I am not going to argue whether these are good speakers or not. Or what people heard in their own experience.
I have never had or heard the LRS. What I am trying to understand is whether the measurements reflect reality and how.
When you do a scientific experiment and you get unexpected results compared to common observations, you try to understand the reasons. But first you check if the experiment is measuring what it is supposed to measure and second if the interpretation of that is related to reality especially if it conflicts with other experience/observations/measurements.
It is fairly non-controversial that small Maggies are bass-deficient. But the rolling off starting at 300hz seems very odd. This is not reflective of small Maggies (unless the LRS is really hosed). The Maggies are a trade-off of a number of things. If they were that deficient in general for all of their smaller ones, I very much doubt that people would have kept them in the numbers they did. But that is subjective and
NOT my point. But it does cause one to say "wait a minute"...
I did a quick measurement of the 25 year old SMGa using REW. Restored as described here (
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...n-makes-a-video-for-the-lrs.14769/post-477571 )
Here are my L and R measurements (no EQ, no processing, nothing in the way).
View attachment 83849
There is some room mode effects especially below 100hz, but in no way can this be considered as rolling off from 300hz. The mids around 500-700hz have a bump up, not sure whether that is a room mode or the an effect of the crossover at 800hz is not clear. As I had mentioned earlier in this thread, I cross them at 100hz (by disabled for this measurements) to the sub. But they are relatively flat down to about 90hz or so. And no, they don't sound anywhere near what Amir described it as although it is difficult to calibrate such subjective descriptions.
So
1. The measured 300 hz roll-off is definitely not a given for small Maggies (not even for this 25 year old model). This would be a wrong conclusion to draw from this review.
2.
Unless the LRS is really screwed up in which case, I think they should be burnt to have shows such a dismal measurement, one has to explore reasons.
Repeatability (not just in one experiment) but by others is one significant requirement for establishing validity of a scientific experiment. Is there a single REW of the LRS anywhere else that shows such a roll-off? A valid question to ask. Next, is the measurement that has a huge discrepancy valid?
Now one might say, there may be something odd or unusual about my set up that is causing it to measure better than it is. So I did a control measurement that actually is similar to what a 300hz roll-off might look like (exact same audio chain but for center).
View attachment 83859
Once can even credibly claim that this starts to roll off around 500. This is for another model of Maggie, a pair of wall-mounted $325/pair MMG-Ws used as phantom center. MMG-W is the tiniest of the Maggies and not designed for low extension but does well as a phantom center to match bigger Maggie mains. So, there is nothing compensating to make any of them sound better than they are.
Is the LRS really more like the tiny MMG-Ws (I would find it hard to believe) or is there a discrepancy that needs to be explained? Can we find one corroborating measurement of the LRS that supports the measurements here? These are valid questions to ask in the interests of science alone.
Nothing to do with whether one likes or does not like these speakers.
