As far as I can tell, the chief reason the Magneplanar 20R dipole isn't the most popular speaker in all the high end is because, outside of a crossover change, Jim Winey hasn't modified it since it was introduced six years ago.
People just naturally forget how good a good thing is when nobody's there to remind them. Once the buzz dies down, audiophiles, and the audio press, tend to move on to what's new; what's old winds up parked in the comer of the showroom (at least in those stores that still bother to carry it), gathering dust behind the latest sylphs from Avalon or Revel.
All of which is sad, sad, sad. Because, folks, I cannot name you a speaker at any price that does what the 20R does well, as well. Properly set up, adequately driven, it still ranks high among the very best speaker systems you can buy. Indeed, in my opinion, it is the very best speaker you can buy if. (a) you want state-of-the-art sound, but you're not absolutely made of money; (b) you're not obsessed with bass below 25 Hz; (c) you don't play rock (or anything else) at or near stadium-concert levels; and (d) you have enough room to set the things up right.
A few months back, I raved to you about the Magneplanar 1.6QR. If you can imagine a Mark Maguire-sized version of that same speaker-still an inch or two thick, still framed in hardwood bunting and nubby grillecloth, but grown about a foot-and-ahalf taller and nearly a foot wider, with a true five-foot ribbon for its tweeter, a substantially larger quasi-ribbon for its mid range/upper bass, and a giant planar-magnetic for its bottom octaves-you'll have a fair picture of the 20R. Yes, it's big-a pair of 20Rs takes up almost five feet of the width of your listening room, and six-and-a-half feet of its height! Given all that magnet, ribbon, and Mylar, the speakers are fairly hefty suckers, too, at around one-hundred pounds apiece. That's a lot of panel. And when you consider that they sound best with at least three to four feet of open room on either side of them and, maybe, four to five feet of open room behind... clearly you're not gonna be wrassling 20Rs into that old spare bedroom any time soon. You're gonna need a large space and, yep, a large limit on your credit card. Ninety-nine-hundred bucks the pair..
What you'll get in return for this expanse and expense is one of the most natural sounds you can buy. Of course, the similar-sounding Maggie I.6QRs are also one of the most natural sounds you can buysuperbly coherent loudspeakers with exceptional staging and imaging-and the 1.6s only cost fifteen-hundred bucks. How much more can that extra eight grand possibly get you? Well, quite a bit, actually.
First, there's the added size I just mentioned. Yeah, from a practical, fit-it-in-my-room- and-forget- it angle two very large planar panels are a pain. (And don't let anyone kid ya about how much easier than box speakers dipoles are to set up-'cause it just ain't SO.) But, buddy, as I said in my 1.6QR review there's no substitute for cubic inches If you want to move the kind of air a sym phony orchestra moves when it plays loud, the big Maggies are far and away your best (and most cost-effective) bet.
With close to sixty square feet of radiating surface, front and back, the 20Rs can move air, and, since they do radiate front and back, they move that air through an angle of virtually 360 degrees-just like musical instruments do. When you couple a very large radiating surface and virtual 360-degree dispersion with unenclosed, nearly massless drivers of extraordinary speed and integrity, you end up with one of the most naturally-sized soundfield, peopled with the most naturally-sized and naturally-detailed instruments, you'll ever hear.
It's not just that instruments are realistically larger, or the soundstage broader, deeper, and higher, than what you usually get through even a very good hi-fi system; it's that everything within the soundfield moves air in more realistic proportions. Through the 20Rs, a bass drum isn't a compact little item at the back of the stage, imaged with laser-like definition and reproduced with the sharp percussive crack of a handclap, but a huge hollow-bodied instrument that, when struck hard, sends forth waves like a dam bursting on a valley town. Through the Maggies, that drum'll make you jump, all right, but not because the speakers "go so deep" (although the 20Rs definitely do-flat to 25 Hz in my room), or "image so tightly," or have "lightning-like transient response." None of that covers what I'm talking about. That drum'll make you jump because it sounds more like a bass drum, because the physical size and shape of the instrument and the sheer volume of air it moves when struck hard are being reproduced with greater verisimilitude.
I hate to beat this poor dead horse again, but, in life, no instrument is the sonic equivalent of a wallet-sized snapshot-a sharp little image neatly tucked beside other sharp little images. It's a big, supple, three-dimensional thing that changes dramatically in shape, color, size, and impact with changes in the way it is being played. The very idea of trying to "reproduce" a grand piano (or a triangle, for that matter) realistically through your average-sized box speaker is laughable. It's like watching Lawrence of Arabia on a thirteen-inch Samsung.
Now, I'll admit that realistic "reproduction" doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. (Just ask President Clinton.) But if the term is used, as I use it, to mean a virtual duplicate of the recorded instrument rather than a mere analog of some aspects of its sound, then you simply can't achieve that level of realism without, first, moving air the way Maggies (or a big horn, planar, or dynamic system) do.
