Can Magnepan survive Wendell Diller?


I bought my first set of Magnepans in 1976, and I currently have a pair of 1.7i's.

It is difficult for me to upgrade to the 3.7i's because their are so many things that the company can do to improve their product that they simply won't offer; upgraded crossover components, a solid wood/rigid frames and better stands are examples.

Other companies are now doing this, but Magnepan always says Wendell doesn't think that is a good idea.

Can a man who suggests using lamp cord for his speaker line really have that much control over an otherwise unique technological approach to speaker design? I must be missing something obvious when a product is hand assembled in MN and any of these upgrades would, in my mind, warrant factory upgrades. Who wouldn't spend an extra $1k for a 1.7i with a hardwood frame and an upgraded x-over? Adding a ribbon tweeter to the 1.7i would warrant an additional $1k, still bringing them in $2k under the 3.7i.

Is it common for one person to hold an entire company back in high end audio? 
william53b

Showing 12 responses by william53b

@ps555


If this was just a cheap shot at Wendell and Magnepan, I would have left it at that. Well, actually I wouldn’t have posted it in the first place since the point to that would have been what to me? I have several legitimate beefs with the company, and it’s a crime to air them? And when it’s an individual in that company I should throw the company under the bus to protect their identity? 

What’s more I have spent the intervening time researching and upgrading my Magnepan’s, putting my former knowledge from working in Design and Development to good use,  and they can buy these back from me if they want to reasonably make significant upgrades to this series. So I have visibly placed the ball in their court, and time will if my assertions are valid or not.


Sorry, that’s why nothing ever gets done in the world. The only time it does on this level is when the problem is defined and then acted on. And apparently you haven’t read this thread, because many other people have the same issues with Magnepan, and wrote about them here.


Strip all of the side chatter out and you will find pertinent information on this post.


Since I posted this I have learned a lot about Magnepan. One of the prescient points is that all of the company is holding the company back, and there isn’t a lot of it left, so if it survives that rests on their shoulders, not one post on a single audiophile forum out of the hundreds available.


I and others have posted more here that is beneficial to the company and it’s product then any damage a single post could do, and if they don’t want to listen that’s their conscious decision and they will have to live with the results of that decision, just like they have been for a very long time.


Having stripped the panels down and having spent close to $1k on test equipment and crossover parts for comparison analysis, crossover points and blending first, second and third order crossover combinations that are not "conventional" I have gotten to the point where I have gotten a relatively flat curve from my 1.7i’s from 60hz to 11khz. Something the company cannot apparently do.


Right now I’m making changes to the panel geometry and wiring of that to smooth the curve even more, as well as changing the geometry of the face of the speaker to eliminate some inconsistencies in the curve caused by reflections from the mounting point relative to its MDF surround and the structural side supports, which don’t have to be as thick or forward of the radiating surface as they are, thereby allowing me to remove the "buttons" from the membrane and improve bass response.


I have also tested 3 amps while doing this work and can tell you the simple fact that, until recently with Class D amps, any amp worth buying to use with these speakers can be judged in one listening session, so the bs on their web site about them not having time to make a list of amps that people have had success with is disingenuous.


So from a Marketing standpoint, abdicating responsibility for recommendations of successful combinations of amp/speaker/etc is something that has always hurt their sales. And anyone could simply send an email to the retail stores that sell their product for a list of acceptable combinations, thereby putting that particular bugaboo to bed.


Of course there are other recommendations that could be gathered and published in a FAQ’s page on their site that deals with everything from speaker cable rec’s to subs that actually do work with their speakers. So 14awg lamp wire? No! 10 gauge single strand common house wire twisted together with a vice and electric drill? Oh Hell Yes!


I think the amount of time and money I have spent on proving that this post is prescient says more than any offhand quip someone may dash off, so to your point: yes, I posted a question.




@secretguy 

We'll see who laughs their ass off when I post my final video on YT. 

Just because some people are full of it, doesn’t mean all are. I've screen grabbed your reply so I can hang it on my studio wall with my other trophy’s. 😉
@daveyf

Yes, several times. Either it’s crickets, or sorry not invented here. Heck, I even tried through an order form out of desperation, after posting this originally.


While they have a devoted following, and their customers would love dearly to help them, they seem immune to reason; almost cult like.


I’ll even throw them a bone here: No reasonable engineer would design a sound panel with square corners, for the same reason airplane windows are not square, or that junctions between two planes are vastly stronger with fillets: corners magnify vibrations and create vectors for sympathetic vibrations, and they are a major weakness in mechanical design.


