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Magnepan LRS Speaker Review

Blumlein 88

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Yes, more speakers (of this type) tested via the NFS will be the proof. I suspect a similar effect will be noticed in the lower region. One data point is hardly enough to extrapolate a conclusion.
This is not an anechoic versus in-room disparity the NFS system is measuring/depicting. I explained this back many pages in this intolerably long thread. :)

As it happens, I'm listening to my MMG system at this very moment while I type this. They don't sound like the depiction of the PIR from the NFS.
Sorry about that, but that's what I hear.

Dave.
Do you use or have you used any room correction?

Here is an initial measurement of a friend's Soundlab M3's. It didn't sound like this looks either.

1602892357000.png


In this case we were adding a sub, and this was the first measurement. The sub was between and in line with the panels. Without the sub the low end was more of a single wide 50 hz peak with the peak about 4 db lower. These were good sounding speakers according to those who heard them. Do note the scale it is almost a +/- 5 db window. Even prior to the sub they were run with room correction (disengaged for this measurement at the LP). With Room EQ you could bring the lower mid range trough up a bit, and provide a bit more sloped response evening things out quite nicely. And the result was an improved sound.

The point being you can get used to quite uneven sound, and think it of high quality. Fixing it makes it even better. To those who enjoy their LRS that is fine. If you could add a sub, or go to a larger Maggie and/or straighten out the measured response irregularities you'd like them even better. The fact you find them highly satisfactory doesn't mean the Klippel measures are wrong. Dipoles seem to be somehow more forgiving of response problems speaking anecdotally. But I think if you hear them behind an acoustically transparent curtain vs a more even responding speaker you might be surprised how you'd judge them.
 
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The point being you can get used to quite uneven sound, and think it of high quality. Fixing it makes it even better. To those who enjoy their LRS that is fine. If you could add a sub, or go to a larger Maggie and/or straighten out the measured response irregularities you'd like them even better. The fact you find them highly satisfactory doesn't mean the Klippel measures are wrong. Dipoles seem to be somehow more forgiving of response problems speaking anecdotally. But I think if you hear them behind an acoustically transparent curtain vs a more even responding speaker you might be surprised how you'd judge them.

I'm sure that's it. Thanks for the tip.

Dave.
 

Ron Texas

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With the intensely vulgar top-end Wilsons, one can bury monkeys of varying size all at once...

It's kind of a wonder that Wilson's are best sellers in their obscene price range.
 

welsh

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It's kind of a wonder that Wilson's are best sellers in their obscene price range.
Apparently they buy the drivers off the shelf - being generous, about £10,000 in the quarter-million-quid speakers?
 

welsh

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Your assumptions are generally not correct. The marketing photos are usually generated by buying stock images of beautiful homes and photoshopping the speakers into them. This is why you don't see cables, interconnects, other gear, etc in these shots. It would be a huge expense to take speakers into people's expensive homes to photograph them the way you imagine. I know this because I worked with a number of audio/electronics companies to get their "lifestyle" images for our website and they would give me the photoshop files with the layers clearly showing the stock room with no electronics and the other layers with pictures of gear.

The Magnepan site is decidedly low budget, resembling what the web looked like in ancient times. :) The pictures as such are real and likely customer ones. Here is the one I showed again:

IMG_0539.jpg


The seating position is where the camera is placed. It is a U-shaped sofa. So definitely real. And definitely asymmetrical.

Compare that to typical photoshopped marketing image:

collection-persona-series.jpg


No equipment rack. No way to get cables to those speakers without ruining this look, etc.

Bottom line, the assertion was incorrect. Every speaker manufacturer likes to have customers use symmetrical spaces. There is nothing unique about Magnepan.
Photoshop can produce absurd results, obviously. I recently saw a picture of a pair of £1,000,000(!) speakers in what looked like a typical Russian oligarch pad. The huge speakers appeared to be levitating several inches off the marble floor. If you’re in this market, at least hire someone who can actually use Adobe programs... or perhaps the speakers really used anti-gravity tech culled from reverse-engineering UFOs
 

welsh

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Different strokes for different folks. Love, love, love the sound of my 1.7is in my room. Have set up Klipsch RF35s, RF82s, RF7, RP600m, Wharfedale Diamond 10.1, and, most recently, KEF LS50 (non-Meta) in the room and nothing has wowed me anywhere near the psychoacoustic sense of the "wall of sound" for me. Bought them immediately upon hearing them with comparison to the Vandersteen Treo (not that I was about to drop that kind of dough, anyway, haha).

Un-EQ'd they still measured pretty well and have, if anything, a bit too much bass for the space.

View attachment 86444

If anything, my only regret is not having the floor space for the 3.7i. Well, I probably could have made them fit, but it's imposing enough in the room with the 1.7is staring at me.

View attachment 86442
 

Ron Texas

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Apparently they buy the drivers off the shelf - being generous, about £10,000 in the quarter-million-quid speakers?

Most likely made to order in batches by some manufacturer of drivers. It doesn't take a very large order to get some deviation from their stock drivers. If I had that kind of money to spend on toys it would probably have a steering wheel.
 

TheGhostOfEugeneDebs

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Most likely made to order in batches by some manufacturer of drivers. It doesn't take a very large order to get some deviation from their stock drivers. If I had that kind of money to spend on toys it would probably have a steering wheel.

