I just heard the future of Magnepan! We all win...

[Ahmad Lee]

Thanks to Titanium Troy’s timely tip, I joined Magnepan’s focus group in Pittsburgh, where Wendell Diller’s road show (V2.0) introduced a new Prototype.

Tall, svelte and surprisingly unobtrusive panels played a diverse selection of music that sang through the challenging acoustic conditions of a glass enclosed modern apartment. Sound enthusiasts or not, everyone at the demonstration was impressed.

Takeaway 1: The experience blew me away. Magnepan’s New Bass Solution (NBS) IS this company’s bass blueprint for the future.

The Prototype projects a stunning, detailed, and realistic three-dimensional musical soundstage with seamless bass generated from a small triangular box - 6” per side and 36” high. It has the best speed, snap, accuracy, and depth I’ve ever heard from planars in my 45-year love affair with music.

They are both beautifully musical and amazingly analytical; starkly revealing the enormous production differences between every.single.piece.of.music.demo’d.that.evening!

I walked in asking, “Can they really substitute their flagship 30.7’s accurate and grand bass panels with a tiny triangular box, without shortcomings?”

I walked out, with a definitive, “Yes!” - impressed that not only that they had pulled it off but realizing I had just witnessed the obsolescence of large bass panels.

Additionally, the sonic improvement goes beyond the bass. In reducing the original 30.7 drivers to a single panel with NBS substituting the bass panels, this Prototype fully outperformed the original.

Takeaway 2. NBS is fundamentally TRANSFORMATIVE to Magnepan. It will make their products more appealing and competitive.

First, NBS provides a whopping 70% reduction in size – planars go from overwhelming to more welcoming in our homes. It’s also less sensitive to positioning and room size giving us more flexibility in how we enjoy it at home.

Second, NBS delivers improved power handling, reducing the need for expensive amplifiers. The Prototype was effortlessly driven by Magnepan’s new MAC amplifier (150W/8 Ohm and 300W/ 8 Ohm), soon to be available at about $3,600.

Third, NBS saves money. Manufacturing and shipping huge panels is expensive - NBS isn’t. So Magnepan gets improved margins, their dealer base gets reenergized, and consumers get more value.

Fourth, NBS is so compelling I would be surprised if Magnepan didn’t soon revamp their 20.7, 3.7i, and 1.7i offerings.

Magnepan deserves to be congratulated for innovating new products.

They’ve pulled this off before. Two decades ago they dropped their original mylar tweeters in their higher end speakers for something new—their patented ribbon tweeter! It remains to this day one of audio’s superb highs

A few humble suggestions for Mangepan

1-It’s time to name this great speaker something more than “30.7 for Condos”.

2-Stick to your Value(s). Literally. Magnepan consistently wins best-in-price-class honors from the LRS to the 20.7. Please continue this in pricing your new NBS line.

3-If you need more focus groups, invite the participants to MN. Your NBS works. Let’s focus on getting the new speakers to market as soon as possible.

***

I keep hearing that HIGH END AUDIO is dying with the baby boomer generation.

If so, it’s certainly not because the market as a whole is shrinking. Audio is actually bigger today than ever, it’s just that high-end’s share of it is dropping.

Brand, brand character, product quality, convenience, relevance, positioning and experience drive today’s consumer. I’m not confident many high-end manufacturers are playing at that table.

Magnepan is about to shed major size and performance handicaps and introduce a great new speaker. I would love to see Magnepan seize this fantastic opportunity to increase its “top of mind” and market share. Because now they CAN.

 

[pozz]

Nice report. Hopefully Magnepan will read it and provide more us comprehensive stats/measurements, too.

 

[Ron Texas]

This is a bit like what Martin Logan does. Provide a dedicated sub to do what the panels don't do well.

 

[RayDunzl]

I walked out, with a definitive, “Yes!”

Did you also walk out with a photo?