Of course, moving a lot of air unequally (as some big horn, planar, and dynamic systems do) is obviously a mixed blessing. Yeah, you may get natural size and lifelike impact, but, thanks to driver, crossover, and enclosure colorations, the timbres and dynamics of instruments may not be true (or only selectively so). Who wants to hear a violin, no matter how lively or natural lly-sized, that has a teeth on it like a crosscut saw? Or a piccolo that snags you like a hawthorn bush? Happily, this is not a problem with the Maggies.
Although it has been said before (by HP, most memorably), the 20Rs have one of the most natural octave - to-octave balances of any loudspeaker in the world. By this I do not mean that they necessarily measure flat in an anechoic chamber. (I really don't know how they measure anechoically, and furthermore I don't care.) What I do mean is that, properly set up in a real-world listening room, they sound like one, big, smooth, neutral, coherent sound source, from top to bottom.
I do not think I can emphasize strongly enough-and will not have to do so for listeners familiar with world-class dipoles and 'stats-how much less like a loudspeaker and more like the real thing a great fullrange planar sounds. Reproduced by drivers that are this neutral and this closely matched in speed and dispersiveness-and that aren't sealed in a resonating box or tripped up by complex crossovers or skewed by panel "ringing"-instruments have the free-standing openness and seamless tonal and dynamic "continuousness" they have in life, no matter what octave(s) they're playing in or what sound level they're playing at. When timbres and dynamics are reproduced this fully and naturally, the system takes on an ease that is very much like the real thing.
The ear isn't drawn, as it always is with more "hi-fi" speakers, to glamorous peaks that add rosin, rasp, and subtle bite to that Guarnerius, or canny little dips that make the cello and doublebass choirs sound ohso-transparent, albeit a mite thin. Such psychoacoustic tricks may wow you at first, but, over time, they inevitably become annoying reminders that you're listening to a highly colored e lectro- mechanical device. Even after months of use, the 20Rs don't grow stale or irritating, simply because they don't play these kind of games with frequency balance. They are the kind of speakers you can't wait to turn on again-and will not want to turn off-no matter how often you've listened to them.
| FI SPECSHEET |
| Product Type |
Floor-standing, three-way, ribbbon / quasi-ribbon / planar-magnetic dipole loudspeaker |
| SPECIFICATIONS |
| Bass Radiating Area |
786 sq. in. |
| Quasi-Ribbon Size |
137 sq. in. |
| Ribbon Size |
60 in, long |
| Frequency Response |
25 Hz - 40 kHz + 3 dB |
| Power Requirements |
100 watts RMS (8 ohms), normal; 250 wafts RMS (8 ohms), max |
| Sensitivity |
85 dB (2.83 V/500 Hz/1 m) |
| Impedance |
4 ohms |
| Crossover |
3 kHz, 150 Hz |
| FI COMPONENT IN A NUTSHELL |
| Pitch |
Outstanding to State-of-the-Art |
| Timbre |
State-of-the-Art |
| Large-Scale Dynamics |
Excellent |
| Small-Scale Dynamics |
Outstanding |
| Duration |
Excellent |
| Imaging |
Excellent to Outstanding |
| Soundstaging |
State-of-the-Art |
| Clarity |
Outstanding |
| Value For Dollar |
Outstanding |
| Overall Rating |
Outstanding |
| Other Products I Should Hear |
Sound Labs A-1 s |
Of course, I made some of these same claims (single-driver coherence, openness, speed, listenability) about the 1.6QRs, but, over and above the incredible size and detail of their soundfield and their nearly incomparable tonal balance, the 20Rs go the 1.6s one better, still. Literally. You see, they have an extra driver-the celebrated Magneplanar ribbon tweeter. (Consult the sidebar for an explanation of ribbons and quasi-ribbons.) The 1.6QR is a two-way, in which a Maggie quasi-ribbon driver is used full-range to cover the treble and midband. The 20R is a three-way loudspeaker, with the Maggie ribbon covering the treble and upper mids, the quasi-ribbon covering the midband and upper bass (down to 150 Hz), and the planar-magnetic panel covering the bottom octaves.
Now, the Maggie quasi-ribbon is one helluva driver-fast, sweet, detailed, and capable of moving a great deal of air. But the Maggie ribbon is in a class by itself. Simply put, this is the best tweeter I've yet heard. With the exception of the late lamented RTR electrostatic tweeters, nothing else (not even the Genesis circular ribbons) rivals the natural tone colors, superb transient attack, and simply incredible infusion of air that this ribbon reproduces-and, properly set up and driven, reproduces without a hint of the grain or metal-dome brightness of speakers- in-a-box or the frying-pan sizzle of 'stats or the P.A. edginess of certain horns. I've simply never heard cymbals, triangles, upper octave strings/ flute/piccolo/piano/harp-just name anything that plays into the treble-reproduced with this kind of natural delicacy, speed, and air, air, air.
