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

"Some recordings were a little bright, but I think I could remedy that with resistors applied to the tweeters. The dealer didn't supply with resistors to take with me."

If you ask Magnepan, they'll send them to you. They didn't ask me for any money, so they probably won't charge you either.

"07-23-14: Bombaywalla

07-23-14: Brownsfan
Bombawalla, thanks for sharing this info. I had not heard this idea, and I must admit it makes perfect sense....

Brownsfan, yes, what I'm finding out is that a lot of people are quite unaware (& perhaps even ignorant) about loudspeakers needing to be time-coherent. Time-coherence in loudspeakers ensure non-fatiguing sonics & a very realistic & natural playback of the music. "

That's all great, but how does it help him in getting his Magnepan's sounding right?

I didn't see where you mentioned the stands. I thought you were just talking in theory. The stands are an interesting idea. Have you ever tried anything like that with Magnepan? With traditional speakers, you can place the drivers at points that are most effective for time coherence, but with Magnepan, the ribbons run the full length of the speaker. If you pivot the speaker at its mid point, you move half the ribbon further away from the listener, but the other half closer. Since you get the highs from the full length of the driver, I don't see how that will help. If it were to make an audible improvement, I suspect that it will be from pointing the ribbon upward and not having it fire directly at the listener. The highs would be rolled off, but not necessarily time correct. You can probably get almost the exact same effect if you were to just tilt the speaker back. Try putting some type of spacer under the 2 front feet. Its a very good idea, though. Had I thought of it, I might have been able to live with my 1.7's.

" 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."

I was thinking pretty much the same thing with regards to the bottom of the ribbon moving toward the listener and the top moving away. I'm just questioning the why of it. How do you know its a time coherence issue, and not a roll off/freq. response issue? Magnepans do measure poorly in that area. I don't know for sure, so you may very well right. I know freq. response can be measured. Is it possible to measure time coherence?

"When you think about it, the sound from an instrument as large as a piano isn't time coherent either and would get worse the closer you are to it. Just think of the tilt of the top of a piano that's played open."

That's an excellent point, but it doesn't hold up. A pair of speakers and a piano are not interchangeable. The purpose for which they were designed are different. Playing a piano live, in real space, is the absolute sound. There can be issues as to the sound quality of the piano just like you have with an audio system. Depending on the room and how the piano is set up, SQ can range from good to bad.

A speakers job is to take the recording of the piano and reproduce it as accurately as possible. So if the piano didn't sound very good live, the speaker is expected to sound the same event; and not sound better or worse.

With regards to the piano and speakers being time correct, its 2 completely different things. If you have a recording of a piano that has some sound quality issues, timing or otherwise, there's nothing that you can do about it. Sometimes you get music that's well recorded and sometimes you don't. If you have a speaker that is time and phase correct, its a design feature. Having that feature allows you to reproduce the recording so that its a more transparent window to the source. Its another step forward in trying to get the most accurate playback possible. And that means hearing the timing flaws on the recording, but not creating new ones due to your systems short comings.

I hope that helps. I'm in a hurry and typed this out really fast, so If I'm not clear on anything, post and I'll try and fix it.

One thing that I didn't have time to add in my post from last night is that just because we were talking about some of the flaws in Magnepan's designs, doesn't mean that you shouldn't get them. Use the info provided in these posts to make a better choice. But its very important that you make your own choice. Its your system and you are the one that has to listen to it, not us. If you like Magnepan speakers and that's what makes you happy, then those are the speakers for you. Honestly, I had the 1.7's and found they were not the speaker for me. That's why they make other brands. Just don't let us talk you out of the best speaker for you.