[SteveFord]

I finally decided to see what the deal is with the 1.7s.
The Absolute Sound raved about them along with the various internet sources but I figure that there's a fair amount of marketing BS in the magazines and who knows what's being written online.
So I managed to track down The Listening Room in Maryland earlier today.  When their site says Call For Directions they really mean it.  Don't do what I did, call for directions before you leave or else you may end up at the owner's house!
I listened to my 1.6s for two hours before I left and the last thing I listened to was Zappa's Apostrophe which I brought with me.
The 1.7s are like everyone says in that the sound is much more of a piece (if that makes any sense).  The speaker sounds more coherent (unlike me) or perhaps a better way of putting it is that there doesn't seem to be the bass/mid/treble sections, the music is just coming from one BIG PANEL.
The tweeters were on the inside and the soundstage seemed wider than my 1.6s which I have with the tweeter section on the outside.  I think that these will fill larger rooms better - before you had to go with 3.6s.  I tried my 1.6s in the living room and they were just too puny.  I think that 1.7s might work downstairs.
I listened to these without a sub so I could hear just what the speaker alone can do.  They were fine without one but I'd add a sub as there's nothing below 40hz.
Build quality and parts selection looks to be better than on the previous models and the aluminum side pieces looked better than I thought they would.  In the pictures they seem to stand out further than they actually do.
All in all, they're really impressive (despite those wretched little feet)!

[AVnerdguy]

Those wretched little feet actually work fairly well BUT a set of Mye stands or something similar is a must for piece of mind. With the animals and kids banging around I feel a lot more confident about their stability. Teri thinks they have a better/tighter bottom end with the stands as well and she's no audiogeek so there must be something to it if she notices a difference.

A good sub with just a bit of fill rounds out the sound nicely. I crossover around 60Hz. The soundstage is marvelous. I've tried them with tweeters to the inside and with them to the outside. I prefer the outside and just a hint of toe in. Not a huge room where they are but I have no doubt that when I build my perfect room (larger) that they can fill a larger space nicely.

The aluminum side trim is hardly noticeable. I wanted black/black but took the black/silver because I couldn't wait any longer and they were predicting another month. It looks like the trim could be easily removed and painted. May go that route eventually.

[bummrush]

Subs can be nice but are hardly nessecary my mmg,s went down to 40 and its clean clear and plenty deep.Itdepended on room placement and  to have great room to put them in when I had them.people are used to boom boom from subs and Maggie bass is a whole new deal to most

[AVnerdguy]

I hate thumpy boomy fake bass. I'd rather not have a sub if that's what it provided. As good as the 1.7's are down low they needed a bit of rounding out on the bottom end. Not much - just a touch. It might be different in another room but for now I have the sub in the system about 90% of the time. For acoustic jazz I don't typically have it on. They are fantastic on a good walking bass line and do well on most classical music as well. For rock n' roll I want that added dimension.

[SteveFord]

I didn't mean overpowering bass just something to fill in the bottom end where the panels cut out. 
The fellow at The Listening Room was using an Audio Research preamp which I covet!  That is a really nice piece of equipment.

[2gumby2]

I also heard the 1.7s for the first time today at Audio Concepts in Dallas, TX. I thought they sounded O.K., but not a great value in that price range. They also had some of the new Golden Ear speakers which I liked better than the 1.7s. The 1.7s sounded puny in comparison. So, I'll stick with my Odyssey Audio Kismets.

[SteveFord]

There's no denying that they're unusual speakers as so much depends on the ancilliary equipment, set up and the age of the speakers themselves.  They're like tubes: right out of the box they won't sound too splended.
It took me years to get the sound to my satisfaction and I relied an awful lot on the generiosity of fellow enthusiasts in sharing their time and knowledge.  The hard part for me was being too stubborn to listen to a lot of it so there was a lot of gear swapping involved!
Besides, if everyone liked the same thing it would be pretty dull.

[ajzepp]

I also heard the 1.7s for the first time today at Audio Concepts in Dallas, TX. I thought they sounded O.K., but not a great value in that price range. They also had some of the new Golden Ear speakers which I liked better than the 1.7s. The 1.7s sounded puny in comparison. So, I'll stick with my Odyssey Audio Kismets.

When you compare two pairs of speakers, one pair that goes down to 40hz and the other that goes to 18hz, it's no doubt the former will sound "puny" in comparison. If you put a pair of monitors that hit down to around 40hz against a pair of floorstanders that were close to the same price range, the monitors would sound puny too...doesn't mean the floorstanders are better, they are just fuller. Our ears don't localize the bass end of things real well, so it's expected that you'd have a "bigger" sound with a more full-range speaker. You would really need to take the time to dial in a subwoofer with the 1.7s that also would extend down to 18 hz and then compare the two.

The Golden Ear speakers are also 25% more expensive than the 1.7s, so there's that...

[geowak]

Steve

I did not get the last part of your post. Did you get a pair of 1.7's?

The reason I ask is because I am looking at these speakers. I am away for work and when I get back in some many months- they are on my short list to audition. If you get a pair, please keep us (me!) informed on your listening pleasure or displeasure as I want to know. They will be replacing some aging Snell e-5 floorstanders. I have a sub, but it might be overkill for these and I use it for HT/ movies.

Thanks

[SteveFord]

No, I didn't get them, I just went to give them a listen.
I came away thinking that in the Maggie hierarchy they would be right inbetween the 1.6 and the 3.6.  Better than the 1.6 but not as good as the 3.6. 
I suspect that the 3.7 is going to be a very special speaker.

I'm in the middle of setting up another tube tuner/headphone system and then need to figure out what will work best for a SS system for Lynda.  Trying to fit everything into a buget thanks to my stupid mortgage, don't you know.