 

[Ahmad Lee]

I did! I found it amazing that the minuscule triangular device between the plants bested the 30.7's immense bass panels. The tall panel to its right, narrower than even a MG-1.7i, contained all the other 30.7 drivers. Magnepan's apparently still working on the crossover (displayed on the ground behind the panel). While it has Prototype written all over it, it plays music like no other...

 

[Hemi-Demon]

I love the Magnepan sound, but the dimensions have always been problematic, as I always end up selling them due to room crowding and space.
That small triangle is an automatic purchase for me. When it is being released?

 

[RayDunzl]

I love the Magnepan sound, but the dimensions have always been problematic, as I always end up selling them due to room crowding and space.
That small triangle is an automatic purchase for me.

The triangle is just the bass add-on, as I read it.

 

[Ahmad Lee]

There is no release date yet, but I am with you. After hearing it, I too am excited and intend to buy Magnepan's new speaker. The good news is that the results from Magnepan's multiple focus group meetings has been so overwhelmingly positive I'd be surprised if they haven't already green lit the final design stage. But between that and getting final production set up, I don't think we'll see it before summer 2020. But one can always hope...

And just to be clear, the new bass triangle is an integral component of Magnepan's new full-range speaker system and not a separate component. Furthermore, if I understood correctly, it's not being represented as a subwoofer, but a woofer. I'm sure all of this detail will be forthcoming once Magnepan finalizes this design.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

If the rumored price is correct, I would say this is NOT the future of Magnepan.
They will obviously need to maintain their value-oriented products and support for those. THAT is their core market.

I'm sure your check is in the mail though.

Dave.

 

[TLEDDY]

... and that rumored price is?

 

[josh358]

... and that rumored price is?

The rumors are unfounded -- Magnepan doesn't know yet how much it will cost, or even if it will become a commercial product. If they do make it, they'll begin with the flagship model and then add a range of models at various price points. And, as you say, they'll keep making the panels, which will always be less expensive since they don't require DSP and a dedicated 1000-watt amplifier, or the separate woofers. But hopefully, this will extend their reach to customers who want the sound but don't want their living room to look like the set from "2001."

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Josh,

Tell us why the need a 1000 watt amplifier for bass duties in this system?
This is not a closed-box woofer system and power requirements should not be exceptional. In fact, with most open-baffle woofer systems using multiple drivers power requirements are modest. My various dipole woofer systems all work fine with a 50-60 watt amplifier.

Dave.

 

[josh358]

Thanks to Titanium Troy’s timely tip, I joined Magnepan’s focus group in Pittsburgh, where Wendell Diller’s road show (V2.0) introduced a new Prototype.

Tall, svelte and surprisingly unobtrusive panels played a diverse selection of music that sang through the challenging acoustic conditions of a glass enclosed modern apartment. Sound enthusiasts or not, everyone at the demonstration was impressed.

Takeaway 1: The experience blew me away. Magnepan’s New Bass Solution (NBS) IS this company’s bass blueprint for the future.

The Prototype projects a stunning, detailed, and realistic three-dimensional musical soundstage with seamless bass generated from a small triangular box - 6” per side and 36” high. It has the best speed, snap, accuracy, and depth I’ve ever heard from planars in my 45-year love affair with music.

They are both beautifully musical and amazingly analytical; starkly revealing the enormous production differences between every.single.piece.of.music.demo’d.that.evening!

I walked in asking, “Can they really substitute their flagship 30.7’s accurate and grand bass panels with a tiny triangular box, without shortcomings?”

I walked out, with a definitive, “Yes!” - impressed that not only that they had pulled it off but realizing I had just witnessed the obsolescence of large bass panels.

Additionally, the sonic improvement goes beyond the bass. In reducing the original 30.7 drivers to a single panel with NBS substituting the bass panels, this Prototype fully outperformed the original.

Takeaway 2. NBS is fundamentally TRANSFORMATIVE to Magnepan. It will make their products more appealing and competitive.

First, NBS provides a whopping 70% reduction in size – planars go from overwhelming to more welcoming in our homes. It’s also less sensitive to positioning and room size giving us more flexibility in how we enjoy it at home.

