Followup-Magnepan 1.7s in a 10x13' dedicated room?

Linesource, on the recordings that were bright, try the tweeters on the inside and see if that helps. Ultimately, floor to ceiling treatment of the corners behind the speakers may also help tame any brightness. I've been doing Maggies for 24 years, having had SMGa, 1.6, and now 3.7Rs. Most of the objections you hear to Maggies are based in fact, but their strong points and value proposition makes it worth the effort to spend some time mitigating their shortcomings.
It is good to hear that the 12s are working well in your small room. For what it is worth, I found that my 3.7s worked better in my 19x15x8 room than the 1.6s did. I think the tweeters inside, plus improvements in the crossover, made the difference.

Have fun and enjoy the music!

Rhanson, I can't emphasize enough that in my room, though it has very plush carpeting, Maggies were a no go without treating the back corners floor to ceiling with auralex panels. I glued them to blue board insulation, covered them with fabric, and wedged them into the corners at a 45 degree angle to each wall. Without them, there is a certain high frequency that was reinforced to ear bleed levels. The corner treatment substantially mitigated the problem with the 1.6s, and combined with tweeters inside arrangement, completely mitigated the problem on the 3.7s. The remaining walls were untreated.

I would much rather fix what is wrong with the room than attenuate those angelic maggie ribbons. No issues with those who use the resistors, its just my preference to fix what is really wrong.

I also think it is extremely important with Maggie based systems to address RFI/EMI issues in the entire system. It is my belief that Maggies somehow reveal the high frequency grunge caused by these issues to a greater extent than most other speakers, resulting in high frequency related listener fatigue. This can, I think, sometimes be interpreted by the listener as an overly aggressive top end--too bright. The ribbons, and even the quasi ribbons, are very revealing. If something is wrong in the high frequencies, you are going to hear it. Attention to power treatment is pretty important with Maggie based systems.

Bombawalla, thanks for sharing this info. I had not heard this idea, and I must admit it makes perfect sense and is probably a contributing complication. I have used Mye stands with both the 1.6s and 3.7s, and have found that the ability to tilt the panels in order to align the center point (vertically) with a perpendicular to the listeners ear when seated, substantially improves the overall performance. What this does is achieve the best possible time alignment of each panel or ribbon with respect to itself, if you catch my meaning. In other words, not only are the speakers not time aligned in the conventional sense, but because the panels and ribbons are so tall, the arrival time to the listener's ear from each individual panel is smeared more than would be the case were the sound to emit from a single point.

On the other hand, there are many non time aligned speakers that are not perceived as bright, just as I suspect one can find time aligned speakers that are perceived as bright.

If there were a perfect speaker design, everyone would be using it and life would be much simpler. Maggies, like any other speaker, have their strengths and weaknesses. I used them exclusively from about 1991 to 2014 for a reason. Up until April of this year, I could not find a single dynamic speaker under 16K that I thought I could live with. I picked up a pair of (time aligned, it turns out) Coincident Triumph extreme IIs, and I have just fallen in love with these little monitors. As expected for monitors, they don't do everything, but for what they do, they do as well or better than speakers I have heard costing much more. It would seem that at long last, I have found the speaker that could induce me to move on from Maggies and not look back.

I am still a fan of Maggies, because they can do wonderful things when implemented properly. But, for me, at long last, it is now time for something different.

Zd, yes we wandered a bit. However, if the OP is able to use stands that permit tilting the panels to achieve a perpendicular from the mid point of the panels to his ear when seated, it will improve the sound. Other than that, nada. Just an interesting observation I thought.

Zd, I used this technique with both the 1.6s and the 3.7s. This technique does not roll off the high end, which would more likely occur by turning or tilting as you suggested. What this technique does is reduce the time smear from an individual driver to the extent possible, but it certainly does not reduce it to zero. The speakers sound better, but it does not really change the tonal balance to make them more or less bright or warm. If you think about how this plays out with, for example,the ribbon, when the panels are tilted to achieve a perpendicular from the mid point to ones ear, then the distance from the top of the ribbon to one's ear and the bottom of the ribbon to ones ear is equal. This would give the lowest total amount of smear. On the other hand, if the panels are tilted back, then the bottom of the ribbon may be 6 -8 inches closer to one's ear than the top, and each point from top to bottom is a different distance from one's ear. This arrangement gives the maximum time discrepancy possible. In practice, I found this improvement to be more significant with the 1.6s, but it also helped with the 3.7s.

Bombaywalla, I take it you are not a big fan of Maggies!

Obviously, I draw a different conclusion than you do, while conceding that the unique Magnepan design brings with it some unique compromises. Those you have heard may not sound right to you, but Magnepan has a lot of fans who are not tone deaf knuckleheads, who would express a much different conclusion. Magnepans can sound heavenly in the right room with the right ancillaries.

Sometimes, the problem is the recording. Some times, the problem is the room. Sometimes, it is the wrong speaker for the room, but would work well in another room. I have recounted several times in this forum a concert experience from the late 80s, listening to an Isaac Stern recital. If I had closed my eyes, I would have said this is the worst screeching ear-bleed inducing bad digital recording I have ever heard. It was a world class violinist, playing a superb instrument, but unfortunately, it was the wrong seat in the wrong hall for that violinist and violin. It sounded really really bad. I don't know that it had anything to do with time coherence. Later that year, I heard Itzhak Perlman from the same seat, and his playing was sweet as honey.

Likewise, any room not constructed as a perfect sphere or an anechoic chamber is going to reinforce and diminish certain frequencies. This has nothing to do with speaker design. Treating a room to reduce unnaturally reinforced frequencies makes sense to me.

As I said before, if there were a perfect no compromise design everyone would use it and life would be simple.

Zd, I have no way of proving the improvement is time coherence. The person who suggested this to me explained it that way, and it made sense, so I just accepted the statement.
With the right equipment, one could evaluate any change in frequency response, but all ll I have is my ears.