I hate to be mean to Mr. Bill (Oh NOOOOOOOOOO...) but no Mini Maggies here at the moment - I did say Ogres which are bigger than your average human. What would an orgre consider a mini maggie? An MMG.
For years I've been thinking about the wall mounted MMGWs and finally got to hear some at The Listening Room in Towson, MD when Lynda and I were checking out the 3.7s. They have a small home theater room set up there with MMGWs up front, what was
probably an MMGC center speaker , a small REL sub and some small surround boxes on stands, a Cambridge Audio integrated amp and I forget what kind of DVD player. I was actually kind of busy at the time (scheming on how to get some 3.7s into my fat little fingers).
It sounded tremendous until I asked them to shut off the surround speakers and well, there went the magic. I wonder what those little weasels are? I'll have to find out but they sounded expensive.
The center speaker wasn't set up right for whatever reason but at least I got to hear the MMGWs. The sales fellow assured me that they were a step up from the MMGs which I didn't believe believe and Wendell confirmed my suspicions - the MMGs are a better speaker. The MMGWs were okay but I wouldn't want to use just a pair of them and a sub as they just wouldn't cut it. Perhaps 4 of them would be a different story.
Then the Mini Maggies dipped a toe in the planar waters, I had a DMW woofer being used to help tame the weird room shape upstairs and I just got one of my MMGs back from a complete rebuild at Magnepan and they were just collecting dust after spending 5 years in storage in the basement with doggie wee wee stains on the grills. Maybe it's time to get off my dead ass and put this idea I've been kicking around into action.
As luck would have it, I had a trashed MG-1C speaker downstairs and the oak side rails were an exact fit for the MMGs - imagine that. I cut the side rails down to MMG size, drilled some holes to match up with where the screws go on the MMGs, sanded off most of the stain, picked up some longer side rail mounting screws and a couple of 4" hinges at the hardware store.
Lynda's a tv addict and I wanted to have some decent sound as well. She'd prefer to have the boob tube in the living room and it just so happens that there's a big cabinet there along the long wall so that's where the MMGs went. Across the room is a couch so you're sitting roughly 12' away from where the flat screen will go.
I figure that I can come up with a swing-away mount so I can access my CDs.
You'll notice the DMW in the center which I hooked up the AMP IN connectors
using these double connectors from Parts Express which allows me to use an SVS subwoofer at the same time.
It looks the connectors are touching but they're not and that's all driven by my $25 wonder from eBay
the mighty, mighty Harman Kardon PM640.
Okay, I don't know how mighty is is but it works which I still find surprising
and the whole fershlugginer mess is driven by the usual suspects
I hooked the MMGs and DMW up with some old Tributarie speaker wire that I had in my spare junk pile and therein lies the weak spot. I normally use Kimber Kable and I know for a fact that the Tributarie wire has a grainy sound to it but it's what I had in the length I needed so that's what I used.
Hey, this isn't Stereophile and this is a temporary lash-up as well.
I should mention that Magnepan says the quality of speaker cable with the DMW is pretty much irrelevant but I'd say not for the MMGs.
After MUCH screwing around, I finally ended up positioning the center of the mylar panel at around my ear height when seated which puts the speakers 15" off of the ground - I could probably go up another inch or two which would improve the sound considerably when you're up walking around. An MMG that's another 6 or 8" taller would be ideal for this application and that's a very strong hint, I might add. Perhaps stick in the .7 technology while you're at it, no sense in screwing around.
With the speakers being hinged it's a breeze to set toe-in and you can spend hours driving yourself insane if you're so inclined. The tweeter sections are mounted on the outside and what worked best for me was to aim to tweeters pretty much at my ears with the DMW dead center and pulled out a bit. I messed around a bit with DMW placement and decided that dead center was where it wanted to be. Two foot out with the DWM puts it about 20" in front of the MMGs.
I had to laugh as I just set things up by ear and when I later got out the tape measure everything was within 1/4" of each other. I have been called The Human Tape Measure by people who've seen me set up speakers before. If it looks right and sounds right it will measure right, too.
When you measure from the inside edge of the outer side rail (where the tweeter section is), the speakers are 24" out from the rear wall with the DMW pulled out an equal amount from the rear shelves. If it's back too much further bass output goes up but it gets boomy which is no good. The volume control on the unapproachable Harman Kardon integrated is set at about the 11:00 position. To the right of the couch about 4' away and up against the wall is an SVS PB12-ISB sub which is crossed over at 50 Hz and the volume is at about the 9:00 position.
Enough preamble, who cares, get to the point already, how does it sound? It sounds tremendous, it really does - I don't need no steenking surround speakers, wretched little overpriced boxes!
What this does is the most astonishing thing: when you have everything set up right you'll swear that the majority of the sound is coming from the DWM which is impossible as it only goes up to 200 hz. The MMGs just sound like they're providing a really wide soundstage.
I had Maria Muldaur's Southland of the Heart CD going late last night and it was bizarre - she was coming out dead center where that flippin' DWM is. Put your ear up against the DWM and it's just low frequency stuff, go back to the couch and she's coming out of the DWM.
I ready an article where I believe the author discovered the same phenomenon - it was quite a (pleasant) surprise.
If you turn off the DWM it sounds like really good stereo, turn the DWM on and it sounds like a center channel with additional material on the periphery. The guys at Magnepan are pretty sharp, I've got to hand it to them.
You'll have to screw around to get this effect and like all planars, a small adjustment goes a long way. You'll know when you get it right - there's no mistaking it.
At very low listening levels the sound is kind of flat but crank the knob a little bit and it comes right to life. I can't crank it too far as my VTLs outstrip the legendary Harman Kardon's power output and it popped both fuses during a listen to King Crimson's Red. Shame as that sounded pretty good and then I had to pop the cover on the peerless electronic marvel.
When you're done, just fold the speakers back
and it looks like a normal living room (more or less).
I think that the DWM is good for both smoothing out room irregularities and is tremendous with the MMGs if you futz around a bit with placement. A real subwoofer is required and while I think of it, just sticking a sub where the DWM will not come anywhere close to having the same effect - it'll give you the dreaded Flatulent Elephant Effect, instead.
It only makes sense that you have to keep things to scale and my guess is that with the larger models you would want to use two DWMs to have the same effect. Side by side or stacked, I can not say - I guess that it would depend on your particular room as each one is different.
I listened for a good 7 hours last night and today so I'm a little beat but the sound was so surprising that I stayed up way too late. It was only the grainy speaker wires that caused my ears to crap out. They have got to go.
Further adventures await. I'll bet with some MMGWs on either side of the couch if would be just tremendous!
Ogre-sized Mini Maggies? I'd say so.
Mini Maggies for us normal sized people? That's for another day.
I think that I'd better stop making fun of that incomprable Harman Kardon piece, an integrated amplifier which has become the industry standard and for good reason.
It'll catch on fire just to pay me back.
