My used Magnepan 1.6's are missing sparkly treble. Why?
Here are some pictures of what is behind that aluminium panel. I assume the other speaker is the same. https://www.dropbox.com/s/x5tt7tqscfu77om/IMG_0019.JPG?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/qoraem5mzc07lte/IMG_0022.JPG?dl=0 |
I don't know what a Shefield demag disk is. Are you talking about this: https://www.amazon.com/Sheffield-Xlo-Test-Burn-CD/dp/B000025RLX Although that seems like an interesting, if wildly overpriced, product I can't imagine why it would fix anything in the speakers. |
At some point the speakers were modified to remove the fuse. That whole panel shown in the manual doesn't exist. There is just an aluminum panel across the speaker with plugs for the wires. The seller represented that was a modification to improve the sound along with better stands. I wanted to attach a picture but couldn't figure out how to. Is there a trick to that or are JPEGs not supported in this forum? |
Thanks for the tip. Lets see if this dropbox link to the JPEG of the back of the speaker works. https://www.dropbox.com/s/3qaj08yrow0nat0/IMG_0017.JPG?dl=0 |
I'm not sure if this is simply confirmation bias or what but I did find several different demagnetizing tracks on YouTube and after playing them I think the treble response is improved. It is still somewhat muted but better than it was. I don't think the problem with the speakers has anything to do with the removal of the fuse or a tear in the ribbons either of which ought to pretty much eliminate the high end response and that isn't what is going on. I found a couple of 20Hz to 20KHz audio sweep on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-iCZElJ8m0 . I stopped hearing anything around 11KHz which was also my limit listening with my Ananda headphones and that might be about all my 62 year old ears can hear anyhow. So the 1.6's are responsive to at least that level. I think the high end is just softer/quieter than it should be. Maybe time to look into an equalizer? |
11K is about it for me. I'm curious how high you hear? Assuming this tone generator is accurate you should be able to get a pretty precise measure of the limits of you hearing. https://www.szynalski.com/tone-generator/ |
I thought I should provide an update to my original post. Since I wasn't sure what was going on with the 1.6's and there was a very good used 1.7 for sale locally at a good price I ended up getting that also. Overall I liked the 1.7 better and the treble might have been a bit better but still not what I expected. However, I kept playing around with the placement of the speaker and positioning the 1.7's tweeter on the inside and a little more toed in and that definitely improved the over all sound but cymbals and top hats still seemed to be somewhat lacking. Reading more posts about how others had placed their Maggies I noticed many users thought they were better tilted forward slightly. So today I made that small adjustment by sliding a CD case just under the rear stands. And that definitely made a big difference in the overall sound and especially the high end. The 1.7's now sound realistically bright and closely match what I'm hearing if I listen on the Ananda headphones. And that also may explain why the 1.6's seemed so disappointing since they were actually set up to be tilted back by about the same amount as my 1.7's are now tilted forward. I feel like I mostly have the 1.7's dialed in now but it is amazing how sensitive they are to small changes in positioning. That fussiness is probably why they aren't more popular. |
I think you are probably right about the 1.6's being fine although I'm probably not going to go to the trouble of hooking them up again to find out. I'll put them up for sale soon and hopefully somebody else will fall in love with them. At the used prices these Maggies are one of the great values in the HiFi world. |
