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Magnepan LRS Speaker Review

Francis Vaughan

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It is indeed a curious position if we take into account that no one listens to music using a single speaker.
Could it be a case of misinterpreting the data?
I don't think there is any misinterpretation of the data. The basic premise seems to be that listening in stereo masks problems, not that listening in mono prevents a speaker performing to its potential. There is no clear justification for this, but there is an underlying idea that the ESL 63 was always a poor design in comparison with the others, with objectively poorer response. So the conclusion was that the speaker could never sound as good, and thus when it did, it must be because listening in stereo masked the problems.
IMHO, whilst this might be the correct reasoning, I don't think this one experiment is nearly enough to justify it. It assumes too much of what is being proved. I can't find any other experiments with the ESL 63, or indeed any other dipoles by Toole.
I haven't looked yet, but I want to sheet home the experimental background to the protocol of mono listening to speakers now used. I would hope that there is further work that compares only conventional speakers that demonstrates stereo listening masking issues in the speakers.
 

williamwally

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I'm genuinely curious if listening to the LRS in a smaller room will subjectively 'bring the bass back' as many here are saying it will.
 

Thomas savage

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No, I am not playing with semantics at all. Not in the least. Nor am I "stuck", nor did I "erroneously" say something referring to math instead of to the use of formulae, or whatever it is exactly that you mean there. You clearly have made the assumption that your understanding of this stuff is perfect and that I am just being silly. I implore you to be less hasty with your assumptions and conclusions.

One of the fundamental difficulties with dialogs of this nature, concerning philosophy-science, is that most people simply don't have any appreciation for the degree of linguistic precision that is needed with dialogs of this nature, in order for them to be truly meaningful. It is necessary to abide a high degree of linguistic precision, such that ambiguity is fully avoided. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

You have provided a clarification of what you (or maybe someone else, it doesn't matter) meant by "actual". This was good. You assert (strongly in bold) that people colloquially use "actual" synonymous with "direct" as distinct from "indirect". Okay, but it matters nought whether this is or isn't a colloquial practice.

To make clearer what is meant by "actually" in this context, you now talk about "indirect measurements" vs. "direct measurements". I am expected to know precisely how you define the two, such that I would know with absolutely certainty which measurements you would deem "direct" and which measurements you would deem "indirect". I am afraid that I fall short of this expectation. I think I might have a fuzzy idea what you might mean by this, but we would both be fools were we to permit this dialog to go further without first making entirely certain that what you mean is entirely clear to both of us. It is absolutely essential for you to state the necessary and sufficient conditions by which some particular measurement would be deemed an "actual" measurement.

Once you have made it entirely clear what the distinction is, between a direct measurement and an indirect measurement, the next step is to inquire into whether the measurement of torque taken on some class of dynamometer meets the necessary and sufficient conditions such that it would be deemed a "direct" measurement. You are most likely thinking at this point that the distinction between a direct and an indirect measurement is self-evident and that it is silly for me to ask you to define this distinction. But as soon as you start to think about this question seriously, you will mostly likely change your mind. Or at least I hope that you will.

I want to suggest a few questions that you may find relevant, as you ponder the question of how to define the distinction between direct and indirect measurements. How exactly is the measure of torque obtained? Does it involve taking a measure of force and multiplying it by a predetermined distance? If so, how is the measure of force obtained? Does it involve a strain gauge? If so, is force inferred from a reading of voltage? If so, is the voltage measured by way of comparison to calibrated voltage sources and using calibrated resistors? What is involved in the calibration of the calibrated voltage sources? Are they calibrated by way of comparison with other voltage sources, or how exactly?

If you want the easy way out, all you need to say is something along the lines of, "A direct measurement is a measurement that is directly taken."
Regardless of linguistic precision this communication medium is a compromised one.

I'd keep that in mind and maybe walk away from certain situations here when things start to be less enjoyable and it's obvious no common ground is being forged or even basic mutual understanding and respect .

That's advice for everyone, I'm just quoting this post as its a fair example of the fact .
 

Coffee_fan

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Here's a view of the 1.7i in my living room. As you can see, they are quite large - standing at 65" tall, with a few more inches added to that height by using the Mye stands.

View attachment 84072
Yep, that is what prevents me from getting Maggies. I was thinking of the LRS, but I heard them at a store compared to Vandersteen 2s and they seemed anemic and metallic compared to those. I remember my 1.6QR sounding better, but then again I would always use them with a subwoofer.
 

Blumlein 88

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I wonder what side by side LRS with tweeter in the middle would sound like? Should extend the bass an octave. Might even study the directional patterns and find an angle that might smooth the lobing while reducing the head in the vice effect.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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Doesn't Magnepan have a 30 day trial period? Listen to them; if Amir is right you won't like them and you can send them back.
Good luck with packing and sending this massive speaker back. :)
 

Coffee_fan

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Good luck with packing and sending this massive speaker back. :)
Oh, I remember I kept the boxes in the attic and when I sold my maggies I packed them perfectly. Was not that hard. I don't know what the shipping costs would be though.
 

