Bonnie and I decided to avoid the crowds last weekend, and instead settled in at home to watch the recent remake of Great Expectations, with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow. It seemed like a pretty good movie, but before long I found my thoughts drifting to the review I had in progress: my audition and analysis of the Magnepan Magneplanar MG3.6/R- True, Great Expectations is a little slow, and a few explosions or car chases might have better held my attention, but if ever there was an audio product to which the phrase "great expectations" applied, it's the Magnepan 3.6/R.

The MG3.6/R's immediate predecessor, the MG3.5/R, was a break through product for Magnepan. It was a huge commercial success, and established a spectacular new level of performance for Magnepan in terms of dynamics and transparency. As if that weren't enough, the 3.6/R comes right on the heels of the MG1.6/QR, another huge success, and an industry-wide benchmark for performance in a $1500 loudspeaker. I reviewed the 1.6/QR in January 99; it's one of the least expensive speakers to ever appear in Class B of Stereophile's "Recommended Components."

Months before the MG3.6/R was even introduced at the 1999 WCES, a buzz permeated the Internet about "the new Magnepan," and I received a steady stream of e-mail messages asking about it. "Is the 3.6 as good as I've heard? Is it really all of the updates developed for the 1.6, now applied to the 3.5?"

Nowhere were expectations greater than at Casa McKenzie-Damkroger. I've been listening to Magnepans evolve for two decades. I've admired their coherence and loved the uncanny way they could capture the sense of real instruments playing in a real space. Conversely, their lack of dynamics and slight opacity were always barriers between the music and me, barriers diminished in each succeeding generation and nearly eliminated in the MG3.5/R and 1.6/R. Now comes the MG3.6/R, so maybe ... ?

Great expectations, indeed.

Basic Technology: What is an MG3.6/R?

Several Magnepan loudspeakers have been covered in these pages, including two of the MG3.6/R's predecessors, the III and IIIA. The 3.6/R carries forward the same configuration, layout, and driver technology. It's a three-way design with crossover points of 20OHz and 170OHz. The planar-magnetic driver is a 0.5-mil-thick Mylar diaphragm, onto different areas of which have been fastened separate, current-carrying wire grids for the bass and midrange. The top end is handled by Magnepan's unique, 55"-Iong ribbon -a true, free-standing ribbon in which the current-carrying aluminum ribbon is also the driving element.

The 3.6/R is cosmetically identical to the 3.5/R: a slim, elegant tower approximately 6' tall by 2' wide by 1.5" deep. My pair was covered with an oatmealcolored, open-weave fabric, with dark cherry strips flanking the panels and separating the tweeter and midrange-bass sections. The panels are mirror-imaged, with the planar-magnetic driver located to the inside in the recommended setup, and the ribbon tweeter to the outside.' Connections (single or biwire) are made via banana plugs to an external crossover box that plugs into the panel's rear. Magnepan also makes an optional crossover for bi-amping but I did all of my listening with the standard unit.

NOTE: The tweeters should be slightly farther from the listener than the bass-midrange panel so will be placed inboard or outboard, depending on distance and toe-in.

Although it retains the 3.5/R's basic configuration, appearance, and driver technology, the 3.6/R differs slightly in some system parameters. The changes reflect both a response to perceived shortfalls in the 3.5/R and lessons learned in the successful transformation of the 1.5/QR into the giant-killer 1.6. The goals for the 3.6/R were to improve low bass power and articulation, smooth the in-room midbass smoothness, and better integrate the drivers. The first was accomplished by increasing the midrange panel's area from 170 to 199 in, allowing the bass/midrange crossover point to be lowered, and the bass panel's tuning to be optimized for a narrower frequency range. Better integration and smoother in-room response were achieved primarily by careful optimization of the tensioning, damping, and partitioning of the diaphragm -the "black are' responsible for much of the transformation of the 1.5 into the 1.6.

System and Setup

I did all of my listening in my main 17' by 23' listening room, with the Maggies firing across rather than down the room's length. The setup put them approximately 3.5' out from the front wall, and the speakers' outer edges approximately 7' 10" from the left wall and 4' 11" from the right. The speakers' inside edges were about 5' 8" apart, their centers each about 13' from my listening position. I settled on a slightly toed-in configuration, with the speaker axes crossed at a point approximately 6' behind the listening position.

