Subwoofer for Magnepan 1.6's

Never lose sight that it is about the music, not the gear...

that said, the right gear does enhance the experience...

It is pretty seamless to integrate, I never have owned a sub, my dealer was great in helping me to set the thing up correctly. This cut down the learning curve with the thing, I'm sure I would still be tweaking with all the set-ups if they hadnt' helped.

Dgplo - Awesome, good choice. Were you able to integrate it pretty seamlessly with your maggies??

Congrats! and thanks for the update

Now go buy some more music!

i ended up going with the rel brittania 3 -- it sounds sweet with my setup...

Thanks for all the good suggestions, should make looking for a sub a fun process...

Martin Logans also mate well with planars. Their subwoofers are also compact in size and can produce tight bass.

If you are looking for a great sounding affordable sub without breaking the bank, try the Onix Rocket by Av123.com
/Perpetual Technologies. It comes complete with the room calibration and mic. set-up in a well made, compact, and attractive enclosure. They offer a 30 day free home trial as well. It sells for under $500 and comes in a number of different finishes. It blends very well with faster speakers like the Maggies. I have been very happy with it in my small system, paired with my 3A MM DeCappo i's. It gets down quite deep to 24hz, but does not overwhelm the room with too much boomy, uncontrolled bass like many of the more powerful home theater subs. The automatic room calibration is quite effective at removing the resonant bass peak in my room.

I use a REL Strata III with my Innersound ISIS and am very happy with it. The adjustable crossover is what sold me on it, as well as it's musicallity without being boomy

The DD series subs from Velodyne are the way to go.

Tim

Have your had a chance to hear the new Rel series? The B3 or B2? I have been told that these do a great job with maggies, music and theatre...

I've got 1.6's mated with a pair of Strata III's. They
are a very synergistic match. The REL has a highly
adaptable crossover network which is easy to integrate
with Magnepans. A pair is not necessary, I'm just
obsessive-compulsive about my system. A single Strata III
served me will for several years.

The Vandersteen sub has a really execellent way of integrating the subs with the Mags since they are connected via speaker cable they can control the subs to match the speakers.. I butchered this description but someone else can fill in the details or check out their website. Not to mention they are pretty affordable subs..

I have not heard of the thunderbolt's, I will try to check them out.

thanks...

Check out the Nola Thunderbolt, a terrific sub for music and HT. It retails for around $1700, although every once in a while a version one pops up for 1K +/-. The TB doesn't take up a lot of room and is relatively easy to place.

It will integrate well with your 1.6s - the TB was designed to be "fast" since it was intended to be mated with Alon's (now Nola Speakers) high end dipole speakers.

The Thunderbolt has very tuneful, *musical* and deep bass - bass impact but no boom. Much of the technology incorporated into this sub was developed through the designer's experience implementing his SOTA kilobuck reference system the Grand Exoticas (Harry Pearson's reference at The Absolute Sound.)

I attempted to mate subs with Maggies 10 years ago. It weren't easy. Wish I'd had the Thunderbolts back then.

Thanks for the response, I will look into the velodyne series as well.

The Velodyne DD series is the only sub that has built in parametric eq + microphone to measure your room's freq response, and automatically (or manually) EQ the sub to accomodate for your room's problems. It is also extremely tight (servo) and very attractive in high gloss finish.

There is no substitute.