6 db.
The results are phenomenal to these ears. The bass is clean and powerful with great delineation. I am NOT getting low bass out of the DWMs. I am using the DWMs to give me the positioning freedom to optimize the rest of my system to get better results. The benefit is in a much, much deeper soundstage and more optimal low bass out of the three series.
Some final thoughts....
1). Beware auditions at dealers. The first store I went to had the 3.7s set up terribly. No imaging, no sound staging. The second one I went to had good sounding 3.7s but only a single DWM wired out of phase and stuck under a shelf. I honestly could not even hear it when it was turned on and off in blind listening tests. Just as importantly, the position of the Maggies which optimizes their sound without the DWM's is unlikely to be the same as the best location with the woofer panels.
2). As above, do not assume the DWMs are in proper phase with your mains or with each other. This needs to be verified.
3). I strongly recommend an in home trial before you buy. I have no idea if what worked in my room will work in your room with your ears. I'm not even sure it would work in a different room in my house. Find a good dealer who will let you try them at home for a few weeks.
4). Make sure you have a radio shack meter, test CD, a pen and a lot of paper to measure what is happening. Eventually, I measured enough changes to start learning what kind of changes made what kind of effects. Measure, move chair four inches, remeasure, angle panels more, remeasure, move mains back six inches... Then redo it all using just your ears. I recorded 50 or more different configurations. The flattest response was not the best sounding, but the two are strongly correlated.
5). The panels can be run by wiring them with separate wires to your amp terminals. This is easy, but it lowers the load to 2 ohms. I cannot imagine doing this with a receiver or lower-powered amp, or one which fails to deliver a whole lot of current. Magnepan recommends cheap, thin, speaker wires for the DWM and that is what I used.
6). Use the DWM resistors. It lowers output and was necessary in my room. This may not be the case in a larger room.
7). When I had everything positioned perfectly for sound staging and bass response, I still had a problem with under-damped sounding bass. It sounded great on some music, especially arena rock, but it was not exactly what I wanted. Clearly I was hearing room resonances. I solved it by eliminating all toe in on the main speakers and the woofer panels. This substantially reduced the decay time or smearing on the mid bass. I assume I was no longer exciting the width mode of the room, as all bass was firing perfectly down the length of the room.
. The straight-on firing gave good but not the best imaging. So I am tilting the speakers in by a couple of inches. Tradeoffs. This excites some of the room overhang, but not as much as before.
9). I tried using the mains and panels in a Roose configuration. I loved the sound of the Roose, but have as yet been unable to integrate the DWM panels in this configuration. Perhaps someone else can figure this out. In my room, I felt I would need a real sub to make the Roose work.
10). My final confession is that the increased lower-end power led to the odd situation where the main panels actually sound better REVERSED (Mylar forward). It compensates by tilting the balance of the mains up a bit. My guess is this would not be true for a newer speaker without a twenty year old ribbon. But that is a guess.
Do I have perfect sound? Heck no. My 3a's still present overly large instruments on close-miked recordings, I still have the frustrating toe-in tradeoff between the tightest bass and best imaging. I also do not have the cohesive integration and realism that owners of newer Maggies get. That said, this is the best sound I have gotten yet out of my quarter century old Magneplanars.
Could subwoofers now improve things even more? Hmm, the journey continues....