My past experience with Magnepans led me to expect a fairly easy setup and optimization process, and that proved to be the case. A few things are worth noting, however. The MG3.6/R's radiation patterns -dipole for the bass, a line source for the midrange and tweeter - reduced bass problems with room boundaries, but made sidewall interactions a bit more of a concern. Positioning too close to a side wall could cause the image to come for-ward along the side walls, distorting stage placement and image size. In my room, with a 23' long wall behind the speakers, it wasn't an issue. It's also been my experience that Maggies in general work best when backed by a solid but irregular wall. Hard plaster and adobe are good, brick and stone are better. None was an option for me, so I had to make do with drywall and lath over concrete block.

Another consideration is that although the 3.6/R is a benign load -mainly resistive and a fairly flat 4 ohms -at 86dB/2.83V/m they're not terribly sensitive. The VAC Renaissance 70/70 is an unusually strong 70W amp, but wasn't really enough to make the Maggies sing. The Mark Levinson No.20.6s, VTL Ichibans, and Classe' CAM-350s A did better jobs of resolving low-level dynamics and detail, and opened up the soundstage noticeably. I spent time with all three, but ended up preferring and doing most of my listening with the Classe' monoblocks, which are rated as delivering 70OWpc into the Maggies' 4 ohm load.

The rest of the system remained constant throughout the review period: my VPI TNT IV/JMW Memorial turntable/tonearm combo with Grado Reference cartridge, SimAudio's new Moon Eclipse CD player, and a VAC CPA1 Mk.III preamplifier at the center of it all. Nirvana's new S-X interconnects arrived mid-review and immediately claimed their territory. I biwired the MG3.6/Rs with Synergistic Research Designer's Reference when the Classe's were in use, and used Kimber's Bi-Focal XL with the VTL and Levinson amps.

Bright Star's Rack of Gibraltar and Air Mass, Big Rock, and Little Rock isolation products kept everything stable and quiet, and AC was fed through an MIT Z Stabilizer (amps) and Z System (front end), with a Nirvana isolation transformer providing an extra measure of isolation for the Moon Eclipse.

I ended up using only a minimum of room treatment-a single 14" ASC Tube Trap in one front corner (reflective side out), an EchoBuster diffuser panel in the other, and a combination of EchoBuster BassBuster columns and homemade panel resonators in the rear corners. EchoBuster absorbers were mounted to the rear wall, behind the listening position.

Use and Listening: Can Great Expectations be Met?

Great Expectation No.1: A huge, open, holographic soundstage. Magnepans have always gotten "the space thing" right. Whatever their other pluses or minuses, they've been able to create a more realistic soundstage than most speakers, and better capture the sense of real instruments playing in a single, coherent acoustic environment. The 1.6/QRs were very good in this regard; the MG3.5/Rs were outstanding.

The MG3.6/Rs didn't disappoint me in the least. Their soundstage was huge - extending well outside the speakers, and the deepest of any speaker I've used. Front-to-back layering was superb; in fact, the 3.6s set a new standard in this regard. They didn't just clearly define the position of the instruments on the stage and the surrounding hall boundaries, or even do so with a greater degree of precision and specificity than other speakers - they also quite clearly described the spaces between the performers, and between the instruments and an adjacent hall boundary. A lot of speakers can do this in the lateral plane, but none -in my experience-can do it so well with respect to the front-to-back distances.

The effect is particularly riveting on naturally recorded works, where the hall ambience is discernibly woven between the instruments. For a dramatic example, try John Eliot Gardiner's recording of Henry Purcell's The Tempest, with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra (Musical Heritage Society 4479). Most speakers can assign the correct depth cues to the orchestra and various singers, and correctly place the images on the stage. Good speakers clearly track the singers as they move forward and backward on the stage.

With the MG3.6/Rs, there was also a continuous ambience field that stretched from the side walls down into the front-to-back spaces between singers, who were clearly and obviously moving around within a single, defined acoustic envelope. I often felt as if I could actually enter the recording's acoustic environment and wander around among the performers. Even on good studio recordings, where there's no real "stage" per se, the soundstage and images were so tangible that it seemed as if I was almost able to get between and behind the performers.