Newman

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.... 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?

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.
 

Vasr

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A bit more work but I think it would be useful in speaker reviews that also have a listening report to do a REW sweep (perhaps an RTA) around the MLP and publish it as well in addition to the Klippel predicted response. Just to calibrate and as extra data point. In theory, that is what is one hearing despite all differences in speaker design and set the context for listening impressions. Yes, it would be affected by room modes but it would be good for qualitative analysis (roll-offs, extension, etc) especially in conjunction with the predicted response. It would also be easier to compare if such sweeps exist elsewhere.
 

Newman

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No, that is not correct. SL (Linkwitz) continued to believe that controlled-directivity should be maintained to much lower frequencies than traditional speaker systems are capable of. Dipole woofer systems are one way to address this, but other approaches are valid and becoming more mainstream with time.
That is not actually not what I was discussing, namely, whether "the steady-state low frequency response is a poor indicator of the quality of bass reproduction". I'm taking bass to mean the first few hundred Hz.
Let's please not engage in revisionist history.
No intention to do so. I was recalling a thread discussion a couple of years ago, where it was said that Linkwitz in late life had some long discussions with LF gurus and changed his mind about the value of dipole bass below transition. I never saw, nor asked for proof of, those discussions, so the door is wide open for you there. But the thread discussion seemed earnest and dogma-free.
cheers
 

Juhazi

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All that bass...
I had a face to face discussion with Siegfried in 2014 at AES conference in Finland. he was aware of my Gradient 1.3 -inspired 4-way active dipoles that have closed box woofer crossed LR2 at 150Hz. He kindly asked me to at least try a dipole bass, but as a gentleman he was, in a very polite and friendly way. I had to say that's out of question because of constraints with the room and positioning. I'm using Minidsp 4x10HD and he wanted to know if I had any problems with it. About two years later he gave a recommended option to use minidsp ... and presented LXMini http://www.linkwitzlab.com/Store/LX521.4.htm

siggi%20juhazi.jpg


MartinLogan panels use dynamic woofers, but they have integration problems without help of dsp, as shown by measurements in eg. Stereophile. (look at step response). I believe that this matching difficulty was also the main reason SL promoted dipole bass. John Kreskowsky is another dipole guru from California and his 4-way dipoles use dipole bass. In a discussion at diyaudio.com he mentioned that monopole bass should be ok with proper settings too.

What a dipole bass (below Schroeder) does differently, is about waking up room modes. Lateral modes are much weaker with dipoles and interference with front wall (behind the speaker) is different. The net result has some pros and cons. Because of heavy eq needed, radiating area, Xmax and power must be adequate and this cannot be achieved with small panel size, eg. Magnepan LRS.
 
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Joppe Peelen

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Yep, that is what prevents me from getting Maggies. I was thinking of the LRS, but I heard them at a store compared to Vandersteen 2s and they seemed anemic and metallic compared to those. I remember my 1.6QR sounding better, but then again I would always use them with a subwoofer.
At least it isgetting closer to a line source compared to the smal lrs
 
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Burning Sounds

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All that bass...
MartinLogan panels use dynamic woofers, but they have integration problems without help of dsp, as shown by measurements in eg. Stereophile. (llok at step response). I believe that this matching difficulty was also the main reason SL promoted dipole bass. John Kreskowsky is another dipole guru from California and his 4-way dipoles use dipole bass. In a discussion at diyaudio.com he mentioned that monopole bass should be ok with proper settings too.

What a dipole bass (below Schroeder) does differently, is about waking up room modes. Lateral modes are much weaker with dipoles and interferece with front wall (behind the speaker) is different. The net result has some pros and cons. Because of heavy eq needed, radiating area, Xmax and power must be adequate and this cannot be achieved with small panel size, eg. Magnepan LRS.

The matching issue concurs with my experience over many years of owning Maggies, small and large. I've either purchased or built ported (big mistake, but I was young, then :)), transmission line and closed box subs. It wasn't until I built the LX521 and used its bass unit that I was really happy with bass integration with Maggies. Actually, to tell the truth, I actually bought the plans for the LX521 just to build the bass unit for the Maggies. It wasn't until I built the rest of the LX521 that I realised that panels had such flaws - but that doesn't stop me firing them up every so often and enjoying that grand scale.
 

tuga

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I don't think there is any misinterpretation of the data. The basic premise seems to be that listening in stereo masks problems, not that listening in mono prevents a speaker performing to its potential. There is no clear justification for this, but there is an underlying idea that the ESL 63 was always a poor design in comparison with the others, with objectively poorer response. So the conclusion was that the speaker could never sound as good, and thus when it did, it must be because listening in stereo masked the problems.
IMHO, whilst this might be the correct reasoning, I don't think this one experiment is nearly enough to justify it. It assumes too much of what is being proved. I can't find any other experiments with the ESL 63, or indeed any other dipoles by Toole.
I haven't looked yet, but I want to sheet home the experimental background to the protocol of mono listening to speakers now used. I would hope that there is further work that compares only conventional speakers that demonstrates stereo listening masking issues in the speakers.

