I missed the demo in San Diego (my hometown), had no idea until too late.
I've been a maggie owner for a long time, and contrary to 'conventional wisdom', I haven't found them that hard to set up. What I do:
1) Four feet or more of air behind them.
2) Play a monophonic signal, maybe even pink noise. Move speakers and ears until the virtual image is a stable immovable dot or line that doesn't change with volume or frequency. I.e. the minimum possible, most absolutely boring 'soundstage'. Turn on stereo: maximum realistic soundstage.
I've never needed room treatment or anything to get them to be good.
"At 14’x28’ with a 12’ vaulted ceiling, I think my room may even be large enough for the 3.7i s."
Plenty, in fact the problem with large maggies in smaller rooms is more aesthetic than acoustic above the bass: smaller rooms have more bass modes in psychoacoustically relevant frequencies.
I also haven't found subwoofer integration that difficult---with a sealed sub of course. On its own, I ran the sub with a very low crossover frequency (35 Hz?) and the speakers full range. Also try pointing the sub so the driver is 'across' the room, e.g. from the right speaker pointing to the left or vice versa.
But substantially superior was moving to high quality measured DSP, namely Anthem ARC. (Algorithms are quite audibly different, some are better than others significantly!) If you're having trouble integrating a sub, try one of these: Anthem, Dirac, RoomPerfect.
It's truly amazing. I plopped the sub in the middle, followed the procedure with the included mic, and with only one change to default parameters (maximum correction frequency at 1000 to 1500 Hz instead of 5000 Hz) it sounded fantastic. Seemingly perfect sub integration, and what's more the common weakness in my 3.6's (slightly fuzzy low-midbass) was eliminated and it sounds more "dynamic", to my ears, no loss vs a very very good conventional speaker.
Bonus: the Anthem proprietary algorithms for surround synthesis from stereo work very well (much better and more tasteful than Dolby etc), plus transparent calibrated Fletcher-Munson correction for lower volume listening.
btw, I bought some KEF Reference 1's (top reviews & perfect measurements) in mind as an upgrade---nope. they're good speakers but not magic.
Other planars I've heard:
Some Emerald Physics at the T.H.E. audio show---to my surprise, major and obvious midrange coloration/tonality problem.
Spatial Audio M?: nice, well above average, better than unsubwoofered Maggie (1.7 or lower) in bass, but not as clear above bass.
Sanders 10D or 10E: utterly perfect, best recorded sound I've ever heard---in the 9 inch sweet spot.
(A.Asylum: DrChaos)
I've been a maggie owner for a long time, and contrary to 'conventional wisdom', I haven't found them that hard to set up. What I do:
1) Four feet or more of air behind them.
2) Play a monophonic signal, maybe even pink noise. Move speakers and ears until the virtual image is a stable immovable dot or line that doesn't change with volume or frequency. I.e. the minimum possible, most absolutely boring 'soundstage'. Turn on stereo: maximum realistic soundstage.
I've never needed room treatment or anything to get them to be good.
"At 14’x28’ with a 12’ vaulted ceiling, I think my room may even be large enough for the 3.7i s."
Plenty, in fact the problem with large maggies in smaller rooms is more aesthetic than acoustic above the bass: smaller rooms have more bass modes in psychoacoustically relevant frequencies.
I also haven't found subwoofer integration that difficult---with a sealed sub of course. On its own, I ran the sub with a very low crossover frequency (35 Hz?) and the speakers full range. Also try pointing the sub so the driver is 'across' the room, e.g. from the right speaker pointing to the left or vice versa.
But substantially superior was moving to high quality measured DSP, namely Anthem ARC. (Algorithms are quite audibly different, some are better than others significantly!) If you're having trouble integrating a sub, try one of these: Anthem, Dirac, RoomPerfect.
It's truly amazing. I plopped the sub in the middle, followed the procedure with the included mic, and with only one change to default parameters (maximum correction frequency at 1000 to 1500 Hz instead of 5000 Hz) it sounded fantastic. Seemingly perfect sub integration, and what's more the common weakness in my 3.6's (slightly fuzzy low-midbass) was eliminated and it sounds more "dynamic", to my ears, no loss vs a very very good conventional speaker.
Bonus: the Anthem proprietary algorithms for surround synthesis from stereo work very well (much better and more tasteful than Dolby etc), plus transparent calibrated Fletcher-Munson correction for lower volume listening.
btw, I bought some KEF Reference 1's (top reviews & perfect measurements) in mind as an upgrade---nope. they're good speakers but not magic.
Other planars I've heard:
Some Emerald Physics at the T.H.E. audio show---to my surprise, major and obvious midrange coloration/tonality problem.
Spatial Audio M?: nice, well above average, better than unsubwoofered Maggie (1.7 or lower) in bass, but not as clear above bass.
Sanders 10D or 10E: utterly perfect, best recorded sound I've ever heard---in the 9 inch sweet spot.
(A.Asylum: DrChaos)