Magnepan LRS in the house!

[Joe Smith]

These do intrigue me, and I got the same message from the factory rep...I just can't buy something that expensive without having a listen first. Also, I don't really have a great room for them, and I would need a more powerful amp. Hoping someone locally gets a set and I can listen to them sometime down the road.

I do find it odd that there is nothing on the website about them, even with the issue of the long lead time...just disclose that while promoting the product. Most people who are buying them will not be dissuaded just because of longer production time...?

Oh, yeah, congrats on the risers. Nice design. Magnepan should pay you and copy that design!

 

[rmsanger]

Just joined team Magnepan.. I pull them 3-5 feet in the room during primary listening and move back to the pictured position generally.

I was going to wait for the LRS+ to come to my local dealer but Magnepan was being excessively slow and non-communicative with them on timing. In fact they had fired 2 of the 3 dealers in our state within the last 1-2 years so their network is a bit odd at this point. Luckily I found a used set of 1.7i's in pristine condition and am quite happy. Compared with the regular LRS they are a step up in detail/resolution, stage size, and most of all bass extension/impact. No they are not bass monsters and likely I may still get a dual set of rel / rythmik subs at some point. I'm excited to start testing out the ARC room correction enabled with my Anthem integrated. This could be a game change to avoid extensive room treatments.

 

[A Cute Earring]

I love the speaker stands you made! My only complaint about my Maggie 1.7 is the factory stands. Yours are simple and nicely made. Kudos to you.

I bought MagnaRisers for my 1.7i. Even my wife thinks they look better. I can’t hear any difference, btw.

 

[MattHooper]

Soundlab Dynastats and A1's - friend used the be a dealer. The Dynastats were hybrid with 8 inch woofers for bass. The A1's were "big" and made bass by themselves and sounded awesome. The problem with electrostats is humidity causes arcing which eventually creates other "problems". At which point you find out the new "core" for the problem channel does not match the other channel. Then you try ordering both channels cores and electronics and still have problems getting things to match. At least that's what I saw with Soundlabs stuff. I think getting electrostats it needs to be understood more maintenance will happen than dynamic speakers.

I used to go to a local dealer who had the Dynastats and the A1s. Listened to quite a bit of stuff on those speakers. Always a pleasure. My recollection, from long ago, was that the Dynastats had an over all "polite" and easy listening presentation, not a seamless integration with the dynamic woofers, but overall gave a lot of that electrostatic magic to the sound. It was always a thrill to hear the A1s. Nothing quite like full range stats!

 

[Da cynics]

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[Joppe Peelen]

I played a pair of MG1C's for 13 years before the aluminum wires started unsticking from the contact cement holding them to the membrane. The symptom was a "buzzing" sound during bass notes. As you can see from the video below, the new quasi ribbons are lower mass and will stick better to the glue. I would expect these not to ever come loose. The first pair of 1.7i's I heard struck me as "dynamic", which was not something I associated with Maggies of old.

New Video: AMERICAN MADE: Magnepan LRS

This new video profiles the LRS manufacturing process.

magnepan.com

they are not lower mass or the resistance would go up often people think foil is lighter then wire.. based on resistance its not. they are even less efficient.

 

[Bob from Florida]

Bob from Florida said:
I played a pair of MG1C's for 13 years before the aluminum wires started unsticking from the contact cement holding them to the membrane. The symptom was a "buzzing" sound during bass notes. As you can see from the video below, the new quasi ribbons are lower mass and will stick better to the glue. I would expect these not to ever come loose. The first pair of 1.7i's I heard struck me as "dynamic", which was not something I associated with Maggies of old.

New Video: AMERICAN MADE: Magnepan LRS​

This new video profiles the LRS manufacturing process.
magnepan.com

they are not lower mass or the resistance would go up often people think foil is lighter then wire.. based on resistance its not. they are even less efficient.

When I stop and think about it - if the wire is the same gauge and flattened into a ribbon - the mass has to be the same. So, what else is different? The ribbon increases the contact area glued to the membrane - does this result in "better" membrane movement? One thing ribbon does better than round wire is to minimize eddy currents. This is a real benefit to using ribbon over wire. Whether you can hear this is another "good question".

 

[RoyB]

I have to believe "ribbon" is more flexible than a round wire. Therefore I'd think it would have less resistance to movement......And no question there is more surface area to adhere to the membrane.....

 

[DonH56]

What Magnepan has said is that the diaphragm is lower in mass. That could be thinner/lighter material as well as wires. The wire may be lower mass if they shifted from copper to aluminum strips for the bass panel (I do not know). I do have to wonder just how much benefit there is due to lower eddy currents, seems like it would be very minimal. Hopefully patterned traces along with modern glues lead to better adhesion of the conductors. Time will tell...

As noted by others, the conductor is a flat trace like a ribbon bonded to the diaphragm, and is not a true ribbon driver. It remains a planar magnetic driver as always with the only actual ribbon driver being the tweeter strip in the 3.x and up models.

