What's Up with Magnapan at Shows?

According to Wendell, the goal of this demonstration wasn't just to sell speakers, but to introduce a concept -- that of using the DWM woofer to match bass panel area to the acoustics of individual rooms. This concept is still unfamiliar to most, and dealers expressed concern that customers would think the DWM meant that the 3.7 didn't put out enough bass, when in fact like all speakers it's tuned to an average room and may need more or less output to fit a particular acoustic. So Wendell is doing his best to get the concept of room matching out there, and judging by the glowing press reaction, the demo seems to have gone over very well.

I guess I should add that Magnepan believes very strongly in the value of blind listening. They use this for effect at shows, but they also use it in their own speaker testing -- they won't make a change unless a listening panel prefers it in a blind A/B test. This is an excellent way of circumventing expectation bias.

Finally, regarding dissatisfaction with the closed demo format, Wendell explains that they have a limited number of good seats and that while he'd like to accommodate requests such as listening to a specific cut, listening without the center and so forth, to do so would be to deny others a chance to listen to the demo. He says that he was doing 15-20 minute demos for four days without a break for lunch. Because they knew the room would have to be in use full time for the demos, Mark and Paula were in the hall to answer questions.

Don,

I don't think a 3 Hz difference in the the -3 dB point is going to make much of an audible difference. Any speaker design consists of numerous interacting tradeoffs. The 3.7 is a radical redesign from the 3.6, with different tuning, conductors, and crossover. I don't know what accounts for the difference but I do know that the bass is tuned differently. Among other things, according to what Wendell told the magazines, improved midbass performance was a priority, with the midbass of the Tympani IVa the ideal.

I think it's worth noting to that the DWM isn't a subwoofer. Its 3 dB point is something like 40 Hs. There may be some mutual coupling with the baffle of the mains depending on room arrangement, and this could potentially extend the bass of both by increasing effective baffle size and lowering Fequal. But Wendell stresses that the purpose of adding the DWM is to tune the 3.7 to a larger or bass-shy room. As of course you know bass is extremely room dependent and Magnepan can only tune a speaker to an average room. The DWM can be used to match the 3.7 and other models to the room where that's necessary.

This was a big part of why Wendell chose to do this demonstration -- he's trying to explain that it's a matter of tuning diaphragm area to a specific room.

I don't know about you, but I was very impressed by the bass of the 3.7. I know Wendell says that the quasi ribbon foil doesn't make much of a difference in the bass, but it seemed to me anyway to be cleaner than the wire bass, which is already unusually clean at moderate levels.

I really did find the 3.7 an improvement over the earlier versions, BTW. The quasi-ribbon mid makes a difference, IMO. Part of this I think is also due to the new crossover design, which along with other changes improves driver blending. Single pole crossovers have distinct technical advantages, *if* your drivers can handle that range. Judging by a picture I've seen of a naked 3.7, Magnepan has done some clever design to allow the drivers to work over the full range.

Series crossovers have their own tradeoffs. The back EMF which you (or someone) mentioned on the Planar Circle is a drawback. Amplitude response immunity to driver impedance variations is an advantage. There are other trades as I'm sure you know. Why wouldn't Magnepan would have gone with a parallel crossover if performance had been better?

I'm not aware of any problems with the performance of the 3.7. It's a wonderful sounding loudspeaker, based both on my own listening and that of lots of people I know, including people who have upgraded from the 3.6. The worst I've heard is that it wasn't enough of a difference to justify the upgrade. That was what one person said here. Most people seem to think it's worth the upgrade, but, of course, that's subjective.

I suggest you talk to Mark and Wendell about why they didn't submit the 3.7 to Stereophile. There has been a lot of information and speculation, including my own, that according to them was incorrect.