What is best sub to match with Magnepan?

no subwoofer

no subwoofer

Among many other speakers through the years including ATCs, Epos, Apogees and Martin Logans, I have owned and enjoyed Magneplanars since I was a junior high school student in the late '70's - from MG-Is to Tympani IVs which I still have today.

Personally, I would never try to combine a dynamic subwoofer with any of them - regardless of price or quality.

I would first consider your room, and experiment by moving your 1.7s closer to the front wall and/or corners.

You can use blue painters tape to mark the positions and may find that even 6 inches will make a significant difference.

At the same time, you can experiment with pushing your listening chair closer to the rear wall.

Unless its your thing to rock out with hip hop or heavy metal, even the smaller Magnepans are capable of rich, magical, three dimensional sound, hence their enduring business and reputations with audiophiles.

In my experience, the people who speak poorly of them are generally dealers who don't sell them.

Cheers,

Brownsfan and others,

If you enjoy subs with your Magnepans, that's great and I wish you happiness with your system. And I agree with the observation that yes, you would want them to be as unintrusive as possible or as Brownsfan puts it to not try to do too much!

I am not a bass freak and have generally had bass challenged speakers throughout my life. I do think imaging is one of the greatest things for an audiophile and my understanding is that very low bass can add space, ambience and room size to imaging?

Nonetheless, the reason I am stubborn on this point is that the unique magic of Magnepans comes from their amazing cohesiveness, which is unmatched by most coned speakers.

In my experience, no matter how fast a dynamic speaker is, it will never keep up with a panel or an electrostatic, so there is inevitably some smearing and blurring of the qualities that you might have purchased planar speakers for in the first place.

I had a pair of Martin Logan SL3s years ago where obviously the manufacturer would go to great efforts to blend the woofer and the panel. I sold them because it wasnt even close.

So if you want to use subwoofers, I would first go to the end of the earth and every conceivable effort to extract the best full range, top to bottom, sound that you can from your room and from your Magnepans.

Then and only then I would add your subs back in and as Brownsfan points out, dial them out of the conversation as much as possible.

Finally, those of you who have been doing this for a while may recall an audiophile classic do it yourself speaker in the 70's / 80's as touted by the Absolute Sound: The Infinity QRS - Magneplanar Tympani 1D.

In that case, the best bass in the world was derived by splicing the Mangeplanar BASS panels onto the Infinitys.

So I would definitely also check out the new woofer panels - combined with 1.7s they could be a new giant killer.

Cheers,