I've already told you, in my Audio Research VT-200 review in the October ish, about the way the Maggie/ARC combo floats that triangle forward from the back of the stage in the Benjamin Romantic Fantasy [RCAI-full-sized, colored with the delicacy of a Vermeer, shimmering with little metallic eddies of pitch and dynamic, and simply buoyant with air, just as it sounds in life. But it's not just the treble range that benefits from the Maggie ribbon. The thing plays into the upper midrange (with significant output down to I kHz). That means, first of all, that starting transients (which are entirely uppermid/treb le -range harmonics, regardless of what instrument we're talking about) are superbly realistic. I mean you just have to hear the excuse-me brush of a fingernail against a guitar's E string or a the juicy bite of a bow into a Strad's G string to know what I'm raving about. But wait... there's more!
What good's a starting transient without realistic reproduction of the sounded pitch, and of the harmonics that contribute to the instrument's timbre? Those harmonics, at least the upper ones, are also handled by the Maggie's ribbon, and, folks, you just don't know how drop-dead gorgeous a wellrecorded instrument or voice can sound until you've heard that ribbon (and its partner, the quasi,ribbon) strut its stuff. Although I'm not as wild about the music of James Lee Stanley as our Official Wild Man, Frank Doris, was in his November Finesounds, there's no question Stanley's Freelance Human Being [Beachwood] is a world-class recording. If you want to know how worldclass, listen to it on the 20Rs. From sounded pitch to highest overtones, from bass clef to treble clef, from pianississimo to fortississimo, the Maggies reproduce the harmonic/dynamic envelope of Stanley's guitar and voice the way a prism refracts sunlight into the full spectrum of colors.
By the way, in praising the Maggie ribbon so highly I don't mean to slight the 20R's other drivers. The quasi-ribbon and the planar-magnetic bass panels are each superlative and, in the context of this system, superlatively matched to one another and to the musical duties they've been assigned. I've already told you about the Maggie quasi-ribbon's midband virtues in my I.6QR review, about the "you- are -there" realism it brings to voice, strings, pianos, winds, brasses; but a further word needs to be said about the Maggie's bass. That word is terrific. If you want to hear very low pitches reproduced cleanly, if you want to hear them announced with something approaching the power with which they are delivered by real instruments, and, in particular, if you want to hear a seamless transition between upper bass and lower midrange-the crossover region where so many otherwise fine speakers are brought to their knees-then listen to the 20Rs.
The thing that kills me about Maggie bass isn't its extension (although it's very extended), or its definition (it's pretty well-defined), or its speed (a regular Road Runner), or even its natural size; it's its timbres and the sheer amount of air that gets moved. YOU just don't hear color and "action" like this from bass-range instruments outside the concert hall. Just as in the midrange and the treble, the 20Rs refract the full range of tone colors from instruments that are generally reproduced as colorless thuds or hollowed-out thumps. And when it comes to moving air realistically, well, just listen to something like the gigantic cello and contrabass choirs in the third movement of Prokofiev's Second Violin Concerto [RCA] or the incredible stone wheels of Time's chariot in Birtwistle's The Triumph of Time [Argo] that I told you about in last issue's Grado review. The 20Rs build up bass waves the way storm clouds build and billow in the sky, and because of the Maggies' astoundingly open soundfield those waves have room to blossom and bloom.
So what have we got here? A big planar speaker that throws the widest, deepest, tallest, most coherent soundfield I've heard from a hi-fi system, filled with the most naturally-sized instruments I've heard from a hi-fi system, with the sweetest, most natural timbres I've heard from a hi-fi system, the finest dynamic nuance I've heard from a hifi system (particularly in the treble), and the most natural illusion of instrumental "action" I've heard from a hi-fi system. What we've got here, in sum, is "realistic reproduction" in the highest sense of the phrase, in the sense I spoke of earlier: the virtual duplication of instruments and voices, rather than mere analogs of certain aspects of their sound.
No, the 20Rs aren't perfect. They are physically large and relatively unwieldy. They take a lot of power to bring to life. They have a bit of a sound of their own, as all Maggies do-a sweet, soft, powder-fine grain that is negligible compared to the cottony deadness of box speakers, but that you won't hear with a great 'stat. (On the other hand, you won't get the Maggies' body, bass, treble, or impact with a great 'star.)
Yes, you can buy a half-octave more bass extension and, perhaps, a bit more toe-tapping pace (for a lot more money). Yes, you can buy better large-scale dynamics and ultimate SPLs (for a lot more money). Yes, you can get a bit more midband "body" with a great horn or dynamic system (although the Maggies represent a nice compromise between the X-ray transparency of electrostast and the natural weight and volume of cones). Yes, you may get a smidgen more inner detail from a great 'star (although the difference here is truly small). But no matter how much more YOU spend, there are still things the Maggie 20Rs will do better than anything else out there: that singledriver coherence and supremely natural octave-to-octave balance, that bass color and bloom, that incomparable treble speed and air, that huge, transparent soundstage, that incredible dynamic nuance and action, that 11 you-are-there" duplication of piano, brass, winds, voices, and strings. While it's hard to call anything that costs nearly ten grand a bargain, I can tell you this: if it were my money, and I were shopping for the very best, these are the speakers I'd buy.