It used to be Focal. Not sure who it is anymore.
 

welsh

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Masterful work here, Amir. Bravo.

This looks like an absolute nightmare to own. No wonder people say sub integration is difficult with Magnepans! They are probably trying to cross over at 120Hz, lol!!!!
I have Revel M16s (ASR approved), KEF LS50s (not so ASR approved) and Magnepan LRS (definitely not ASR approved). Each speaker gives me an experience that I appreciate (I use each type with twin REL subs, and all driven by a Yamaha AS-801 amplifier. Variety, etc...
 

Newman

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You could say that about any 3 speakers. And none of it would have any objectivity. Sighted listening etc.
 

TheGhostOfEugeneDebs

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You could say that about any 3 speakers. And none of it would have any objectivity. Sighted listening etc.

Of course you could say that about any three speakers. They would all clearly have different frequency responses in room, why wouldn't it be objective? I don't think anyone at all is arguing that speakers all sound the same.
 
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All speakers that measure the same on the NFS should sound the same in the behind-the-curtain test.

Dave.
 

richard12511

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All speakers that measure the same on the NFS should sound the same in the behind-the-curtain test.

Dave.

I'm not sure about that. Isn't it possible for distortion/compression to have some audible effects that wouldn't show up in the frequency response? Especially if the listening test is done loud(louder than the NFS measured).
 

Tim Link

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You're fighting an uphill ideological battle here....arguing for an "in-room/typical use" scenario response test instead of NFS testing...
-- not sure this is the forum for the argument you're trying to make...but you've made some headway!
-- however -- in my opinion, it'd be cool to see in-room measurements, especially with/without room correction, etc., etc....kinda like Amir's testing of Room Perfect and Audyssey... but this scenario would be unworkable for the qty. of products he tests, unless a well heeled audio fanatic would bankroll a facility and staff for such an endeavor???? Any takers? No? Just sayin....
I've had a client send me in-room REW measurement of his maggies. The frequency response was ragged and didn't extend very deep with a 10db hump centered around 300hz, but the clarity C50 was excellent. I don't think I've seen as good with dynamic box speakers except for maybe studio mixing setups with lots of acoustic treatments. I just now looked at that again. The C50 from about 60 hz to 400hz was particularly good, around 20db. I'm averaging around 10db through that range in my room with my horn speakers.
 
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Newman

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I mean, for goodness sake, I'm not even trying to defend the LRS or shit on your review; I've never heard it, don't want one, and will continue to fund your experimentation through patreon. You could very well be totally right: it has no bass and sounds wonky in exactly the way it's measured! But we've got only one panel speaker put to the test. Why am I being mocked for the entirely reasonable curiosity if this is an appropriate methodology for panel speakers - considering they are, after all, a totally esoteric, oddballish and rarer speaker design?

Without skimming the 26 unread pages of this thread to see if you got your answer to the above 60-day-old question (not about why you are being mocked but about the appropriateness of NFS to dipoles or panels), here is my attempted explanation.

Main point to absorb is that Klippel builds a model of the total sound field in anechoic space. And it does it for any sound source, without caveat, whether point or line or pretzel or acoustic laser beam. So, yes, it is appropriate for this (or any) speaker.

Some reading, link, includes some discussion of line-source speaker from post #31.

The beauty of building (from Klippel NFS measurements) a total 3D model of the anechoic sound field, is that we know enough about how sound waves behave to describe how that sound field will expand. The physics is no longer about what caused that sound field — whether it was a loudspeaker of a certain shape, a live instrument, a human voice, or an exploding bomb, is all irrelevant — the physics from that point on is saying “we have a full 3D model of this ‘bubble’, so we know how it is going to behave as it expands, at every distance, at every direction, if it were in open space”. I hope that is helpful to your enquiry.

Why is anechoic response important for a speaker that will be heard in rooms with many reflections? Humans have spent enough time indoors/incave to feel it's unnatural if indoors and hearing sound without wall reflections. Toole has described, drawing on solid research, how the human listener is able to evaluate the direct sound separately from the summed sound, and if the direct sound of the Maggies (or any speaker) has an FR that varies much from flat, smooth, and extended, then it will not perform well in blind tests for that reason alone. It falls over at the first hurdle, and Amir’s measurement is the ‘real deal’ at telling us if it clears the first hurdle. A good speaker has to perform well at direct sound and reflected sound, both.

If the direct sound is bad, then it's just wallpapering to look to the total room result for help. The speaker is doomed and can never reach the top shelf.

Then why do some bad-measuring speakers get glowing listener reviews? Because it is human nature to pre-condition incoming raw sense data (the sound waves) with a suite of unconscious personal cognitive biases, which we are wired to mistake for the raw sense data. That's why some bad speakers still get so much praise. Something non-sonic about them (or their back story) is so well aligned with widespread biases or values that many of us hear their sound as good anyway.

cheers
 
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shumi

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Then why do some bad-measuring speakers get glowing listener reviews? Because it is human nature to pre-condition incoming raw sense data (the sound waves) with a suite of unconscious personal cognitive biases said:
You mean to tell us that expert reviewer Herb Reichert who highly recommends these speakers for ' their levels of microscopic detail, accurate timbre, and pure-water transparency which are unprecedented at anywhere near $650/pair.' is being fooled by something NOT SONIC? Like a check from MAGNEPAN?
Nonsense.
 
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