Very Nice ;-)
Magnepan LRS in the house!
I've been a Magnepan fan since day one. Recently I decided to trade up from my MMGs to the new LRS. I had someone hot and heavy to buy the MMGs so I let them go a few months ago and called Magnepan to order the new LRS. I was informed that in a couple months there would be a new version of the LRS called LRS+. So I decided to wait on the order and see early reviews. The reviews are way over the top! Some are claiming the best speaker ever made! So time to order, called Magnepan and was told that the current wait was 8-10 months!!!
Si I ordered them and then tried to find a used pair of the older LRS to have something, Magnepan, to listen to over the winter. Luck would have it, there was a like new pair available in Colorado (I'm in Massachusetts). But I was too late...SOLD! Now it gets interesting. I posted a "Wanted To Buy" ad at US Audio Mart.....A fellow, one town over calls me and tells me he bought a pair from a guy in Colorado and when they showed up, his wife said "No Way Jose!"...Get them out of here!.....A plan made in heaven!
He delivered them on Saturday. Sunday morning I woke up early and welded up a set of risers as I read everywhere that using risers and placing the LRS dead vertical really makes them come alive.
Once the pain dried I set them up in the listening room.....Node2i into a Gustard X16 DAC...into a Schiit Freya...Into a Pass Labs First Watt F5v2.....
Oh my! These are NOT older Magnepan MMGs! HUGE improvement! These speakers have bass..Well defined, tight, dynamic base! But the biggest difference is midrange vocals...Not sure the risers are the reason, but vocals are right there! No moving around. I'm still playing with placement for imaging and sound stage, but even just plopped down in the room, they are magnificient!
Going to be a great winter!
43 responses Add your response
The KEF LS50 Metas are pure magic! Hard to beat for an easily placed, all around good loudspeaker. The imaging and sound stage is simply amazing. Depending on the room, add a subwoofer and you'd have to spend 10X more to get a 5% improvement! The Maggies are different. Much more up front and in your face. Amazing on Jazz, quartets, music the likes of Steely Dan, Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago......I'll keep both and switch them in and out depending on my mood.... |
I have had my LRS+ for 2 weeks and they are sounding great. Though Magnepan states full break-in cannot happen in less than 3 months, regardless of how much I play them...though they sure are getting played a lot...I was happy owner of original LRS but sold them months ago, and have owned various Magnepans for 30+ years...the Magnepan upgrade stands will be available in a few months, though not everyone at Magnepan believes they improve the sound... |
Really digging my recently delivered LRS+ as well. Very nice pairing with my Simaudio Moon 340i D3PX integrated amplifier. In the past I have owned other Maggies and these are the best overall sounding pair I have had so far. The Sound Anchors stands provide a very sturdy setting and improve the sound too!
|
@beatlebum Pull those out another 2 or 3 feet and some toe-in if you haven't already. |
No, yours looked pretty good. |
Fellow Members, if this is a dumb question I apologize in advance. I've read raves about the LRS and LRS+ speakers over the past year, but I've never looked up the price. I'm used to reading threads on this site where $20,000 and higher speaker prices are as common as Big Macs, and the Magnepans I've seen before were $8,000 to $40,000 a pair. Am I reading correctly that the LRS+ speakers are less than $1,000 a pair??? If so, that is fantastic to hear such raves about the performance quality of a speaker that is affordable to even young music fans just entering adulthood. Again, if I've miscalculated the price of the LRS+ speakers, sorry. Thanks. |
Enjoy your new LRS! When your LRS+ come in, and break in, I'd love to hear your impressions. I had SMG's, MMG's and 1.6's but retiring & downsizing left me with a listening room that was too small for the 1.6's. I was always floored by the decision to equip(cripple) the lower-end panels with god-awful, cheap, L bracket stands. I still remember truly hearing my SMG's for the first time, after installing them vertically on Magne-riser stands. The improvement was off-scale. It's about time they offer a decent stand for the LRS+.....it ought to be standard on LRS too. |