Second, NBS delivers improved power handling, reducing the need for expensive amplifiers. The Prototype was effortlessly driven by Magnepan’s new MAC amplifier (150W/8 Ohm and 300W/ 8 Ohm), soon to be available at about $3,600.

Third, NBS saves money. Manufacturing and shipping huge panels is expensive - NBS isn’t. So Magnepan gets improved margins, their dealer base gets reenergized, and consumers get more value.

Fourth, NBS is so compelling I would be surprised if Magnepan didn’t soon revamp their 20.7, 3.7i, and 1.7i offerings.

Magnepan deserves to be congratulated for innovating new products.

They’ve pulled this off before. Two decades ago they dropped their original mylar tweeters in their higher end speakers for something new—their patented ribbon tweeter! It remains to this day one of audio’s superb highs

A few humble suggestions for Mangepan

1-It’s time to name this great speaker something more than “30.7 for Condos”.

2-Stick to your Value(s). Literally. Magnepan consistently wins best-in-price-class honors from the LRS to the 20.7. Please continue this in pricing your new NBS line.

3-If you need more focus groups, invite the participants to MN. Your NBS works. Let’s focus on getting the new speakers to market as soon as possible.

***

I keep hearing that HIGH END AUDIO is dying with the baby boomer generation.

If so, it’s certainly not because the market as a whole is shrinking. Audio is actually bigger today than ever, it’s just that high-end’s share of it is dropping.

Brand, brand character, product quality, convenience, relevance, positioning and experience drive today’s consumer. I’m not confident many high-end manufacturers are playing at that table.

Magnepan is about to shed major size and performance handicaps and introduce a great new speaker. I would love to see Magnepan seize this fantastic opportunity to increase its “top of mind” and market share. Because now they CAN.

This is exactly the kind of feedback they're looking for -- I'll pass it on to Wendell. [Edit -- just did, and he said he'd met you and your wife at the Pittsburgh event.]

I heard these at the next stop, in Verona, New Jersey, and it was the best speaker system I've ever heard. The realism was just stunning, a step up even from the 30.7. Don't know if you were still there, but at the end they played the Firebird Suite and my jaw dropped, because it was the first time I really understood what they can do. They went from the delicacy of a butterfly to the power of a locomotive (sorry for the reviewer talk, but it was just amazing).

From a more technical perspective, I'd say that:

1. The midrange was exceedingly flat -- we're talking something like +/-1 dB accuracy in the presence range. Largely as a result, voices and pianos were reproduced with uncanny accuracy. It inherited this characteristic from the 30.7 -- the midrange coupler/midrange/tweeter panels (this is a four-way system) are similar to those in the 30.7, and the sound through that region was similar as well, which is to say a step up from previous Maggies and at least as good as I've ever heard.

2. The separate woofer is a dipole like the panels. Wendell Diller explained that their goal was to duplicate the performance of the planar bass panels. The main advantage of dipole bass is that it doesn't excite the lateral and vertical axial room modes, leaving only the z-axis axial mode and the oblique modes. Also, it mates more easily with a dipole mid because it doesn't suffer from backwave cancellation at the crossover point (the in-phase radiation from an omnidirectional woofer cancels the backwave from a dipole midrange). Wendell said that he's never heard a hybrid system in which you couldn't hear the transition to the woofer, including in their own experimental efforts. Integration was the main challenge they faced, and I'd say they did an excellent job of it.

3. The general consensus seems to be that the dynamic woofers have more output than planar woofers. They aren't subs, though. I think you'd want a bottom octave sub for pipe organ (there are otherwise almost no instruments with fundamentals below 37 Hz). But then, how often do we listen to pipe organ? My impression was that the dynamic range was superior to any Maggie I've heard, perhaps not surprising since the woofers aren't a panel. And it's the woofers, with their large excursion, that are the main limit on the dynamic range of a planar.