No one currently working on the planer model of speakers that I know of seems to notice that the sympathetic vibrations and standing waves generated in the membrane on the panel are a result of those corners, just as audiophiles understand that standing waves in a room generated by parallel walls and uniform depth combine to destroy coherent sound.


So in the domain of planar speaker patents, that one just left the building because it’s now in the public domaine, if it wasn’t already.


Most people have no idea how time consuming researching prior art is, so no, I wasn’t going to bother considering the changes I’m making to my panels is just for my personal enrichment.
A remarkable thing about life is that if you have patience, perseverance and a talent, time is your ally. 
Another interesting thing is that some people become flustered when someone who is no one to them disapproves of what they are doing. Especially when you are doing that thing well.
@motzartfan,

I am not disputing that they are not a bargain, they are, but can be made much better, if you want to go through the trouble of doing that. And half of my 1.7i’s problems can be solved without changing the XO’s much, so the "upgrades" should be part of the technical evolution of the panels.

I and others like me that have encountered the Wall of Wendell when trying to contact Magnepan, become frustrated when he stops us from contacting the technical side of the company. That goes for his giving and withholding advice on setup, compatible amps, etc.

He’s not a tech person, he’s a marketing person.

Most of us die-hard Magnepan fans would go to White Bear Lake for a week and donate a work week of time to keep the company solvent. And it is only the knee jerk reactions of some reply’s on this post that entirely miss the point of that and have have taken it off track and through the mud.

Skip the chaff on this post, go back and read the criticisms and testimonials for Wendell and then you will understand the meaning of the original post; it's not about Magnepan, it’s about Wendell.

Oh for Christ's sake, have they not taken this thread down yet?

Yes, you can improve Magnepan's all day long. Risers, better stands, removing the fuse from the tweeter circuit, hardwood or hardwood plywood frames, better crossovers, a second layer of foil tape over the existing one to raise them to 8 ohms, beveling the opening in the MDF frame and adding hardwood on the outside of the frame so you don't have to use white gloves to move them, removing the bottom and adding an open baffle sub underneath…. And on and on and on. The 1.7i's going down to 40hz, as per their specs, is a joke. They have a large bump at 70hz, then fall off to almost nothing.

After a million years, they still have square corners in their panels, which cause an inordinate amount of unneeded harmonic distortions in the film requiring them to pin the film to the backplane in several spots, that holds the magnets, with plastic buttons and screws. And those buttons placement are not uniform, even in pairs.

Their primary goal is to be cheap. That definition of quality components and audiophile are seldom used in the same city, let alone sentence.

You want Maggie’s? Buy the LRS and use a good open baffle sub as a base and you’re golden. Otherwise anything else in their line gives you the finest mid bass midrange and an ok tweeter.

Funny, that tweeter isn’t available in the 1.7i, the bottom of the top of the line.

Is that because no one would buy the 3.7i for the price difference if it was?

Feel free to screw with me on a business I have dissected with some degree of malice, and found lacking.

I buy Stereophile grade A products, if it doesn’t get an A, for the most part, it doesn’t get in.

I still have my 1.7i's, stripped down. Would you like me to make my point? I've already rounded off the corners to the degree that I have been able to remove the buttons…

@mschott

Obviously having an established company with a steady customer base is the key to survival, and there is no need to look for better management or innovation, when you have everything under control.

Just ask these companies:

Kodak

Sears

K-Mart

Radio Shack

General Motors

Blockbuster

Polaroid

Borders

Pan Am

Circuit City

FW Woolworth

SS Kresge

Kay-Bee Toys

Toys R Us

Tower Records

Pier 1 Imports

Hummer

American Motors

CIT Group (NYSE:CIT)

Enron Corp. ...

Conseco Inc. ...

MF Global. ...

Chrysler. ...

Thornburg Mortgage. ...

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. ...

Texaco.

Etcetera…..

And of course, the obsession to hold the line on costs may test them to the max with runaway inflation.

Absolutely stupid, smaller businesses fail more often.
 

And sorry, but I used to make a living as a consultant in product design and development until I retired, so I have no insight into this subject at all.

 

It’s irrelevant to the intent of this thread as posted.

Magnepan doesn’t need to be cheap, they need to innovate.

That people have wandered off the reservation is not my fault.

I asked Audiogon to remove this thread quite a while ago, but it's still here. Why do they remove other less contentious posts and leave this up?

I do not know.