[thunderbrick]

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but a few years back I hauled my amp to a Maggie dealer to hear the 1.6s.  Wasn't impressed with the sound; good, not great.  I found a used pair nearby for a good price and bought 'em.  Best audio decision I ever made.  Blew away my ML Quests and stacked DQ-10s.  As people say, better to hear them at home than trust an audition.

I miss the old B&M stores that would let you do that. 

[pardales]

I heard the 1.7 at my dealer last week. They appeared properly set-up in a well treated room driven by very expensive, top of the line, Marantz separates. I was listening at moderate volume to jazz music I know very well.

I owned a pair of 1.5QR many years ago for a long time and loved them, but have not had a room I could put Maggies in for many years. For the last 6 years I have been doing the single-driver, low watt amp thing and loving it.

Well, I thought the 1.7's sounded good but was not really taken with them. I definitely prefer my simple single-driver speaker set-up and could not see myself being interested in owning these speakers. I wonder if my years with single-drivers have changed my taste in speakers as I used to love the Magnepan sound. 

[ajzepp]

I don't mean to hijack the thread, but a few years back I hauled my amp to a Maggie dealer to hear the 1.6s.  Wasn't impressed with the sound; good, not great.  I found a used pair nearby for a good price and bought 'em.  Best audio decision I ever made.  Blew away my ML Quests and stacked DQ-10s.  As people say, better to hear them at home than trust an audition.

I miss the old B&M stores that would let you do that.

Martin Logans are the one speaker I wanted to love more than any other. Back about ten years ago when I first really started doing research on speakers in order to find my first GREAT pair, a local dealer had some ML Aeons they were setting up in the theater room. They had the center channel, a couple of frescoes (I think that's what they're called) for surrounds, and some pretty impressive looking amplification. They fired up Pearl Harbour, which was one of the best sounding films I've ever heard in my home even though I hated the movie itself. I was so disappointed with what I heard. Lots of detail, but the listener fatigue I experienced after about 15 min was too much to bear. I gave them another listen some years later with strictly music, and it was better but just didn't quite captivate me.

Like Paradales and Steve said, though, the ears want what the ears want, and sometimes we just have different preferences than others. But I would have LOVED to have a pair of those MLs in my home just for how cool they looked. If only my ears had been a bit happier.

But I don't feel bad for myself anymore, cause a few years after that Pearl Harbour experience I would discover a little speaker called the Magnepan MMG and the rest was history 

[SteveFord]

An in-home demo would be the ticket, all right.
I'm sure the gentleman from The Listening Room would have let me do so if I had given him my credit card info. 
If I buy new I'd go through him without a second's hesitation.  Don's an older gentleman and both him and his wife are just as nice as can be. 
While I'm on the subject, his ad (that would be The Listening Room) states No Pressure and that's exactly what it is, too.  Here's the stuff, here's the remotes, enjoy yourself and he closed the door behind him. 
That is my kind of salesman.  You could just tell he's a good guy.
I'll be back there and will move up from the .6 series.  I really like my 1.6s but the 1.7s really are quite a bit better.  It's pretty obvious that they put a lot of time into developing the .7 series.  They're proud of them as well they should be.
I just have to get done fiddling around with my Stax headphone setup first and I think that I got that squared away earlier today.  I'm a busy boy!

[HPower]

I didn't mean overpowering bass just something to fill in the bottom end where the panels cut out. 
The fellow at The Listening Room was using an Audio Research preamp which I covet!  That is a really nice piece of equipment.

Hey Steve,

What model ARC preamp were you listening to with the 1.7s?

The reason I ask is that I just picked up a pair of 1.7s about 4 weeks ago and I am loving them.
I just spent the last 5 years with a pair of Klipschorns and various tubed, amps, preamps and integrateds.

A couple of weeks ago I found a Sanders Magtech amp to drive the Maggies, and drive them it does!

I now want to add a tubed pre to the mix, currently I am using an older Bryston 11B that a buddy has lent me.

The couple or 3 models that I am considering are:

Cary SPL-98
Modwright LS100
ARC LS17 or LS26

[SteveFord]

I believe it was this one:

http://www.audioresearch.com/Reference5.html

I've never heard the female vocals on Apostrophe just pop out of nowhere like I did with this preamp. 

[krikor]

The 1.7s are like everyone says in that the sound is much more of a piece (if that makes any sense).  The speaker sounds more coherent (unlike me) or perhaps a better way of putting it is that there doesn't seem to be the bass/mid/treble sections, the music is just coming from one BIG PANEL.

It's interesting they've managed to improve in this regard as I've always felt coherency to be one of the 1.6s stand out traits vs. other speakers. Bodes well for the new 1.7, especially since they've divided the panel into essentially three sections.

I've sometimes mused that Maggies... at least the QR models... can almost be thought of as a single-driver loudspeaker. After all, there is only one mylar diaphragm, or cone as it would be in a conventional speaker, albeit driven at different frequencies across its surface.

[josh358]

The improved uniformity seems to be due to two factors: the use of QR foil on the midwoofer section, and the use of a 6 dB/octave crossover. It's also a 2-1/2 way system, so the supertweeter frequencies actually emanate from part of the tweeter, again with a 6 dB/octave crossover.

[gtb75]

I suspect that the 3.7 is going to be a very special speaker.

That's what I'm thinking as well.  I like what I heard from the 1.7's, but wouldn't put them above my 3.6's...  That being said I've got 3.7's on order and can't wait to get them!  I also run Odyssey Kismets (in the Stratos chassis for the dual transformers) - great match for the 3.6's. 

[SteveFord]

A road trip to hear the 3.7s is in order as soon as they come into the local dealer's place. 
I can't swing 3.7s this year but maybe next year I can do it if I behave myself.
Could we have a review on your 3.7s when you get them?