4. Imaging was stunning. This has always been a forte of Maggies and dipoles in particular, but this was even better than other Maggies. Of course, setup influences that -- they were pretty far from the front wall, which is important to the perception of depth, and the room had diffusion, which Wendell says was true of all the best rooms on his 30.7 tour. There were also the usual ficus plants behind the panels. But on the negative side, there were a couple of big floorstanders behind the panels and in front of the woofers. I think part of the excellent imaging is that the 12" wide panels result in better lateral imaging specificity, which has always been a weak spot with Maggies, since the drivers are spread out. The large panels can also sometimes block the reflected backwave, which is important to the sense of space.

5. The DSP allows the bass to be adjusted for room characteristics. I think that any woofer should have DSP at this point. Wendell hadn't had time to adjust the DSP and the room had no bass traps, but bass was still well balanced at the prime listening seats (there was too much midbass in the very back of the room). I tried listening from various locations in the room to separate room effects from the response of the woofers, and it was clear that the room modes predominated, though they were less pronounced than they would have been with an omidirectional woofer.

We ended up having an interesting discussion on questions like whether the DSP should have automatic room EQ (the consensus was that it should -- someone mentioned his positive experience with the DSPeaker). All in all, a spectacular effort and if the reaction from those present is an indication, it will go over big with those whose wives I mean spouses won't allow big panels in the living room. Agree that price will have a big effect on how widely it's adopted, though -- if they price it like the 30.7, it will sell to the Park Avenue crowd, if it's more in the 3.7-20.7 range it will be more accessible to the rest of us.

 

[josh358]

Josh,

Tell us why the need a 1000 watt amplifier for bass duties in this system?
This is not a closed-box woofer system and power requirements should not be exceptional. In fact, with most open-baffle woofer systems using multiple drivers power requirements are modest. My various dipole woofer systems all work fine with a 50-60 watt amplifier.

Dave.

Because of the small baffle. The ability to hide the woofers was important to them, and the small baffle lowers Fequal.

I don't know that the amp size is written in stone, BTW. It's just the number Wendell has been mentioning.

Wonder how long it will take for the geeks among us to put bigger baffles on them.

 

[josh358]

PS -- For those who are wondering, the panels are 12" wide by 6' tall. The woofers are designed to be hidden behind furniture and the DSP will allow for versatility in placement since they'll have adjustable delay.

 

[Deleted member 2944]

Because of the small baffle. The ability to hide the woofers was important to them, and the small baffle lowers Fequal.

I don't know that the amp size is written in stone, BTW. It's just the number Wendell has been mentioning.

Wonder how long it will take for the geeks among us to put bigger baffles on them.

Josh, baffle size has nothing to do with power requirements in an open-baffle system. Only sufficient power to move the drivers to their maximum excursion is necessary.
Because of the (usually) large equalization employed in dipole systems, the system limitations are far more about mechanical limits of the drivers vice available power. I suspect that a final version of this system will not require anything close to a 1000 watt amplifier. The only types of woofer systems that (might) require power like that are closed-box woofer systems where the box is really small.

Dave.

 

[josh358]

Josh, baffle size has nothing to do with power requirements in an open-baffle system. Only sufficient power to move the drivers to their maximum excursion is necessary.
Because of the (usually) large equalization employed in dipole systems, the system limitations are far more about mechanical limits of the drivers vice available power. I suspect that a final version of this system will not require anything close to a 1000 watt amplifier. The only types of woofer systems that (might) require power like that are closed-box woofer systems where the box is really small.

Dave.

Well, Fequal increases by an octave every time you halve effective baffle size, so that will cost you 6 dB of output for every halving of effective baffle size. I assumed that that was the issue here? If I recall correctly, Linkwitz's analysis showed that the output of a dipole woofer was constrained by Xmax towards the bottom of the woofer's range and by amplifier power towards the top.

Anyway, this was just my guess about why they chose such a big amplifier -- all I really know is that Wendell is quoted somewhere as having said that amplifier power was one of the keys to making the woofer compact. It would certainly lower the cost of the speaker if they could use a smaller amp.

