Magnepan .7 Alternatives

Your room is the obvious limiting factor, with both size & dimension issues.  A smaller Maggie might improve the situation, but not likely to cure it.

The safest approach is switching to nearfield monitors.  You've already got the subs, so they don't need to go deep.

If you live near Boston, are feeling lucky (or just experimental) and want to remain out-of-the-box(-speaker), I see there is a pair of used Linkwitz LxMini dipole speakers available online (check hifishark).  Warning - guaranteed negative Spouse Acceptance factor, unless they have a quirky sense of humor!  I haven't heard this design, but his larger speakers are spectacular.  The smaller form factor here probably works better nearfield.

Most of the time my .7 Maggi’s sound fantastic, just a little finicky.

I know my room is smaller than I would like, but unfortunately this is the room I have to work with. I certainly understand the “bloom effect”.

My (2) REL T5x Subs blend beautifully, they’re fast, musical and appropriately sized & placed for the room. The Maggi’s are 3’ out from rear walls & 2’ from side walls, spread is 6-3/4’ apart, After hours of listening and adjusting, I’ve tried them both ways and have opted on having them towed in with Tweeters on outer edge so every seat on the sofa is a sweet spot. Played a lot with placement as well as researched a lot on their nuances and I get it, but have to work within the constraints thrown at me. 

Think I’m going to try running the Blusound Node’s output to a better DAC… Being I mostly listened to vinyl prior, pretty sure it really wasn’t as profound an issue till I started streaming. I’ll be researching the speaker suggestions and trying to figure out how and where and I can audition.  All comments are read and appreciated. Keep those suggestions coming.

Thanks

Work up stream from preamp. A-B dacs streaming serivices they very greatly in resolving on type, sample rate.format all play math in a peculiar way.

No two r the same in the sweat spot point, equilateral triangle in front of your Maggie’s.

Or if material you listen to is on CD or DSD. Buy a cd/DSD spinner which is a dac

Lastly, If you still have all the vinyl collection and your turntable, convert the library to various hires formats on pc/Mac you probably can find an a/d converter then stream library from networked drive from that.although that rabbit trail extends Another six months and $$$ to short to ground variable.

Or just work the preamp upstream angle. If you listen to piano reel piano, my experiences difficult at best to beat vinyl OR well recorded CD/DSD . But I recorded a lot of piano and analog so my opinion is skewed.

digital done well . It’s Not perfect but nice to play ability from your sofa.

kingbarbuda

479 posts

09-17-2022 at 11:21pm 

@mschott I think this narrative about Maggies not integrating well with subs is a myth

Truest thing ever posted here.

lots of good comments here, valuable reading not just for the op, but for many having or interested in the smaller maggies

key points:

-- room appropriateness and setup for any speaker choice is always critical - the dipole maggies illustrate this in spades

-- subs are needed for little maggies and many work well, despite wendell saying they don’t (god bless wendell but he is salesman and he is trying to sell his new bass panels lol!)

-- maggies are very very revealing, and like any truly hi-rez transducer, the resolution can be a dual edged sword -- poor recordings are revealed to their full extent