Perhaps narrow dispersion, inadequate positioning and the choice of music programme impacted performance when listening in mono and thus the rating, particularly if "spaciousness" was an important criteria to the listeners in the panel (as it is for Toole).

Going through Toole's research I am left with the idea that at times corners were cut and or because he may have rushed into conclusions.
 

Willem

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I hesitated long and hard about adding a sub to my Quad 2805 stats, but in the end decided that in our new really large listening room and with so much digital source material with plenty of excellent deep bass I should try. I bought a B&W PV1d as that was/is claimed to be a very clean and precise subwoofer and one that also looks good in a modern interior. To be honest, I was disappointed, because the bass was woolly and boomy to the extent that even with a very low crossover frequency and reduced volume there were still issues. So were the skeptics right and is it virtually impossible to combine these ultra clean stats with a dynamic sub? I read more and more, and became aware of the issue of room modes and the different behaviour of dipole vs monopole speakers. So I decided on dsp room eq of the sub (with an Antimode 8033 in my case). This cleaned up the sound almost completely. Equalized bass is now almost as precise as from the stats, and with perfect integration (using a steep 4th order low pass filter and a low pass filter at some 35 Hz). Response now extends to about 15 Hz and this certainly adds to the realism (I added a steep low cut filter to cure a room mode at 13 Hz). So my conclusion is that the problem of integration is quite simply that dipoles are so much better at avoiding room modes.
I have since started measuring the system, and it is clear that some more work could be done. One of the reasons for getting an RME ADI-2 was that it gave me filters to also equalize the stats themselves a bit, and this improved in room response some more. The next step will have to be a second sub. I wonder if I need a second (expensive) PV1d, or whether a small and cheap second sub will also do (most of) the job, as was recently argued by Archimago. And if so, how small and cheap that sub can be.
 

BDWoody

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tuga

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I hesitated long and hard about adding a sub to my Quad 2805 stats, but in the end decided that in our new really large listening room and with so much digital source material with plenty of excellent deep bass I should try. I bought a B&W PV1d as that was/is claimed to be a very clean and precise subwoofer and one that also looks good in a modern interior. To be honest, I was disappointed, because the bass was woolly and boomy to the extent that even with a very low crossover frequency and reduced volume there were still issues. So were the skeptics right and is it virtually impossible to combine these ultra clean stats with a dynamic sub? I read more and more, and became aware of the issue of room modes and the different behaviour of dipole vs monopole speakers. So I decided on dsp room eq of the sub (with an Antimode 8033 in my case). This cleaned up the sound almost completely. Equalized bass is now almost as precise as from the stats, and with perfect integration (using a steep 4th order low pass filter and a low pass filter at some 35 Hz). Response now extends to about 15 Hz and this certainly adds to the realism (I added a steep low cut filter to cure a room mode at 13 Hz). So my conclusion is that the problem of integration is quite simply that dipoles are so much better at avoiding room modes.
I have since started measuring the system, and it is clear that some more work could be done. One of the reasons for getting an RME ADI-2 was that it gave me filters to also equalize the stats themselves a bit, and this improved in room response some more. The next step will have to be a second sub. I wonder if I need a second (expensive) PV1d, or whether a small and cheap second sub will also do (most of) the job, as was recently argued by Archimago. And if so, how small and cheap that sub can be.

Even though I've never owned panel speakers one of my most memorable audio experiences resulted from, years ago, spending the day at an audiophile's home listening to a pair of ELS-63s and Gradient subs.

I´m not sure if these would work with the 2805s or if Gradient makes a dedicated sub for them but it might be worth exploring such an alternative.
 

Mittomen

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Thank you Amir for the hard work, and thank you all who have contributed to the wealth of information in this thread!
Is there any special setting in REW (in preferences or elsewhere) one should change when measuring Maggies for room EQ? Any differences in the procedure (compared to Amir's "Room EQ for Dummies" guide)?
edit: If I understood correctly there is no need to use RePhase?
 

Willem

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The dipole Gradients will not fit the form factor of the 2805s, but in my case their size was an extra argument not to go that route. The front wall behind the speakers includes a large panorama window from just above the stats, and we really did not want to spoil that view. It was for the same reason that we opted not to buy the larger 2905s. Those have rather more bass for not that much more money, but they are huge.
 
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