Maggie LRS so ridiculously good


I ordered a set of the LRS just to be able to say I have lived with Maggies at least once.  I've had a lot of speakers and some big dog expensive ones like Kef Blade and Revel Salon 2 to name a couple.  These 650 dollar LRS bring as much enjoyment as anything I've ever heard in so many ways.  They don't love hard driving music for sure but for quiet listening or mellow type music they will give you transcendent moments.  I swear they are breaking in or something and becoming a little more dynamic than when brand new.  These have to be one of the greatest hifi bargains of all time.  My 30 watt Pass 30.8 drives them well.  I had 3.6 maggies many years ago and I snubbed them, thought they were so compressed sounding but maybe I was wrong or not using the right amp.  These are just wow and so impressive what you can get for the money.  I have a feeling a killer amp is a big part of the equation with these but even with a Naim Uniti Atom in a smaller space these are still awesome.  This has to be the ultimate apartment speaker for someone who can't turn it up very loud and likes to listen late and night, you can really enjoy these at very low levels.  Anyway I just wanted to put my enthusiasm on public record, if you are thinking of pulling the trigger do it and also give them some time don't write them off to quickly.  I wish I had a separate space so I could always have a set of maggies ready to listen to when the mood and music was just right.  
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Showing 1 response by kacomess

I purchased the LRS when it was first released. I use it with a Classé DR-9 amplifier and I added MagnaRiser stands. A few observations:
1) I spent many hours minutely adjusting the positions, both from the rear and side walls and "toe-in". As legions of others have observed, positioning is critical. I ended up using the formula on the Cardas Audio Room Set-Up page and it seems pretty good to me.
2) With the DR-9 and a Mytek Brooklyn DAC + listening volumes can range from very pleasant to simply deafening. The DR-9 outputs 400 wpc into 4 ohms if I recall correctly.
3) The sound stage is quite good, bordering on convincing realism with some recordings. Maybe these speakers are super-revealing or there's some other shortcoming in my system, but I've observed that a significant number of vinyl, streamed and CD recordings are rather "brassy". On a smaller subset of recordings (e.g., the vinyl of, "The Harvest and the Harrow" by Welch/Rawlings), the speakers perform marvelously well. For context, I use a VPI-HW 19/Mørch UP-4 arm/Sumiko Blue Point #2, an NAD CD (forgot the very long model number) as a transport and I stream music from Tidal using Audirvana.

4) At least for me, the bass is fairly anemic. I don't have a sub-woofer. I prefer chamber music and vintage small group jazz, so that hasn't been a major problem (but, I continue to look for used REL sub-woofers, since these supposedly work well with the LRS).
So, in my opinion, these are well worth the price. I suspect that with a more sophisticated system than my own, they would reveal their full capacity.