The world's most perfect sounding speaker?

Thin is in: the MG1.6/QR

(Credit: Magnepan)

A perfect speaker wouldn't sound like a speaker. That's the goal after all, the speaker should disappear and we should just hear the sound. With perfect speakers the instruments and voices on the recording would sound life-size and completely believable.

Most speakers, including a lot of very high-end, stupid expensive ones still sound like speakers. You know there's a tweeter and woofer, and the sound is coming out of a box.

Magnepan, based in White Bear Lake, Minnesota builds panel (boxless) speakers -- without conventional dome tweeters and cone type woofers. Maybe that's why its MG 1.6/QR ($1895/pair) mostly avoids sounding like a speaker. And in some ways sounds better than high-end speakers retailing for many times the MG 1.6/QR's price. That's no hype, it's that good!

Magnepan was founded in 1969 and has built over 200,000 pairs of loudspeakers to date. The technology is nothing new, they just keep refining it, a little bit at a time.

It's a flat panel design, standing a statuesque 64.5 inches tall, but just 2 inches thick! Instead of a dome tweeter and cone woofer the MG 1.6/QR boasts a 2 inch wide by 48 inch tall aluminum ribbon tweeter and a 442 square inch mid/bass panel. It's a dipole design, meaning just as much sound is radiated off its back surface as the front.

I reviewed the speaker for Playback a few months ago and was shocked by its sound quality, "The MG 1.6/QR might be the perfect way to discover what being an audiophile is all about. The MG1.6QR sounds so different -- and more like live music than any box speaker I can think of for less than two grand. My wife, who rarely reacts to what I'm reviewing was blown away by the MG1.6QRs, and when I told her what they retail for she couldn't believe it. Neither can I."

And no, it's not perfect (read the review to learn more on that score), but it's simply the best there is for under two grand.

You can read the full review here.

[alegr]

Yea, sure. Dipole design.

It's perfect. As long as it's kept in open field. In wavelength range sufficiently less than the speaker size. I don't see how its mid/bass panel (which is pretty much a 20"*20" freely moving board) can be any efficient in below 500Hz range. Just like a traditional (sub)woofer without a box.
As soon as it's put agains the wall (or on a small distance) its frequency response will be all ridges and valleys. I'm not buying into that.

But with such price tag it's easy to sell. For better catch, make it 5 grand.

[vrette]

My first pair of high-endish type speakers were a pair of Magnepan SMGc that I bought in the mid-80s for around $600. They sounded great, and I kept them for over 20 years. However, a common problem with these speakers, at least the old ones, is the wires detach from the mylar skin over time, resulting in a loss of range and vibration. Magnepan has a kit for repair, but its messy and time consuming. I ended up selling my Magnepans on eBay, fulling disclosing the issue, and still got $200 for the pair. Unfortunately I didn't have the right kind of room for Magnepans at our new house, so I ended up with a pair of B&Ws.

[DaveOCP]

Sure, planars and electrostats can sound brilliant, but they will also sound lousy unless placed *exactly* right. No panel short of the big MG20s can do proper bass response, which is why most electrostats rely on dynamic woofers, which tend to blend rather poorly with the panel.

Maggie, Quad, and Soundlab make some great speakers, but they pale in comparison to speakers that use tweeters and woofers in boxes - those from MAGICO, Kharma, Marten, and Rockport.

[andrewbaggins]

Planars and electrostats sound less than their best if you don't place them in the best location, and that is also true of every box speaker you can find! To say they sound lousy is a serious exaggeration in most cases. Planar/electrostats have much less sideways sound output than box speakers so, for a start, you can place them nearer a side wall and still retain good sound than you can with a box speaker. As far as angle or toe-in, the planars will still produce good depth and a spacious soundstage even if not optimized for toe-in. When you move box speakers closer to the wall behind them the bass becomes fuller, but it's boomy and uneven in every case. When you move a planar near the back wall it actually produces less bass, not more. So, the too-close-to-the-rear-wall effect is bad on both box speakers and planars.

Now, in the end, we like whatever we like. It's a matter of taste as to what kind of sound presses your buttons. I love listening to great rock and blues and reggae tracks on my friend's big Klipsch's. They pin me to the chair and I wallow in the almost-live-on-stage sound they produce. However, a string quartet sounds rather unnatural compared to, well, almost anything, really! That same string quartet sounds very nice on our little B&Ws and superb on our Quad ESLs but, hey, nothing we have will rock the house like those horn-loaded Klipsch boxes.....

I'm just saying there's no perfect speaker and some sounds move you more than others, right?

