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I'm a little stumped

My base system (power & speakers) is a McIntosh MA6100 integrated amp running a pair of Klipsch Chorus II's.

I'm been thinking real hard about upgrading both the power & speakers. After a fair bit of research and remembering a friend's MG1's from many moons ago I pretty much decided to go with a pair of Magnepan 1.6qr's. I auditioned a pair today and pretty much drew a blank. I expected to be amazed (I would have brought a pair home) and was left with sort of a "no comment". The audio shop ran the 1.6's with a Bryston 2B (180W @4 ohms). Overall they sounded a little thin & quite bright without much bottom end. The bottom end can always be cured with a sub, but the brightness?? I'm sure they could have used more power, but I thought there would be a hint of greatness I could draw on. I also listened to a pair of B&W 704s & Theil 2.4's. Basically they all paled in comparison to my little MA6100/Chorus combo. I was looking forward to maggie nirvana, but didn't see it...any ideas what happened? Bad room, bad setup, not enough power??
fishboat

Showing 1 response by philjolet

philjolet's avatar
philjolet
2,306 posts
 
I owned 1.6 Maggies for about a year and a half and during that time I came to the conclusion the QR tweeter has too much output and has to be tamed. When set up properly with the right equipment the speaker is terrific. Things like ficus trees between the speaker and the wall help a great deal to tame the QRs.

BTW the 1.6 has plenty of bottom end, some have measured it to 35HZ. I was always very impressed by its low end with the several amps I tried. Look somewhere else for bass problems, a subwoofer is the last thing these speakers need and a sure way to lose the wonderful coherence they have which is one of the best things about them IMO.
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