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Why do Maggies need a lot of power?

It has been genearally accepted that Maggies (i.e. 1.6s) needs a lot of power. Why?

Mathematically, any 86dB speaker should need only 64W of power to reach optimum listening level (104 dB). Why it's not the case for Maggies? One may say that b/c it has only 4 ohm, but there are tons of low sensibility 4 ohm speakers in the market and they do not seem to have any problems like Maggies. Again, one may say that they need current. I think most of the amp is cappable of 20 Amp and wonder if that 's still not enough? If so how much current are we talking about?

I have seen a few recommendation and review of low power amp to drive maggies (i.e. Cary Rocket amp (40W), or Bel 1001 (50W) and a few more class A amp with range around 50W) sucessfully.

For the one who recommend the high power amp (>200W), how lound do you listen to them? I can't imagine myself sitting next to the speakers that have 200W of power fed into them. It muust be awfully loud to me. On the other hand are we talking about reserve power (head room) that Maggie may need at a cirtain time, not the entire period?

Has anyone really been happy with the low power amp with Maggies, either SS or Tube?

Thanks a lot for the thoughts,

Ake
ake

Showing 1 response by gmorris

gmorris
351 posts
 
I think that you can drive the maggies up to the 3.6 (excluding the 20.1) with a good 100 watt tube amp with high output current such as the ARC VT100 MKII. I have been using maggies exclusively since 1977. Initially, my first high end speaker was the venerable MG2 which was first driven by an ARC D76A (75 watts), followed by the MGIII/MGIIIA which were driven successfully by an ARC D115 MKII (115 watts).

Currently, I am driving MG 3.5s with an ARC VT100 MKII. I have had no problem with dynamics or loudness limitations. Coupled with a stereo pair of Sunfire Signature subwoofers (the blend is seamless and not detectable), I feel that I have a full range system that approximates the performance of some of the expensive full range speakers at a fraction of the cost.
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