Magnepan 1.7 too bright, HELP

My Maggie 1.7's are in a room with 9 foot ceilings, 35 feet long and 15 wide. Fully carpeted with couch, loveseat, and chair. Palm trees behind the speakers. The room is on a lower level with stairs near the listening end and an el around the back so it opens up behind the listening position.

The speakers are four feet from the front wall (15 foot wall) and about seven feet apart. I sit about ten feet away (which is too close to get the full effect of different instruments in space). This means about 20 feet behind me. I would like to move to 3.6's or 3.7's but do not think that they will fit given the current room setup. (Mancave to a point but with a healthy dose of WAF!)

I have the tweeters oriented "in" which helped with focus and imaging. Moving them around inch by inch impacts the bass. Mye stands (new used on Audiogon) have made a noticeable improvement in bass.

The speakers have been used for about 350 hours. They seem to continue to improve in the richness of the sound. They started out a little analytical and bright but have mellowed. An improvement.

I have not made the plunge to any special interconnects or speaker wire. Using "no name" stranded wire for the speakers that is thicker than lamp cord. My interconnects are home made from a Walmart out door patio cord with soldered RCA connectors and heat wrap.

I listen to some vinyl, but mostly CDs through a tubed Audiospace CD8.

I run a 300 wpc/4ohm Krell that can play quite loud when I am in the listening position. The volume goes from 0 to 150. If I go above 90 it will overheat and autoshutdown occurs. When the wife comes to talk I have to turn the volume down to about 50 which is a loud background level in order to hear her. We have a bar at the far end of the room and when I sit there I want them louder. Also, I think that 300 wpc into 4 ohms is not enough to carry the peaks.

So...Wyred4Sound SX1000 and STP SE are on order from Underwood Hifi.

By the way, Wally says that Wyred4Sound is contemplating a "reference" line of amps that can be played in digital or tubed mode. They will have better asethetics. Price will be much higher than SX series and the digital side of the sound will not be any different.

For what it is worth, I tried the Grant Fidelity tube buffer between a Azur 640 CD player and a McIntosh MA6300 integrated amp driving a double stack of Large Advents. Could not tell a difference.

Okay - the W4S SX1000 and STP SE have arrived and been listened to for about ten hours - maybe 12 different CD's - mostly jazz and acoustic rock.

Initial impressions:
Yes, Maggies love power. They sound a lot better. The sound is generally fully and much more palpable at higher volume. I have played as high as 40 which keeps the STP in passive mode (threshold to active is 60). Not sure that I needed the 1000 versus 500, but if the wife is going to yell I figured I might as well make it worth it!

I am hearing much more detail such as different voices in harmonies and better resolution of instruments in a mix.

The depth of the sound stage has improved because I can hear much more front to back.

I was not sure about the bass at first. Then I remembered Magfan saying to tweak with what you have. I started moving the Maggies in one inch increments and improved the bass in fullness and texture. I would have never thought that two different amps would require respositioning the speakers but I believe it now!

I definitely listened to the Maggie 1.7's before buying them. Here is my recent "audiophile" history:

I was an double stack Large Advent Loudspeaker guy for about 25 years. Finally told the wife that I needed to upgrade. This is after capacitor upgrades to the Advents (which opened up the sound quite a bit).

My first upgrade was to purchase a McIntosh MA 6300 integrated at 160 wpc/4ohms. Did this because my old Yamaha 760 integrated quit working. It was the "I always wanted a Mac" purchase.

Next up was an Azur 640 CD player. That lasted less than six months but I knew that going in. I was relocating to a new job and my old player died so I bought the Azur quickly on a "good deal".

Then I upgraded to an Audiospace CD8 with tubed front end. Big improvement. Much more detail, bass, and low noise floor.

So now I am a double stack Advent guy with MA 6300 and a CD8 player. Plus vinyl which I will not go into here. This drove the Advents well but I had heard enough to know that the Advents had to step down.

Now the speaker shopping starts:

Snell J7 monitors - in home audition - too small a sound, too analytical

Klipsch towers - just not my cup of tea. Sounded too harsh and not very refined. Probably was the amp for all I know

Jamo 803 monitors - really sweet, musical sound with pretty good, big bass, but I wanted more than that

B&W - several different models including a couple of in home auditions - just too dry and analytical - very specific imaging to the point of not sounding real at all. To me, with B&W, all the sound is there but there is no life. These were through some Classe and Levinson monoblocks at the dealer as well

Martin Logan - just seemed like the bass was not right - just too much of it - like boomy almost. Too much "in your face" for me. Heard through the same Classe and Levinson monoblocks.

Ascend Acoustic Sierra Ones - in home audition - Liked the sound but really did want a bigger sound and not a monitor size sound

Paradigm Signature towers - couple different models - Too brittle, not enough real bass, no texture

Maggie 1.2' - Heard these and fell in love. To my ear they had a sort of Advent sound. One reviewer had stated about 20 years ago that Advents have a sort of electrostatic sound, so maybe I am not that nuts. I could live without the Advent bass because there was so much more detail to hear. However, it did not take long to think that the 1.2's needed more power.

I home auditioned a Krell S300i integrated with 300wpc/4 ohms that blew the Mac away - no warm, woolly Mac sound but the bass and detail were big improvements.

Then the Maggie 1.7's came out last year and I listened to them twice and puchased them last Thanksgiving - five week wait. I was somewhat apprehensive because they did not sound as musical as the 1.2's although they had a lot more detail and more bass.

The 1.7's continue to break in and now have about 250 hours on them. They sound much more musical than they did at the end of last year. Still thought that I was missing the "edges" of the sound and that is how I got to the 1000 wpc W4S gear.

The bass has improved with the location change and I suspect that it will continue to improve as the new W4s breaks in. The Maggie 1.7's will never be the ultimate in bass but the trade offs to go with Walsh Ohms or ML's, for example, seem to great too me at this time.

MacDadTexas,

You have 3.6's correct?

Outlaws of Love - I have never heard that album - first by the Police, right?

So if I am following this correctly, the 1 ohm resistor took away more energy going to the speaker which reduced the sound compared to the .327 ohm resistor which took away less energy and kept more to produce the sound at the speaker.

Do I have this right?

If so, it seems like a resistor is supposed to be an inexpensive way to correct how a component sounds?

I tried a couple of different subwoofers with my 1.7's including a Genesis 928 with dual 12 inch woofers. I did not like it - could not seem to get the bass right in terms of loudness. I was changing the gain all of the time depending on what I was listening to. It seemed like the Genesis was too much woofer for the 1.7's.

While this subwoofer auditioning was progressing, I started to hear distortion from one of my Maggie 1.7's - sort of a slight "crackling ssshing" noise from high up on one panel. I switched the two speakers just to be sure it was not some other component problem. The sound followed the one speaker.

The dealer said that it would be fixed under the warranty; I just would have to bring the speakers back to the store.

While at the store I got to hear Maggie 3.6's and thought that they sounded darn good. I ended up taking them home as my loaners until the 1.7's were repaired.

As it turned out, I kept the 3.6's.

I would have to say that the 1.7's sounded bright and sterile compared to the 3.6's in my listening place with exactly the same components (W4S amp and preamp and Audiospace CD8).

I think that the 3.6's sound warmer, sweeter, and definitely more mellow - much more of what what I prefer to hear.

In addition, the 3.6 bass is another whole level above the 1.7's.

Also, the 3.6's create a much bigger soundstage. In my listening space the soundstage extends across the whole 15 front wall.

So...while I thought that the 1.7's were pretty good, my vote is that the 3.6's are much better.