Great Expectation No.2: Pinpoint precision and extraordinary detail. While Magnepans have always done a good job of soundstaging and their images have always been wonderfully coherent with the surrounding space, they've never had quite the precision of the best cone-type speakers. Each succeeding generation of Maggies has improved on their performance in this regard, and both the MG3.5/R and the 1.6/QR were dramatic improvements over their predecessors. But the picture was still a little diffuse - certainly not a Monet, but not quite a laser photograph either.

The MG3.6/Rs didn't noticeably improve on the 3.5s' performance in this area. The performers' images were natural, and there was sufficient detail to resolve, in a general sense: individual instruments within an orchestral section, even within dense, complex passages. Similarly, the images' edges interacted naturally with the surrounding space, the notes blooming and expanding, the overtones dissolving into the background ambience. However, there weren't the layer upon layer of fine detail, the complexity, or the density with which speakers like the best Thiels and Avalons can imbue an image.

The situation wasn't perfectly blackand-white, however. I typically sit somewhere mid-hall at local symphony and chamber orchestra performances, and the perspective there isn't terribly dissimilar to the Maggies' slightly diffuse portrayal. Conversely, the added detail that the Thiel CS7.2s provided (see February '00, pp.119-127) unquestionably made voices and instruments more vibrant and alive.

A great example was "Chuck E.'s in Love," from Rickie Lee Jones' live acoustic album, Naked Songs (Reprise 45950-2). Through the MG3.6/Rs, her guitar and vocals, even the audience sounds, sounded very natural, nicely detailed, and dimensional. With the big Thiels, however, the extra detail and complexity seemed to supercharge the images and make them breathe, and gave the performance a presence and fife that had me turning out the lights and sitting spellbound in my chair.

Great Expectation No.3: Seamless top-to-bottom consistency. This is another traditional Magnepan strength, and an area in which the MG3.6/R is a solid improvement on its predecessor. The 3.5/R is wonderfully consistent across the frequency range, but if you listen closely, it loses a bit of articulation in two areas: from the midbass on down, and in the upper midrange to lower treble, just before it transitioned to the ribbon tweeter.

The 3.6/R was every bit as seamless and consistent as the 3.5. There was a slight warmth to its tonal balance in my room, probably reflecting a boost in the upper-bass region, but no overt discontinuities in character or distortions - nothing to draw attention to the speaker. Both instruments and soundstage remained consistent -cut from a single cloth, if you will -across the entire range of frequencies and levels.

The 3.6/R's bottom end was an improvement over the 3.5's, remaining powerful, clean, and articulate all the way down to about 35Hz in my room. The fast electric bass runs on Fourplay's "Bali Run" (from Fourplay, Warner Bros. 26656-2) are a true torture test. The 3.5/R got muddy and confused during these passages, but the 3.6/R sailed right through them. There wasn't the absolute power or last bit of detail at the very bottom that I hear from the Thiel CS3.6 and CS7.2, but the Maggie had a goodly amount of slam, with crisp, fast transients and excellent pitch definition.

The 3.6/R's upper-midrange performance was excellent as well, with no perceptible loss of detail or obvious transition to the ribbon tweeter. Piano recordings showed this off well, and Dick Hyman's In Recital (Reference Recordings RR-84CD) is a particularly good example. This very natural-sounding recording has a slightly distant perspective and a very well-defined portrayal of both the instrument and its interaction with the surrounding space. With some speakers, the piano will sound slightly different as its pitch moves up and down, or its size and placement within the recording space will seem to change. With the Maggie, the piano's tonal balance and the combination of the notes' attack, bloom, resonance, and decay were entirely consistent across the instrument's range, as were its size and placement.