 

[josh358]

Just in case anyone is wondering what the panels look like -- sorry for the quality of the photograph, but it gives you an idea of how small they are:

 

[Deleted member 2944]

If I recall correctly, Linkwitz's analysis showed that the output of a dipole woofer was constrained by Xmax towards the bottom of the woofer's range and by amplifier power towards the top.

That only holds true if you're trying to maintain Xmax as you go up in frequency which, (in the case of dipole woofer system) you never are.
I suggest to quit guessing until some sort of actual technical information emerges on this. And if said information emerges from Wendell, it will need to passed through the marketing-filter algorithm about ten times.

Dave.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

Thanks to Titanium Troy’s timely tip, I joined Magnepan’s focus group in Pittsburgh, where Wendell Diller’s road show (V2.0) introduced a new Prototype.

Tall, svelte and surprisingly unobtrusive panels played a diverse selection of music that sang through the challenging acoustic conditions of a glass enclosed modern apartment. Sound enthusiasts or not, everyone at the demonstration was impressed.

Takeaway 1: The experience blew me away. Magnepan’s New Bass Solution (NBS) IS this company’s bass blueprint for the future.

The Prototype projects a stunning, detailed, and realistic three-dimensional musical soundstage with seamless bass generated from a small triangular box - 6” per side and 36” high. It has the best speed, snap, accuracy, and depth I’ve ever heard from planars in my 45-year love affair with music.

They are both beautifully musical and amazingly analytical; starkly revealing the enormous production differences between every.single.piece.of.music.demo’d.that.evening!

I walked in asking, “Can they really substitute their flagship 30.7’s accurate and grand bass panels with a tiny triangular box, without shortcomings?”

I walked out, with a definitive, “Yes!” - impressed that not only that they had pulled it off but realizing I had just witnessed the obsolescence of large bass panels.

Additionally, the sonic improvement goes beyond the bass. In reducing the original 30.7 drivers to a single panel with NBS substituting the bass panels, this Prototype fully outperformed the original.

Takeaway 2. NBS is fundamentally TRANSFORMATIVE to Magnepan. It will make their products more appealing and competitive.

First, NBS provides a whopping 70% reduction in size – planars go from overwhelming to more welcoming in our homes. It’s also less sensitive to positioning and room size giving us more flexibility in how we enjoy it at home.

Second, NBS delivers improved power handling, reducing the need for expensive amplifiers. The Prototype was effortlessly driven by Magnepan’s new MAC amplifier (150W/8 Ohm and 300W/ 8 Ohm), soon to be available at about $3,600.

Third, NBS saves money. Manufacturing and shipping huge panels is expensive - NBS isn’t. So Magnepan gets improved margins, their dealer base gets reenergized, and consumers get more value.

Fourth, NBS is so compelling I would be surprised if Magnepan didn’t soon revamp their 20.7, 3.7i, and 1.7i offerings.

Magnepan deserves to be congratulated for innovating new products.

They’ve pulled this off before. Two decades ago they dropped their original mylar tweeters in their higher end speakers for something new—their patented ribbon tweeter! It remains to this day one of audio’s superb highs

A few humble suggestions for Mangepan

1-It’s time to name this great speaker something more than “30.7 for Condos”.

2-Stick to your Value(s). Literally. Magnepan consistently wins best-in-price-class honors from the LRS to the 20.7. Please continue this in pricing your new NBS line.

3-If you need more focus groups, invite the participants to MN. Your NBS works. Let’s focus on getting the new speakers to market as soon as possible.

***

I keep hearing that HIGH END AUDIO is dying with the baby boomer generation.

If so, it’s certainly not because the market as a whole is shrinking. Audio is actually bigger today than ever, it’s just that high-end’s share of it is dropping.

Brand, brand character, product quality, convenience, relevance, positioning and experience drive today’s consumer. I’m not confident many high-end manufacturers are playing at that table.

Magnepan is about to shed major size and performance handicaps and introduce a great new speaker. I would love to see Magnepan seize this fantastic opportunity to increase its “top of mind” and market share. Because now they CAN.

very detailed first post.
Did you join just to share the Maggie love with us ?