I alternated between LRS and LS50 Metas and was impressed by both. I plan to try alternating the LRS with KEF Reference 1s. By just moving speaker leads, they will be augmented with room-corrected Velodyne HGS-15s and high-passed with Marchand balanced passive filters. Amp will be Ayre VX-5 Twenty. It should be interesting. |
RJS Accoustics makes a couple of modestly sized subwoofer units (pairs) that go especially well with LRS+. Check them out here: RJS Acoustics | For The Passion Of Sound Reproduction |
@allenf1963 First, price has little to do with quality--i.e., lack of distortion and coloration in speakers. Second, Maggies are the only speaker I have ever heard that reproduce EXACTLY what you feed them, unlike any box or electrostat or horn(!) or whatever. Third, you need some decent power and source material AND, like ANY speakers, they have to be set-up correctly in YOUR room. Once you figure that our, unless you are trying to replicate a live concert at 160 db coming through 100 distorting box PA speakers driven by 100 Crown amps, well, they don’t do that well, but, given their largest model in the right room with high current tube gear, well, get right out of town if you have heard something better (more accurate) reproducing whatever you have as a source, well-recorded or not. Glad the OP loves his Maggies and knows what to do to give them the opportunity do what they do best. Cheers! |
Re the big subs: They are what I use with the KEF Reference 1s and are setup so I’m unaware of them except when they provide something like the vibration associated with low pipe organ notes. I plan to just move speaker cables. Re the high pass filters: I ordered fixed 80 Hz 24 dB/octave passive balanced filters from Marchand after consulting with Ayre. My previous experience with active high-pass had not been satisfactory, and I was admonished by Charles Hansen about putting anything between the preamp and amp because of the zero negative feedback design. Maybe audio maze or rbertalloto can make a pair of stands for me while they’re at it. db |
I agree with every comment you made. I also have never thought the price tag matches the "quality" for MANY of the consumer products bought and sold over the history of commerce...especially in the automotive, electronics, and "bling" categories. I was just initially really surprised at the low cost (low in my humble opinion -- $995 may just as well be $1 million to other members) considering the unreal prices I see on many products highlighted on this site. It pleases me to know a speaker with highly reviewed sound qualities is in the reach of music fans such as my 31 and 28 year-old sons, both who are Public School teachers.
My first experience with Maggies was in 1978. I arrived at my High School girlfriend's house for the first time, I was 16 and she was 15, to pick her up for a date and to meet her parents. As I approached the front door, I heard Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" rocking the front of the house, and my eyes and libido lit up as I thought to myself, "I thought Vicki said her parents were going to be home!". To my surprise, her Mom opened the door to greet me with her Dad sitting in his listening chair in the den, those beautiful Maggies being pushed by a McIntosh MC275 while "Paranoid" was spinning on a Thorens TD125. Needless to say, I got along with her parents VERY well. |
@allenf1963 That's a GREAT story. Makes me wonder how often that happened to customers I sold Maggies to in the 1970's-'80's from my shop. As I have posted many times before, after we locked the doors for the day, we took the opportunity to not only hook-up EVERYTHING to EVERYTHING in my shop, which was a high-end shop I took over in 1976, we also hooked up our guitars (acoustic and electric), basses (electric), took out some brass (trumpets, sax, trombone), etc., and LISTENED to what was what. It was then that my former love for Advent speakers ( and MANY others) died in about 3 seconds--nothing against Mr. Kloss, who was clearly a genius of his time--but we also realized that EVERY box in the shop was "changing" the sound of the recorded and live music. No, Maggies were not "perfect" because ALL recordings, even the direct-to-disc ones from Lincoln Mayorga, are "processed" in some way in the recording studio. BUT, they were the only speakers that just reproduced what you fed them, good, bad, or in between. We did run Audio Research electronics as we were a big dealer of theirs, and the combo was magical. Some may not remember that these two companies used to market their products together; funny that Wendall is now with Magnepan, but that is another story altogether. Glad you love your Maggies, and thanks so much for the wonderful story! Cheers! |