Great Expectation No.4: Pure, articulate upper bass and midrange; airy, detailed highs: The MG3.5/R is superb in these areas, but the MG3.6/R was probably just a bit better. Vocals were treated well, with a natural mix of chest, throat, and mouth tones, but strings really showed off the Maggie's upper bass and midrange best. One of my favorite albums is Franz Helmerson's performance of solo cello works by Bach, Hindemith, and Crumb (BIS BIS LP-65). Listen carefully to some of the slower passages in Bach's Suite No.2, in particular. When Helmerson draws his bow across the string, I could hear the combination of sounds that were layered on each other to build each note. The bow's initial contact, the resinous draw across the string, the string's vibration, and, finally, the resonance building within and expanding out from the cello's body -all were exactly right in their balance and timing. The result was a beautiful, almost heartbreakingly pure cello sound.

The MG3.6/R's highs were nothing short of superb. Piccolos were pure and dear, and maintained all their detail and sharp metallic cut all the way to the top of their range - and without getting hard or steely. Solo violins were delicate and sweet, and high, massed violin crescendos had tremendous power and presence, but never crossed over into a hard, unnatural screech. Cymbals are perhaps the best example, and the Maggie unfailingly had exactly the right balance: a rich, bell-like tone at the center, a palpable sense of waves of overtones emanating from the cymbals'vibration, and, surrounding it all, a cloud of shimmer that seemed to permeate the entire space.

Great Expectation No.5: Dynamics! From the subtlest micro-shading to the most explosive crescendo: Another longtime Magnepan bugaboo has been the need to play them loud to get a sense of realism. The MG3.5/R and 1.6 were dramatic improvements over the previous models in their ability to reproduce large dynamic transients, but they still lacked the nth degree of resolution at the pppp end of the scale. With the MG3.6/R, Magnepan seems to have eradicated this shortcoming. Big crescendos were startling in their power, as were drum sets, particularly rimshots and toms.

At the other end of the scale, when the 3.6/Rs were paired with a muscle amp like the Classe' monoblocks, they did a first-rate job of capturing microdynamic shadings. On "What a Dif'rence A Day Made," from Never Make Your Move Too Soon (Concord jazz CCD4147), Ernestine Anderson often floats the faintest, subtlest traces of vibrato on the very last breath of notes. A lot of speakers, even some excellent dynamic models, can't capture that vibrato, but the 3.6/R did it beautifully. I'd often find myself holding my breath, just to make sure I didn't miss these delicate whispers.

Great Expectation No.6: Transparency: no opacity, no texture: For all their great strengths, Magnepan speakers have always suffered from a slight opacity. The MG3.5/R and 1.6/QR were spectacular advancements in this regard, retaining only faint vestiges of a slightly filmy texture. The 3.6/R is another big step in this direction, its transparency rivaling that of the best cone-type speakers I've heard. This showed up in added purity through the midrange and upper midrange, slightly more complex harmonic mixes, and improved dimensionality. The improved transparency was most apparent, perhaps, in how it helped expand and remove congestion in the back half of the soundstage. The MG3.6/R was the best I've heard at opening up the spaces between trumpets, for example, and maintaining their size and detail.

The flip side of the 3.6/R's transparency, however, was that it wasn't nearly as forgiving as earlier Magnepans. Even the 3.5 wouldn't penalize a listener too much for their choice of upstream components, as long as they included a clean, powerful amplifier. With the 3.6/R, I had to be a lot more careful. My Ultech and Parasound CD players just didn't cut it, for example, and until the SimAudio and oracle players showed up, I listened almost exclusively to vinyl -and had to scrupulously level, adjust, tweak, and warm up my TNT. Selecting cables became an agonizing series of trials and tradeoffs. Even my beloved VTL Ichibans became alimiting factor, ironically contributing a touch of haze of their own. Ditto the Mark Levinson No20.6s, which had a slightly dark, liquid presence. It was only when I installed the Classe' CAM350 monos and optimized the setup around them that I truly appreciated the MG3.6/R's transparency.

Summary

Okay, I'm a Magnepan guy. I've owned several pairs over the years, and I absolutely flipped over the MG3.5/R. In these pages, I pronounced the 1.6/QR "one of the great audio bargains." Nowhere were expectations for the MG3.6/R higher than in my listening room. And, point by point, the 3.6/R delivered.

The 3.6/R builds on the great strengths of the 3.5/R, and successfully incorporates some of the magical touches that transformed the 1.6/QR into such a small wonder. Its re-creation of the onginal soundstage and recording environment are incredible, and with the latest improvements, its dynamics, resolution, and transparency approach those of the very best speakers I've heard.

