about Magnepan and power

I have owned 3.7Rs, 1.6QR's and SMGa's. It has been my experience with all of those that the music becomes conjested at some high volume. Less so with the 3.7s than the others. So, I tend to not go too loud for two long. Maybe the 20.7s aren't giving you that "I've had enough" clue. I would also agree that you should blow a fuse before there is any real damage done. I'd be more worried about your ears (unless they are also fused.)

Use control and common sense. Just about any loudspeaker can be damaged by loud volumes. The Maggies can take a beating but everything has limits. If you are deliberately trying to find a weakness I'm sure you can but Maggies are very robust. I'd say that they are more robust than many other speakers.

I think I was a bit misleading the way I worded the questions. For the record, I'll say it again, I don't make a habit of rattling windows. If the music is jazz or blues or acoustic etc, listening levels should be around where they might be at a live venue. So,then, if I was attending a live concert of the War of 1812, many parts of it would be rather robust and just plain loud. It wasn't so much about how loud these can play or be listened to before they blew up but more about the amount of power you can send through these before your over your skis. Most speakers will have a power handling capacity listed in their manual. These don't. It's documented that Maggies sound better with more juice. So how much is enough? My amps are 1000 watts into four ohms. Will I gain something if I go to 2000 watt amps? I'd actually like to try tube amps someday but are there tube amps that can drive these comfortably, without having to second mortgage the house in order to buy them? When I went to the Magnepan factory and demoed these speakers when they were first introduced they were being driven by a ratty old Bryston amp at 150 watts a side. Not real impressive but I guess it did the job. Any further thoughts learned folks?♠

I used to,own Magnepans with a true ribbon tweeter. You can give these speakers too much power - I once burst a ribbon when I was playing the music at a very loud level. That was an expensive mistake.

Maggies are interesting. You need to give them juice because at lower levels they can be pretty flat and sort of grainy. But you also run into dynamic compression at higher levels. At the right level- which to me meant relatively loud, they are smashing. Bottom line- it you want Magges and want to listen at realistic levels, find a solid state amp rated at 200 wpc or more and which puts out at least 1.5 x it's rated output when into 4 ohms.

My experience with Maggies has been they need power to go to suitable volume, whatever level that may be, but not so much current accordingly, in order to deliver balanced sound. THey are surprisingly tube amp friendly as a result and correspondingly not a speaker that benefits in general from high damping factor.

When I had larger Maggies, I used a 300w/ch + SS amp, but one that was designed to perform more like a tube amp and it worked quite well.

My lcoal Maggie dealer does all his demos using tube amps, 80 w/ch and more, and they always sound splendid.