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

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

Brownsfan, I wouldn't put this strongly. I've heard a couple of Magnepans - one was at a friend's house - I believe it was the MG12 - they were quite narrow & not very tall. He was using an Anthem power amp. It was very nice for vocals but lacked any dynamic drive to get-up & boogie. Another time I heard a MG1.6 at a dealer's place driven by a Musical Fidelity integrated amp & an iPod dock for the front end. Very nice sonics. I enjoyed that brief session. In another room this same dealer had the 20.6 full ranges driven by Rowland Model 10 amps but he was such a stick-in-the-mud & refused to give me a demo because I hadn't set up an appointment!! :(
No, I wouldn't say that I do not like Magnepans but I recognize their severe limitations & their inherent design flaw & decided that I did not want to partake in such a speaker.

.....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.....

Brownsfan, these are exact excuses one has to make when one is dealing with a flawed design loudspeaker. When a loudspeaker is properly designed, it works well in any room & works even better in rooms that are correct for its size & correctly treated. Of course, common-sense has to be exercised - I cannot put a Wilson Maxx into a 10X10X8 room & hope to make it sound its best.

At any rate, this discussion with you is NOT to argue with you or be contentious; rather, it is to point out the loudspeaker design flaw & as a result all the tricks you need play to minimize (but never eliminate) an inherent design flaw. If all you dedicated Magnepan users understood what time-coherence is & what its importance is to music playback, you could go back to Magnepan & demand it from their speakers. The manufacturer will make what his clients ask for/demand lest he should go out of business. In such a case both the Audio industry & the user-base would much better off & maybe the following of Magnepan would grow even more.....

Is it possible to measure time coherence?
Zd542 (Threads | Answers | This Thread)

yes, Zd542 it is very much possible to measure time-coherence. For example, look at Fig 4, Fig 5 of the Quad ESL63 as measured by Stereophile & read the text immediately below Fig 5:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/quad-esl-63-loudspeaker-measurements

I don't know if you remember Meadowlark speakers? The owner/designer was Pat McGinty & he built time-coherent loudspeakers. He wrote a very easy to read article about understanding time-coherence & its importance to music playback thru loudspeakers. Here is the link.

http://www.patmcginty.com/Dbench2.htm

If you don't want to read the full article, take a look at these 3 pages that have animations (hope you have Adobe Flash installed):
http://www.patmcginty.com/Dbench8.htm
http://www.patmcginty.com/Dbench9.htm
http://www.patmcginty.com/Dbench10.htm

These animations should make the importance of time-coherence clear to you.

You'll also note that almost 99% of the speakers in the market have the step-response shown on page 10. And, you can troll the various forums to read all the issues people have with such speakers -
just the right ancilliaries,
just the right recording,
just the right cables,
just the right room size,
just the right recording,
just the right music genre,
just the right toe-in
& the list goes on & on.....
it all goes away once you have time-coherent loudspeakers because the speakers are not further distorting the music signal coming down the pipe from the electronics.

Where the the conversation from this thread has gone is interesting. Especially interesting is the statement that Magnepans and therefore any large flat panel speakers is flawed due to it's design being physically impossible to be time coherent from the top of the panel all the way to the bottom. Though speakers employing drivers that range from 1 to 3 or 5 or 6 or 12 inches to reproduce the wave launch of a piano, a cello or a harp recorded in a large space are not flawed. 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. It's the reproduction of the size of instruments and the transient response of planars and electrostatics that draws me to them. The effect is very obvious and easy to hear. I have yet to ever experience listener fatigue from Magnepans. I have experienced plenty of it from speakers employing conventional drivers however, time coherent and not.

07-28-14: Linesource
Where the the conversation from this thread has gone is interesting. Especially interesting is the statement that Magnepans and therefore any large flat panel speakers is flawed due to it's design being physically impossible to be time coherent from the top of the panel all the way to the bottom.

Linesource, I NEVER said that "any large flat panel speakers is flawed due to it's design being physically impossible to be time coherent from the top of the panel all the way to the bottom."
this is a statement YOU are making by taking this huge leap just because Magnepans are a flawed design. Let's be clear about that....
if you go over to the "Sloped Baffle" thread also running in parallel with this thread here in the "Speakers" forum you will see in one of my many posts (which was a reply to Bifwynne's question to recommend time coherent speakers) I wrote that Eminent Tech LFT8b, the Sanders 11C/10C, some Quad ESLs & some older Martin Logans were time coherent. Many of the speakers cited by me in that post were planars.
So, it's very much possible to make a planar time-coherent; just that Magneplanars are not.
Just wanted to ensure that you were not putting words into my mouth.... :-)
Thanks

Bombaywalla, sorry, guess I was making assumptions. Wife says I do that a lot. So I'm confused, how can the Lft-8bs be time coherent? Doesn't the length of the panels cause the same problems? BTW, do you have any experience with them? I've considered them also and they offer a generous trial period for those who don't have a nearby dealer.