Why is the turnover on maggies 1.6QR so much?

It has been several years since I owned Magnepan 2.7's. At that time the ribbon was a true ribbon tweeter as is in the Maggie 3.5, 3.6 series, and sounds much more open on top than the 1.6's. I've auditioned the 1.6 and agree they are a great value, however, the older III series resolves upper frequency details and sounds more balanced. Bass, to me was and remains a stong limitation of the panel speaker. This includes the Maggies, Apogees, Martin Logans, unless you go to a hybrid with cone bass driver, then the weakness becomes getting the integration correct. Magnepan has a great product, but like all else in audio, it is the trade off of strengths and weaknesses that must be balanced. Many who purchase the 1.6QR find the weaknesses of speaker size, room integration, placement, ancillary electronics, and, wife acceptance as too many weaknesses to settle on them long term. If you notice, most turn within 6 months to 1 year. Again, it's a subjective and personal choice.

I agree with the above, but also take into consideration the folks that upgrade to higher models. ie 3.6 & 20.1

Once you get em home and discover that they won't play "Alice in Chains" or "Metalica" for beans, people get discouraged. I hate it when that happpens....

I had 3.5 and currently have SMGc in my bedroom (very little use). The bottom line is that you get what you paid for. It is very diffcult and expensive to do full range speakers well. They are limited in both frequency and dymanic range. Limited air movement. You can't expect to get $5000 performance by spending $1600.

All of the posts above are correct. There are several reasons for this.

There are a lot of them out there. Because of their low price and high performance, I think many people use these as a stepping stone to higher end products. I personally am waiting for the right pair of 3.6s to come up.

Part of the reason for their lack of WAF and room domination is color choice. I own 1.6s (for the second time around). The first time I got them in black fabric with rosewood side rails. They looked BIG and UGLY. If you'll look at most of the ads, they have the black fabric. Now I own them in lt beige fabric with oak siderails. Now they blend with the color of the walls and don't even seem as big as the Merlin VSMs I've got. No, they don't ROCK, but that's why they make Cerwin Vegas. By the way, Sound Anchor stands are the way to go if you own maggies. This improves bass considerably. Now they ALMOST rock!

I also think that people try to under-power maggies. Doing that results in sloppy bass and a muddy upper bass, lower midrange. From my experience, you have to have at least 100 high current watts, but really don't get the full benefit of this speaker until you go over 200 watts. They are a fantastic speaker for the money as long as your musical tastes are within their capabilites. They don't do rumble-butt bass or in-your-face dynamics. What they do give you when set up right is pristine clarity, detail that is not edgy, natural tonality, lifelike re-creation of the soundstage, and pinpoint imaging.