The 3.6/R does need to be driven by a good, powerful amplifier to sound its best, and will clearly reveal the weaknesses of upstream components. But when all the pieces are in place, it's magic.

The 3.6/R is unquestionably better than the 3.5/R -stronger, more articulate, and better integrated. It's not a quantum step, though, so 3.5/R owners needn't feel the need to immediately dump their speakers in the "garage sale" pile and upgrade. Similarly, the 3.6/R is a substantially better speaker than the 1.6/QR in every way. It's flatter, more refined, much better at the frequency extremes -the fist goes on. However, if bucks are really, really tight, I suggest you opt for the 1.6/QR, invest the difference in upgrades elsewhere in the system, and not lose any sleep over it.

They sure don't look like loudspeakers.

They look like screens standing in the room -- or, in the case of the MGMC1s, hanging on the wall.

They don't work like ordinary loudspeakers, either.

And they sure don't sound like ordinary loudspeakers. They have a big, open, airy sound that's like nothing else out there.

No, there's nothing ordinary about the Magnepan home-theater loudspeaker system.

Hallelujah!

And now for something completely different

Magnepan's name is a compressed form of magnetic planar, the technology the company's speakers employ. Simply put, the speakers have no cabinet or "box," just a framework that supports a tightly stretched, electrically conductive Mylar membrane between arrays of small magnets. On each side, all the magnets are arranged so that the same magnetic pole faces the membrane and the two arrays oppose one another in polarity. When a signal is passed through the membrane, it is attracted to the magnets of opposite polarity on one side of the membrane and repelled by the similarly charged magnets in the opposite array. The motion of the membrane creates the speaker's sound. Since there's no "box" to catch the backwave, a planar-magnetic loudspeaker radiates as much sound to the rear as it does to the front.

The MG3.6/R ($4375-USD/pair) is a large (71"H x 24"W x 1.625"D) three-way, full-range design that couples a true ribbon tweeter to midrange and bass panels, based on Magnepan's basic planar technology. Each speaker has a 55" line-source ribbon tweeter, which is essentially a long, thin strip of conductive foil suspended between two magnets A user-replaceable fuse further protects the tweeter.

The 3.6/R's crossover points are 200Hz and 1700Hz. Magnepan specifies the speaker's sensitivity as 86dB/2.83V/m. The speaker connections are made through an externally mounted crossover box with accommodations for biwiring or biamping. Speaker connections are nonstandard sockets with threaded setscrews that tightly grip bare wires or posts. My Deltron connectors worked fine, as would any banana plug.

The MGMC1 ($750/pair) is a far smaller panel (46"H x 10.25"W x 1"D), but it has an interesting twist -- it can be mounted on the wall on its supplied brackets or used as a floorstanding design with a pair of optional conversion stands. The small size of the panel necessitates near-wall placement if you want to achieve the company's specified frequency response of 80Hz to 24kHz. Sensitivity is given as 86dB/2.83V/m and impedance as 4 ohms. The MGMC1 is a two-way design with a bass/midrange panel and a tweeter panel -- the crossover point is 1300Hz. Speaker attachment is by means of a fixed wire-tail with tinned ends.

What makes the MGMC1 so slick for surround use is that nifty little hinged wall-mount bracket. When you're not using your system, the speakers can be pushed flush to the wall. When you are, they can swing out like doors -- and their on-wall position means they get all the boundary reinforcement they require. What a marvelous concept.

The same could be said for Maggie's center-channel speaker, the $990 MGCC2 (a new version, the MGCC3, which adds an octave to the bottom of the speaker's response, has just been released). It, too, is a two-way design, employing a quasi-ribbon tweeter and a midrange/woofer panel. But here's the cleverest bit -- the midrange/woofer panel is curved, which gives the MGCC2 far better horizontal dispersion than a conventional (well, comparatively) flat panel. The curved panel crosses over to the quasi-ribbon array at 750Hz. The MGCC2 is large for a center-channel (10.5"H x 36"W x 8"D), but it only weighs 22 pounds. Speaker connections are the same set-screw-adjusted sockets that the MG3.6/R sports.

