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Where are your maggies??

Hi,

Just took delivery of a pair of Magnepan 3.6 R's and I'm just starting to get a handle on their sound and at the same time having some placement issues.
I'm using a Belles 250i integrated, which despite it's modest power rating seems to handle the Maggie's incredibly well....large, open soundstage, dynamic, no compression to speak of at higher spl's etc.

My only issue so far is that the overal balance and presentation is a little on the bright side of neutral, more so than the monitors that I've used for the past 6 years or so. Also, bass is definately on the 'lean' side, which doesn't help with the issue of a bright tonal balance.
I'm wondering if my room is mostly to blame for the forward presentation, and wondered if any Maggie owners could cast some light on their own placement issues with 3.6's and what steps they may have taken to overcome the forward presentation and lack of bass. I know that placement with the Maggie's is critical and so far I've spent two evenings making adjustments without any real impact to the overal sound. I have some issues with reflective surfaces, but the speakers are 10' clear from the front wall, 25 or so feet clear from one side wall, 12' clear from the other side wall and 18' from the listening chair with 3' behind the chair to the back wall. So room reflections ought not to be a significant issue given their proximity to the room boundaries.(also, they are 12 feet apart with slight toe-in and the tweeters on the outside).

I've messed around with distance from side and front wall, distance from listening seat, distance between speakers, toe-in angle, and have switched the speakers around between tweeters inside and outside.
The changes in position have effected the soundstage, imaging depth/width but have not really altered bass response or the tonal balance to any real degree.

I'm wondering if these are just inherrently 'bright' speakers with no bass??....though I have heard people claiming to get great bass response from 3.6's and have never heard anyone claiming that they are overly bright. (I've got the Maggie supplied tweeter attenuator installed also, by the way).

Should I be trying anything else as far as placement is concerned, what have others used to tame a forward sound??

Should I be concerned about the amp?...it is an integrated with a tube pre and solid state power stage, and most people describe it's sound as warm, full and tube-like.

Sorry for posting yet another 'Magnepan' thread, but my instinct is that these speakers are capable of much more than I'm getting out of them, and I have the space to allow them to 'breathe' with a room approx 30x60.
I do however have a limited budget for amps, $3k max, though I suspect the Belles is really a great amp that is up to the task of handling these puppies.

Any ideas, insights or tweaks would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks,

Rooze

128x128rooze
jimmyrod
56 posts
 
First off congradulations on owning a fine speaker.

Second did you buy these new or used? They need at least 200-300 hrs to break in.

To tame the tweeter a bit while breaking-in try a simply fix of using some copper wire replacing the metal jumpers for the tweeter attenuator or use the supplied tweeter attenuators.

Now to improve the bass, placement and power will handle that. The comment about using the Cardas method is a good one. I have my 3.6R 48" from the front wall. In your case 10ft from the front wall seems rather far, but again look at the Cardas method to help address this.

Finally Magnepans are not for everyone, but given the right setup they are an incredible speaker especially for the $$.

If you bought from a dealer they should be assisting in setting these up for you.

Some people including myself buy the Magnepans only to end up upgrading their power amps, but before you do set up is key.

Happy listening
onemug
784 posts
 
When the bass loosens up it will mask some of the brightness. In the meantime, see if you can borrow a big amp or powered sub to try. Make sure the sub can be crossed at 30 to 40hz. Some things you can do now are try them 3.5 to 4 feet from the wall behind them, tweeters on the inside and put a 2 inch piece of 12ga. copper wire in place of the steel tweeter bar or resistor your using now. Good luck.
krellman
7 posts
 
Sold... (Hi Roose)
I have tried many tweak and speaker cable before selling them. Even with my big krell KRS 100 (180 pounds each mono block) I couldn't get the bass I was hoping for, and I wasn't looking for out of this world bass, just realistic bass and that in a 15 x 17 x 8 room. So I sold them and bought a pair of Apogee Scintilla : these got bass and a lot of it. But there is still light at the end of your tunnel ; after reading a lot on the net (after selling the maggies, too bad I haven't founded this before) I found that the best way to increase the bass with your maggies is to modify your crossover. So take the plunge and get your crossover modified and be happy.
tok20000's avatar
tok20000
608 posts
 
My Maggies are sold. I had them for almost 3 years.

Anyway, I say listen to Tireguy because he is a Maggie expert.

Personally I would advise the following:
- get the most powerful amps you can afford to drive them
- no integrated amp is going to do what a 500+ wpc amp/amps will do into the Maggies
- Maggies take a while to break in, whatever brightness you hear is due to your system, the room, or the Maggies needing to break in. Maggies are not inherently bright speakers.
- You probably are not getting much bass from the Maggies due to your amp. You need more power to get the Maggies to perform better (especially in the bass).
- At a $3k budget I would get a couple of the Bell Canto digital switching amps and monoblock them or go with used Plinius SA-250 mk4 if you can get one around $3.5k or so... Think POWER.

KF
sean
6,231 posts
 
1) Your room is TOO big for this type of speaker.

2) You don't have near enough power for the speaker that you are trying to run. Combine this with the size of the room that you have and it's no wonder you aren't happy.

3) In order to get what you want out of this system retaining these speakers, you'll probably need to buy a WAY bigger amp ( you can't buy one big enough ) and supplement the bottom end. That will probably take another amp since most "quality" subs don't come with their own amp.

4) If you go the route mentioned above, all you'll have left to do is to play with matching the gain levels on the mains and the subs, find the best placement for the subs and then hope that the subs and Maggies blend well together.

5) You probably bought the wrong speakers. "Good" products are not universal in application.

Getting around the problems cited above may have you pulling your hair out, getting very frustrated and going bankrupt. Sorry for the bad news and being brutally honest, but i'm trying to save you a lot of headaches and heart-aches. Sean
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