 

[Joppe Peelen]

The benefit of foil vs wire is contact area/surface area and often frequency response up high (and not for the obvious reason).
Foil wins in frequency extension, not because its lighter but the distance between the driven area is often smaller (wire to the next wire or foil to the next foil) determents the breakup of the mylar and it will drop like a brick after the breakup. less distance higher the frequency it can produce. this is why the tweeter part has smaller magnets (ther are more reasons ofcourse, like being able to get the impedance , and dispersion)

There are some magnepan tweeters that use wire but mimic this property. by letting 2 wires run on the edge of the gap left and right. so it acts more like a wide flat conductor. anc decreases the undriven area.

at frequencies below 500-1000hz wires or foil do not measure much differend. except that wire is slightly more efficient.

it also has a bigger contact area so more easy to glue (or comes with adhesive in my cases) and it has more heat dissipation then a wire has. wires on the other hand can be packed even in the tiny gap. you can easily get 2 or 3 wires in there making it even more efficient then foil.


by the way they still use 12 micron mylar so the weight reduction might be less aluminium... thus higher resistance and usually 4-6 turns less to make up for that. the old wire panels had double turns on the sides. .. not a huge deal. also less power handling because of it (maybe the heat transfer of a strip vs wire might make up for it) and maybe less weight since they need less glue coats to hold the foil vs the wire on the mylar.

 

[Burning Sounds]

What Magnepan has said is that the diaphragm is lower in mass. That could be thinner/lighter material as well as wires. The wire may be lower mass if they shifted from copper to aluminum strips for the bass panel (I do not know). I do have to wonder just how much benefit there is due to lower eddy currents, seems like it would be very minimal. Hopefully patterned traces along with modern glues lead to better adhesion of the conductors. Time will tell...

As noted by others, the conductor is a flat trace like a ribbon bonded to the diaphragm, and is not a true ribbon driver. It remains a planar magnetic driver as always with the only actual ribbon driver being the tweeter strip in the 3.x and up models.

Pedantic hat on - 2.5R and 2.6R have true ribbons. 2.7 doesn't.

 

[cabs84]

they are not lower mass or the resistance would go up often people think foil is lighter then wire.. based on resistance its not. they are even less efficient.

are they higher resistance but lower impedance? considering the skin effect and all, they may have been able to reduce the mass just due to the higher surface area overall - i feel like i read that somewhere.

 

[Joppe Peelen]

are they higher resistance but lower impedance? considering the skin effect and all, they may have been able to reduce the mass just due to the higher surface area overall - i feel like i read that somewhere.

i dont think skin effect makes up for weight... if you calculate the mm2for the wire vs the foil you would have the same amount of resistance if the coil would be identical in length. now the coil on foil types are less long. often wires had a few double runs of wire near the sides. so that makes it slightly lighter since they had to use les mm2 to get the same resistance. but when you look to the total mass of all those turns.. it does not make it all that lighter. i think the amount of glue might be a bigger thing. at the same time differences when measured foil vs wire on the same speaker differences are hardly visible except in the high frequencies where the panel usually is already crossed over to the tweeter. and even those differences have more to do with driving area then weight. since you can achieve almost the same with 2 spaced out thin wires with the same weight as one thick wire.

 

[cabs84]

i mean like the larger surface area of the flat conductor compared to a round wire should mean lower ACR for the same overall wire gauge (a circle has the least amount of surface area) even if the DCR is the same

 

[Joppe Peelen]

i mean like the larger surface area of the flat conductor compared to a round wire should mean lower ACR for the same overall wire gauge (a circle has the least amount of surface area) even if the DCR is the same

Not sure what ACR is to be fair cant seem to google it without getting things not related

 

[DonH56]

Skin effect is a non-issue at audio frequencies for practical purposes.

Magnepan switched from heavy Cu (copper) wires and panel coatings, especially for the bass panels, to lighter foil conductors (Al, I thought, from Magnepan's talks, but that was over ten years ago now so I may be misremembering). Look at an older 3 or 20 panels vs. the newer "quasi-ribbon" models (late 1990's/early 2000's IIRC -- I had other things going on in life then and was not following audio much). I don't think the QR models made a big splash until ca. 2010 or so but had been around for a decade or so by then.

Pedantic hat on - 2.5R and 2.6R have true ribbons. 2.7 doesn't.

OK, true, but those were discontinued in the mid-1990's IIRC, so I did not include them. I listened to the 2.5R in 1988 when I auditioned the MG-IIIa's I ultimately bought. The 2.6R came a year or two later, followed by the 2.7 (QR, not true ribbon), and then they dropped the 2-series line.

 

[Joppe Peelen]

Skin effect is a non-issue at audio frequencies for practical purposes.

Magnepan switched from heavy Cu (copper) wires and panel coatings, especially for the bass panels, to lighter foil conductors (Al, I thought, from Magnepan's talks, but that was over ten years ago now so I may be misremembering). Look at an older 3 or 20 panels vs. the newer "quasi-ribbon" models (late 1990's/early 2000's IIRC -- I had other things going on in life then and was not following audio much). I don't think the QR models made a big splash until ca. 2010 or so but had been around for a decade or so by then.


OK, true, but those were discontinued in the mid-1990's IIRC, so I did not include them. I listened to the 2.5R in 1988 when I auditioned the MG-IIIa's I ultimately bought. The 2.6R came a year or two later, followed by the 2.7 (QR, not true ribbon), and then they dropped the 2-series line.

I believe there was only 1 or 2 models in the 50 years of magenepan that used copper wires. (a tymphani model i believe) the rest uses aluminium wire then foil. so in terms of weight it might not much difference. the way they where attached might have been, when they used super77 and meloxane overcoat. later super 77 and 3M 30NF. and when switching to foil they might have used even less glue. (not sure though) but a foil with more surface area could stick on there with less glue, and the glue does not have to cover it to hold it.

 

[MarkS]

Not sure what ACR is to be fair cant seem to google it without getting things not related

ACR = alternating current resistance (where skin effect comes into play)
DCR = direct current resistance (where it doesn't)

 

[Joppe Peelen]

ACR = alternating current resistance (where skin effect comes into play)
DCR = direct current resistance (where it doesn't)

Thanks !