The MGCC2's claimed frequency response is 160Hz to 18kHz. No, that's not a misprint, but at the time the CC2 was developed that was all the bass Magnepan could coax out of the technology -- besides, the company reasoned (I think correctly), home-theater enthusiasts would probably have a subwoofer in the system. Despite the reduced low end, the MGCC2 does not employ a high-pass filter, relying instead upon the physical characteristics of the diaphragm to act as a mechanical filter; like Bartleby, when confronted with a signal they cannot reproduce, they prefer not to.

However, during the prolonged interval between the time Maggie shipped me the MGCC2 and this review, the design mavens at the company came up with what company spokesperson Wendell Diller calls "a clever design trick" that gives the MGCC3 bottom-end response down to 80Hz. Always nice to have, of course, but since I do have a subwoofer, I have to say that I never missed the extra bass.

Their principles are the same, though their modes of thinking are different

Setting up the Magnepan MGMC1s is dead simple, of course. Just mount them on the wall (using the supplied brackets). Maggie recommends you place 'em on the wall so they blend on-axis and reflected sound for a nice diffuse blend. This gives you a (ahem!) magnitude of placement options, since their mounting brackets are infinitely adjustable. Nice touch, that.

The MGCC2 was a no-muss-no-fuss setup as well. If you have a direct-view monitor, just place the speaker above or below the TV. If, like me, you have a projection system, just place the speaker under the screen on a stand. If you can't do that, you'll have to play the angles and experiment with which precise tilt-angle makes dialogue sound as though it originates from the screen. The MGCC2 seemed particularly forgiving when it came to placement, possibly because of its wide horizontal dispersion.

The MG3.6/R has two different driver types and, as a result, two different radiation patterns -- the quasi-ribbon tweeter is a line source and the rest of the speaker is a dipole. Normally, panel speakers are tricky to place because their bass response needs rear-boundary reinforcement, so getting that speaker-to-front-wall ratio takes some experimentation, but the side-wall interaction is almost completely nonexistent. However, those line-source tweeters change that equation -- place them too close to the side walls and the speakers will throw a distorted image of the original event. The trick is to get them just far enough from the side walls to keep the soundstage three-dimensional and then move them back and forth between the front wall and your listening position.

If you're lucky, that's all you'll have to worry about. Me, I also had to place them on either side of my screen and keep the screen at the proper focal length from my projector. Even with these added complications, getting the Maggies set up and sounding good was a lot easier than my description of the process would make it seem. Just be warned, you may have to work for the best sound they can produce.

Also be prepared to give them some juice. At 86dB sensitivity and a fairly consistent 4-ohm load, the 3.6/Rs don't seem as though they need a lot of power -- however, they do, they do. The Musical Fidelity M250s were able to drive them to a fare-thee-well; so was the 200Wpc Plinius Odeon -- but most receivers would not be up to the task.

In addition to the MF and Odeon, I also used the McCormack MAP-1, the TAG McLaren AV32R Dual Processor, and DVD-32R DVD player upstream. I crossed over to the Polk PSW650 subwoofer, which remained the go-to-bass workhorse throughout the audition. (I'll be coming back to the TAG McLaren and Plinius components in the upcoming weeks).

We boil at different degrees

If you set a premium on spacious, expansive, enveloping sound, the Magnepan HT loudspeaker system is the answer to your prayers. Yes, it took a bit of placement jiggery-pokery, but the results were worth it.

Central to this embarrassment of sonic riches was the full-bodied wraparound sound of the MG3.6/Rs. Some folks have called them lean, but they aren't at all thin sounding -- not if you take the time to couple that backwave to the front wall properly. Once I got that tuned in, the 3.6/Rs projected big-boned sound that was particularly impressive in its seamless top-to-bottom coherence. And the side-to-side soundstage was bigger and deeper than that of nearly any speaker I have experienced at anywhere close to the price of the Maggies.

Seamlessness and depth are what I expect from a high-resolution panel loudspeaker. What I did not expect was the amount of sweet, extended top-end the 3.6/Rs produced -- not to mention that most valued audiophile commodity, "see-through transparency." The 3.6/R's quasi-ribbon tweeter is really, really special and it adds a new level of detail and ease to the Maggie sound.

