Review: Mye Sound speaker stands Magnepan- MG-20 Tweak


Category: Accessories

In hind sight I have no rational or sane reason why I did not purchase a pair of Mye Sound custom stands for my MG-20's, to replace their stock footers, along time ago. I had read on different websites scores of glowing reviews regarding how the Mye Sound stands dramaticly improved the sonic performance of any Magnepan model. I had never read or heard even one negative comment regarding these custom stands. Well, better late then never.

The Mye Sound stands are beautifully hand built by Grant VanderMye in Kelowna, B.C. Canada. Grant and his wife were a delight to work with and made the purchase a very easy and pleasant experience. If you can handle working with a total of 12 screws/bolts it's a breeze to install these stands on your Maggies. They replace the stock footers with a very heavy and extremely well built stand, which come with very high quality carpet piercing brass points, and a pair of struts which lock the speaker panels into an iron fisted triangle.

I have gone through many upgrades and tweaks over the years, haven't we all, but nothing prepared me for what took place when I placed my dearly loved MG-20's on these stands. The improvement was not subtle or slight but a significant transformational change that brought the already reference level attributes of the 20's to even a higher level. If I had to try to give this a percentage rating I would say at least 25%, which is quite remarkable considering the performance level of the MG-20's with the stock stands to begin with.

Here's the details of what took place sonicly with the Mye Sound stands:

1) I have always found the MG-20's to be sonicly "seamless" and speak with one voice in a very cohesive fashion. With the Mye Stands this quality was taken to even a higher level.

2) The level of transparency/clarity was vastly improved so microdetails and decay trails become more apparent in a very natural/organic way.

3) The location of each individual player became more precise in the soundstage, with greater air around them and a yet still blended in with the rest of the music very naturally.

4) Bass became much faster, more dynamic/powerful, and accurate and blended with the lower midrange in a much more realistic way.

5) Overall timbres became more lifelike in their harmonic structure and tonality.

6) The final change seems the most paradoxical to me. The Mye Stands totally energized and made the MG-20's come "alive" and at the same time made the experience of listening to music through them a more relaxing/emotional situation.

To say I'm enthralled with what the Mye Stands did for the performance of my MG-20's would be an under statement! All this for a total of $600.00. If you own any Maggies, regardless of the model, you really owe it to yourself to put them on Mye Sound stands. My experience now is that you really don't know what sonic performance Magnepans have to offer when used on those dinky stock footers, unless you cement them away from performance killing vibrations with Grant's custom stands!

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teajay
Being audiphiles, we know that a tweak here, a tweak there, can make a great difference. A difference to us listeners, that is. I accept that the Mye stands make an improvement. But I also want to know how and why they make such an improvement. Any comments?
Listener614, your question regarding how the Mye Sound stands dramatically improved the sonic performance across the entire spectrum, is very easy to answer.

The weakest link in all Magnepan speakers is twofold:

1) The passive crossover regarding the quality of its parts effect the performance of the speaker. In my system I use an active Bryston X-over and bi-amp my MG-20's, so I never had to deal with this aspect.

2) The stock footers or stands allow massive vibrations and spurious frequencies to "muck up" the performance of the ribbon tweeter and panels in a drastic negative fashion. Any speakers performance will be harmed because of acoustic vibrations, but when your talking about a seven foot tall frame housing ultra-light transducers, ribbon tweeters and mylar membranes, you can see why the Mye Sound stands allow the MG-20's to really perform to a much higher level and max out their abilities.
Teajay, the ribbon tweeters are mounted in a heavy steel frame. I think those rapidly fluttering ribbons are well isolated. The midrange and bass panels are also very low mass. Do you think they really impact the hard frame in which they're mounted? How did Grant Vandermye come to invent these stands? And I think they're a little pricey.(Evidently, to his credit, he's on to something!) Speakers:3.6R.
The resonant frequency of a Maggie in its stock stand is easy to measure. Just deflect it about an inch at the top, and time the resulting oscillation when you let go. My MG1.6 is about 2 Hz.

Since the MG1.6 rolls off at about 40 Hz the chance of moving it by playing music is remote.

In my experience Maggies sound best when hung with chain from the ceiling in a very large room.
Teajay

Congratulations you have sucessfully direct coupled your loudspeakers to the higher mass of ground. You have shortened the delay time and amount of energy storage within the diaphragm and the frame work that tensions the membrane. The wave launch itself has to have a faster rise time and more accurate decay time when coupled in the method you described. Reactive energy must be mechanically discharged to ground as quickly as possible so it does not pollute the next incoming wave.. Way to go. Tom