Listeners who are using Dynamic Subwoofer(s) with Magnepan Speakers

my local dealer ran the 3.7 with a pair of Vandersteen subs and it sounded awesome. I currently have LRS with a single DWM and it sounds great to me. I spoke to Magnepan, and set up was easy, just lots of experimenting with placement, but that’s true with all sub.  Magnepan is careful to call the DWM a woofer not a subwoofer

Hey my friend,

I can see in your case why a subwoofer is a good idea. I wrote an article which includes information on how to get great results from a sub. I will say this: It takes work. The integration with the speaker and the room are not straightforward.

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2020/04/how-to-not-buy-subwoofer.html

From my experience, it's not that panels and dynamics have speed issues. It is that panels couple to the room a lot easier than dynamics. Properly set up, a single sub woofer is just as "fast" and transparent as any panel.

" Is there anyone out there who is pairing Magnepan speakers with a dynamic subwoofer or subwoofers with good or otherwise results. I’ve heard that timing issues can occur with that combination."

My understanding, based on fairly extensive experience with Maggies and other dipoles and on a paper written by James M. Kates, is that dipoles inherently have smoother in-room bass than monopoles. And my understanding, based on the work of Earl Geddes, is that in general the more in-room bass sources you have, the smoother the in-room bass. This implies that one monopole sub may have trouble matching the in-room smoothness of two dipole main speakers. And smooth bass is "fast" bass, so that’s what we want.

In general rooms do two things to the output of a subwoofer: First, a phenomenon called "room gain" results in a gentle boosting of the sub’s output as we go down in frequency. Second, the room imposes a nasty peak-and-dip pattern on the sub’s output. This peak-and-dip pattern changes if you move the sub or move the listening position, but it does not go away.

You mentioned "timing". In-room peaks in the bass region are indeed a timing issue, because they take longer to decay than the rest of the spectrum. And sounds which last for longer are perceived as being louder. Thus in-room peaks in the bass region are especially audible and objectionable. In my opinion the discrepancy many people hear between their Maggies and a subwoofer trace back to the significantly smoother in-room response of the Maggies.

The solution I embrace is to start out with subs whose native response is the approximate inverse of room gain, and then to use more than one and distribute them asymmetrically around the room. This way each generates a different peak-and-dip pattern at the listening position, and the sum of these multiple dissimilar peak-and-dip patterns is far smoother than any one alone could be.   The placement of each individual sub is non-critical, as long as some general guidelines are followed. 

So imo you are more likely to get a good blend with your Maggies if you use more than one sub. They do not need to be identical; in fact the other subs can be smaller and less capable than your Dynaudio.

Duke
disclaimer: commercially involved with a multi-sub system