about Magnepan and power


Much has been written about how the Magnepan speaker needs a good jolt of power to perform at its best. My question would be is this a speaker that has no limits? I'll refer to the 20.7 seeing as this is the model I own. There are no power handling specs listed like you would see in many other speaker manuals. They're driven by 1000 watt amps. They can get pretty darn loud in my 16'x24'room. I realize that there is a point where too loud gets uncomfortable. When can it get damaging to the speaker? Ok,I guess that's two questions. I should clarify, I don't make a habit of listening to music at ear bleeding levels. It's more about those pieces that have softer sections that you tend to turn it up a bit and then have to hit the volume button when the crescendos hit. I have had the 3.5, 3.6 and the 3.7 before these and never damaged a speaker. So, what are these speakers limitations?

mrschret

Showing 1 response by zavato

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.