[antihifiasreligion]

I know I'm a little late replying to this..... saying they pale in comparison to boxes is an opinion. From the standpoint of physics, enclosures have many problems. Many. Getting rid of the box eliminates resonances. Dipolar bass loads a typical room better than monopolar bass produced by enclosures. So saying "they pale in comparison" is an opinion and one that highly educated designers such as Sigfried Linkwitz produce AES papers providing high level dissertations which would disagree with your assertion.

[tok20000]

The problem with Maggies is that they require a lot of power to sound their best. The more power you feed them, the better they tend to sound. In general the Maggies (1.6's and 3.6's) tend to have lacking bass. Especially the 1.6's.

I disagree with DaveOCP that box speakers are vastly superior to the planars. Boxes have issues as well. One of the biggest is that they always sound like boxes. This box sonic signature is annoying for those that are used to planar speakers. I have had planar speakers for close to 10 years, and I cannot go back to boxes. Even very high end boxes.

Of the planar speakers though, the best I have ever heard (and I own) are the Gilmore Model 2's with the latest updated ribbons and crossovers. This speaker is simply AMAZING and blows away any of the Maggies (even the model 20.1's), Quads, or Soundlabs. I wholly recommend the Audiophiliac to hear the Gilmore Model 2's. They play down to 17hz at -3db and the new ribbons and crossovers have to be heard to be believed (this upgrade was like getting a whole new speaker).

[DaveOCP]

Interesting, I haven't heard of the Gilmores before. One of the biggest issues I have with wide panels like Quads and Soundlabs is that high-frequency "beaming" effect that for me robs all the realism and life from the music. I'd take a ceramic or Be tweeter in a box over that any day.

How are the Gilmores with placement, and do they need an amplifier that can deal with ridiculously low impedance like a lot of the panel speakers?

[DaveMcLain]

I think it would be easier to make a "perfect" headphone/earbud than a perfect speaker enclosure just due to the fact that speakers' sound is always the result of interaction with their environment, eliminate those factors and you could get a lot closer to perfect.

In the present day I feel that we must accept some coloration and how that coloration effects the sound makes any speaker design have it's strengths and weaknesses for various audio tasks.

[buzzvader]

http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/416665.html

Not really about Magnepans, which I heard powered by Ampzilla, but an article for Steve to read because I don't have his e-mail address.

[alegr]

Yea, I see a headline:

"Generation Y, whose hearing is impaired by in-ear headphone abuse, is finally unable to hear vinyl's noises, distortion, and limited frequency response". Which are worse than a 128 kbps MP3.

[moss488]

I'm a big Maggie fan. I have a reconditioned pair of IIIa's. They have the true ribbon tweeter and my bass is pretty good. You either hate Maggies or love them. I have a large living room so placement was not an issue. Power is what you have to worry about. I have a Bob Carver Sunfire amp. 600 watts at 4 ohms.

Magnepan has sold 200,000 speakers. Name a true audiophile speaker that has sold that well.

Magnepan has done it right for a long time.

[borispmchan]

Unluckily Maggies need a lot of power to drive and they are quite space consuming.

[Squeegy200]

I've been running several speakers that are at least two decades old now. One of my favorites is a reconditioned pair of Magnepan SMGs. If placed correctly and in the correct environment, they are beyond compare to anything else I've auditioned. Sonically, they are stunning and are always a visual curiousity for anyone not familiar with the technology. Because of their dipole nature, they do require lots of space around the speaker and pure clean power. If the proper equipment and placement are not ideal, the speakers will reveal that fact.

[hgp1234]

hello together, i'm also a satisfied owner of a pair 3a, 2.5, 2.6 and may in the next few days of a pair 3.5.
that is my problem right now, the 3.5 has two broken ribbon. i have read about of an repair kid for the
ribbons, but i can't find it here in germany and magnepan doesn't answered until now if they shipped
the repair kit to germany. so my question, is anybody here who know where i can get the repair ribbon
or is it just gettable directly by magnepan?? maybe somebody has an contact person/mailing address
for me where i can ordered the kit direct by magnepan. thx a lot

[The Kipnis Studios]

Steve -

My problem is not with the design or the sound quality but, instead, with customer interaction and perhaps service. I called up and spoke to Wendell Diller, and for the first time in my history of dealing with any company - could not come to an agreement about a review sample.

Now this might not bother end users, but to me - a customer is a customer, and I offered to pay for a pair of new 20.1 just so I could hear them as a new pair.

Magnaplanar's response: No!

Cheers -

Jeremy

Kipnis-Studios.com