Another surprise was the way the MGCC2 mated flawlessly with the far-more-full-range 3.6/Rs on either side. No comb-filter effect, no timbral shift, no dynamic damping -- the center-channel just blended in perfectly. And no, the missing bottom octave never caused a problem.

In theory, the center-channel should precisely match the L and R -- I know this because experts keep telling me so. However, I think you can get so hung up with frequency response that you lose sight of the importance of dispersion, and most identical center-channels just don't cut it when you have to sit off center from the picture (yeah, I know, and some do). In an imperfect world, we make our choices where we must and I vote for dispersion -- especially of the sort the MGCC2 delivers.

The MGMC1 wall-mounted panels were also just right, as Goldilocks would have it. When it came to disappearing completely, they were as close to perfect as surrounds can get. Ambience and sound effects were delivered invisibly and (ahem) discretely. I may not be entirely rational when it comes to the MGMC1s, but it’s hard to maintain critical distance when you're in love.

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy

This is a home-theater site, but I have to mention just how satisfying the Maggie surround-sound setup sounded with multichannel music. My infatuation with Telarc's disc of Hovhaness nature portraits (Mysterious Mountain; Hymn to Glacier Peak; Mount St. Helens; Storm on Mount Wildcat [Telarc SACD 60604]) continues unabated, and the Maggie system kept that flame fanned with its extraordinary presentation of the ambient wash of a big concert hall. The reflected sound coming from the rear speakers was impossible to pinpoint, seeming to come from the rear of -- well, certainly not my room, my room isn't 90' deep!

The front channels delivered the full-on assault of a big ensemble -- the sound spread from wall to wall and seemed 30' deep (again, not the typical sound of my listening room). When I say full on, I mean full. These are burly, muscular speakers, capable of bench-pressing a lot more than their weight!

Red Dragon's 5.1 sound was particularly impressive -- and dramatically effective -- through the Magnepan system. It keeps the surrounds going throughout the entire film, establishing locale, deepening the emotional impact of scenes, and placing the viewer deep into the acoustic of the film's environment. In addition, Danny Elfman has composed a stunning -- and extremely grown-up -- score, which the three front channels delivered with precision and panache. Red Dragon is one of the rare films where even its least action-oriented scenes make the strongest possible argument for the surround experience. Well, probably with any high-rez speaker system, but definitely with the Maggies.

That's all fine and dandy, but not all of us watch only demo-worthy films. I still watch silent films, but even less fanatical movie buffs watch classics from the age before hi-fi soundtracks. Fear not, the extremely high resolving power of the Maggies does not make it impossible to listen to less-than-pristine soundtracks (they won't hide the flaws, but they don't highlight them either). I watched Kiss Me Kate, which sports a fuzzy-sounding (occasionally sharp, even) audio track, but the Maggies just reported that fact without adding any shrillness and distortion of their own. Just like they oughta.

We’re probably both trying to say the same thing in different words

The Magnepan MG3.6/R, MGMC1, and MGCC2 loudspeakers gave me many hours of musical and filmic ecstasy. Doing all the "hard" research that resulted in this review was grand fun from start to finish -- in fact, I may have prolonged the process unduly simply because I was enjoying myself so thoroughly. Does that mean you should rush out and buy the system?

Naturally, that all depends. If you like spacious, transparent, vivid sound, maybe you should. You'll need lots of cash ($6115 for the whole shebang) and you'll need a big room (the 3.6/Rs need space), and you'll need a lot of power for the 3.6/Rs (at least 100W, but mo' is betta). Answer yes to all of those needs and the system might be just the ticket.

Of course, you could get a lot of that openness and transparency from a system that substituted Magnepan's MG 1.6/Rs for the 3.6/Rs -- or, in a smaller room, you might get away with the MGMC1 at the corners and the MGCC1 in the front'n'center position, if you have a really good sub.

But the MG3.6/R, MGMC1, MGCC2 system is the one I fell in love with, and I suspect it might enchant you, too. At the very least, you should experience this system before you buy anything in its price range.

I guess it's possible you won't like them as much as I do, but at least you won't have wasted your time listening to yet another ordinary loudspeaker system.