Choking more SPL's out of Maggie 3.6's

I see four problems here.

1) To produce very high spl's, you have to move a lot of air. To move a lot of air, you have to have a lot of driver surface area that is capable of long excursions.

2) Panel speakers can't make long excursions even though some of them have plenty of surface area. As such, you will always be SPL limited so long as you expect them to reproduce ANY type of low frequency signals.

3) If you were to cross them over at a few hundred Hz so as to minimize excursion requirements, and run dynamic woofers NOT as sub-woofers but as woofers, you could get more out of your system. Only problem is that would surely change the presentation of what you are hearing and it seems as if you are not interested in doing that.

4) While i know that you ( and a bunch of others ) will cringe hearing this, you might want to think about trying out some different amps. As many folks here know, i'm not a fan of Bryston's for several reasons. My experience with them is that they do not work all that great with low impedance loads. In my experience and that of a few others that i talk to, Bryston's tend to run out of steam faster than other amps when driving lower impedance speakers. Lest you think i'm a nut, Stereophile noted this with the 7B's in a review a while back. Some other amps that they had on hand, rated for less power than the 7B's, were able to drive loads that the Bryston's were giving up on. Your experience here tends to support both my findings and those of that reviewer in Stereophile ( can't remember who it was ).

As the tube-heads will tell you, "watts ain't watts when it comes to SS vs Tubes". I've said the same thing when it comes to Bryston vs other decent SS amps at lower impedances. Having said that, you might want to check into a big Aragon or Classe' amp. I think that either of these brands will stomp what you have now in your specific situation, even if they are rated for slightly less power at 4 ohms. Sean
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PS... Please don't hate me for sharing my honest opinion. I'm only trying to help and calling it as i see it : )

Pbb is very close to the truth but i'm not basing my comments on my past experience alone.

I did have a 4B a few years back that was pretty well beat up. Dennis at Bryston USA went through the amp top to bottom, replaced the chassis and put the unit through its' paces on the bench. As it turned out, the only real problem was the fact that the chassis was so twisted that it was shorting out the rail voltage feeding the left channel. Once all of the internal components were transferred into a different chassis, according to what he told me, the unit EASILY met spec and was working better than many of the other amps that he had previously had in for repair that were of similar vintage. As such, he was very satisfied with the results of the repair and the unit over-all.

I wish i could have said the same thing. I found the amp, which was rated at and tested to exceed 250 @ 8 and 400 @ 4, to be less potent into low impedances than a Classe' 70. For sake of clarity, the Classe' 70 was rated at 75 / 150 / 300 with a 3 dB's of dynamic headroom. Even though the "baby" Classe' could drive the low impedance load better than the Bryston, sonically, i did not like either amp. As such, out the door both of them went.

As such, i will say that the Bryston was built like a tank to take that type of abuse / damage and still keep ticking. I will also say that Bryston is a "kick ass" company when it comes to standing behind their product.

With that experience embedded in my mind, i have talked to a few others that have had newer Bryston amps and have run into similar problems. There have also been a few threads pertaining to this subject on AA, so i know that this is not just a "thing of the past" with their older amps. On top of that, the review that i mentioned in Stereophile went out of their way to make it known that the 7B was "crying out in pain" whereas other lower powered amps were simply coasting along on the same load. If we add all of this up, it sure looks like 2 + 2 still equals 4.

Like i said, take my comments for what they are worth. I'm simply calling it as i see it based on past experiences and the feedback that i've gotten from both personal communications and professional reviews. Sean
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PS... I have nothing against Canadians or Canadian companies : )