Yes, nice job @rbertalotto. I am not a metalworker but do enjoy woodworking in my small basement shop. So, I'm going to use some sturdy oak for my stands. I don't think the angles in your design will work with wood though. We'll see |
the little maggies are indeed special... in the right size room, right setup, they perform much magic, well beyond most box speakers multiples of their price - keys, as mentioned already, is to stand them exactly upright and lift off ground by 6-8 in to elevate soundstage in my experience rel subs do very well with maggies, even the smaller rels, if the room is fairly easily loaded with the sub output, a pair is even better than a single... as for amplifiers, maggies do demand strong clean power, and with a resistive 4 ohm load, they want substantial current delivery when called for too... high value amps that do very well are odysseys, belles, van alstine, mid hegels, mid to upper musical fidelity, mid naims - also don’t overlook older excellent solid state amps like marsh, forte, classe, bel, thresholds, muse and so on, so long as the amps are in good shape, not needing maintenance/recapping etc
|
Loved your story, also. My High School best friend was (and still is) a fantastic drummer. In the 1970's, his dad owned a Music Shop in town that rented instruments to Junior High and High School students, plus sold a complete line of guitars, bass guitars, drums, and PA systems. It was located in the downtown of the sleepy little East Tennessee town I grew up in, right on Main Street where weekends were spent "cruising" up and down the street all night, showing off your car and your girl. Many, many, Friday and Saturday nights were spent jamming live in that Music Store -- unless it was gig night which took up two to three weekend nights each month. We used to love watching the cars go by outside the store front glass windows, as the car passengers in turn cheered at us like we were rock stars, LOL. Simpler times.
His dad sold me my first "big boy" stereo system when I turned 14. A Kenwood KA-9100 Integrated Amp, Dual Turntable, Kenwood Tuner, Kenwood Tape Deck, and ElectroVoice speakers. I wish I still had that system, but alas, it was a victim of a home burglary in 1991. |
Try Googling "Rod H's Oak MMG Stands". They are what I ended up making for my MMGs. Easy, and they certainly do the trick. Plus, I was able to stain them to match the trim on my MMGs. To the OP: You alluded to voices "moving" in the soundstage from your old MMGs. I have not experienced that at all. Maybe differences in our upstream gear account for what you experienced? FWIW, I'm running a 1993 B&K EX442 Sonata @ 350 wpc/4 ohms. P-P current is 75 amps. |
This thread got me thinking about an upgrade to the LRS+ but Magnepan no longer has a trade-up program for for the MMG. 😥 However, for anyone wondering about the waiting period for the LRS+, it doesn't sound like anything close to 8 months, at least based on what I was just told by Eric Norgaarden at Magnepan: "I don't know who says that we are eight months from being able to deliver on new LRS+ orders, but that is way off. We have approx 200 orders in and are making approx 50 per week, so I would estimate that a new LRS+ order will get filled within 90 days." Caveat emptor. |
Great thread, thanks for starting it! Congrats on finding the LRS+. Living with Magnepans is a great experience.Years ago I home-trialed the MMGs and really liked them, so I bought 1.7s. I have been happily listening for more than ten years. A couple of times I swapped out for a couple of different high-quality box speakers, but it just wasn’t anywhere near the immersive experience that the Maggies provide. I'm fortunate to have a fairly large room that is acoustically suited to take advantage of them. I’ve had very good results with different amplifiers, and occasionally alternate among them to exploit their different advantages: McIntosh MC60s, Hegel H20, First Watt SIT-3, Wyred 4 Sound ST-1000 Mk2, and Devialet Expert 400. These have all worked well. It’s all been a lot of fun, and has made music listening relaxing, pleasurable, and meaningful. I wish you the same with your experience. Enjoy!
Craig |
@hartf36 Thanks for that |
Lead Time for LRS+...
I received this email on availability on 10-10-22... " Hello Roy,
Hey! I have a pair of LRS and I love them....Haha
I'll be happy to write up an order for the LRS+ for you. However, they won't show up until Spring 2023 more than likely. We have several hundred already spoken for so it is going to be a bit of a wait.
We won't make you pay in advance, so hopefully you have something to listen to while you are waiting." |
