Life after Maggies?

thanks everyone for your responses! You've given me a lot to think about.

I'll definitely try to use the maggies in the new room, and see if I can make them work. Fortunately, it won't be used for anything else, so i can stick the speakers well out into the room. Cytocycle, your suggestion to put my listening position at the rear wall is interesting, I wonder how much bass reinforcement I'll get there (too much)? I'll let you know how it works out.

I'm definitely on the audition trail. Hadn't thought about spendors or Gradient Revolutions, some new things to explore! Cenline, thanks for your rave on the Green Mountain line. I'm scheduled to audition some Callisto's next week. I hope Chadnliz is wrong and I don't have to be that far away from them for them to work.

I listened to some Audio Physics speakers yesterday, and they were nice, tons of bass, nice tone, but they sounded closed in and boxy to me. Sigh. Here's hoping that magic will appear in one of these auditions! I do get discouraged when I hear there's no substitute for Maggies... Maybe the Peter Gunn modded units are worth checking out, but I'm not sure they'll be in the same league as my tricked-out 1.6's.

The search continues...

I've had the Maggies for 7 years now (which is forever in this hobby). I'm trying them now in the smaller room. First impression isn't too bad. The room has some nasty bass modes, because the length and width are similar in size, so they double up the bass modes around 63hz/126hz/etc. I think I'm going to have to invest in some big-time bass traps, e.g. RealTraps (which are GREAT, if you haven't tried them.

Of necessity, the Maggies are well out into the room. I tried with my head back against the rear wall, and didn't like the sluggish sounding bass. I'm now rotating walls and trying differnt layouts, including diagonal. It's really near-field listening as I'm only about 6'-8' from the speakers, but the imaging isn't too bad if they're toed in more than I used to have them. The image is well behind the speakers, and well-centered. I don't hear the speakers themselves at all, my attention is on the musicians behind them. Interesting!

Restock & JohnK, you make a good case. My issue with single ended has been the total inadequacy of producing convincing symphonic music with large orchestras. I've heard some spectacular demos (at a NJ high-end show), but they were playing chamber music or jazz. As soon as the Mahler or Beethoven symphonies hit, the musical threads all seem to merge, or get lost. Maybe the state of the art has progressed further. I certainly have limited experience, and would love to be proven wrong, but that's my impression.

The room sucks. Like listening to music through a comb filter. And planars cancel their side waves, and load the room differently for bass too. Anyway, I'm not as unhappy as I expected, but expect to do a lot of trial and error. I still may end up auditioning alternative speakers, but for now I've got plenty of things to try.

Thanks again folks!

G24 actually, I have an Ultracurve Pro, which is one of the reasons I know about the room modes. It's actually a pretty cool device! Running pink noise and/or autocorrect, I can see how much the room is impacting on the sound. I've been hanging out on the Audio Circle forum on room correction and I've got some stuff I need to try to cancel some of the nastier room modes (bass trapping mostly).

Unfortunately, I can't stand the sound of the ultracurve permanently in the signal chain, so using its correction algorithms isn't such a good idea, although it gives me a pretty good idea what a flat sound would be like in the room. When the bass is fixed, it really opens up the mids, which is nice!

One of my issues with equalization is that the bass modes are substantially different even if you move the microphone a few inches. Sampling a bunch of locations, you'd make very different adjustments, altho you can average some of them for something that will work OK. The bass nodes are the worst, of course, and after treating as much as I can with traps, I could go for something like a PARC parametric equalizer to tackle the bumps in response that remain. The Parc is said to sound better than many of the digital solutions, like Tact. I mostly listen to LP's so I'm not living in the digital domain yet. I've been playing around with the parametric equalizer in the DEQ2496, and it makes a really impressive difference without mucking the sound up in adjacent octaves. If only the unit didn't make everything else sound flat & lifeless. In the signal path, even with no parameters engaged, it just sucks the life out of my music. Too bad!

I think I can tackle many of the worst ones with treatments, and use the UltraCurve to track how well I'm doing.

Dennis, I'm still scheduled to audition some Callisto's. I'm excited by what I've heard about the Green Mountain line, and a friend of mine who's an ex-Maggie owner also recommends them. I hope they live up to the buzz.

That said, I've invested 7 years getting the Maggies to sound great, so I'm a little discouraged to be starting all over again in a new space. Frankly, I'd rather listen to music than fiddle with equipment.

Thanks again all who responded!