Magazine Reviews

"The best loudspeakers that not all that much money can buy."

Pssst! Wanna know a secret?

I have the answer to your multichannel-music prayers right here and nobody else knows about it -- yet. But you better act fast; as soon as word gets out, everybody's going to want a pair (or two) and you'll have to get in line. I'm betting it's going to be a looong one.

Here's the kicker: They're not just good -- they're unbelievably inexpensive.

And good-looking -- did I mention that they're good-looking?

Almost invisible, really.

Oh heck, let me just blurt it out: Magnepan's new wall-mounted MMG W loudspeaker costs only $325 USD per pair and has a matching wide-dispersion center-channel, the MMG C, that sells for $299.

Don't shout like that -- this is a secret, remember?

The secret of style: have something to say and say it as clearly as you can

If you're not familiar with Magnepan, a word of explanation is in order. The company is one of the classic American high-end-audio firms. The name is a compressed form of magnetic planar, the technology the company's speakers employ. Magnetic panel loudspeakers have no cabinet or "box," just a framework supporting a tightly stretched, electrically conductive Mylar membrane that is adjacent to arrays of small magnets. The membrane's motion 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, so you have to place the speakers away from the wall behind them.

Review Summary
Sound	"Robust and seamless" -- "much more like 'no speaker' than any $300-per-pair speaker has any right to sound"; "the orchestral sound from the front three speakers was…rich, warm, and dynamic"; "the surround channels added a subtle touch of ambience, which seems like a small thing, but it added a convincing element of solidity to the entire experience."
Features	"Single-driver planar-magnetic speakers from "one of the classic American high-end-audio firms"; "so darn simple" -- "no crossover, no box, no individual drivers"; However, "you won't see the MMG W and MMG C at audio stores; they're only available direct from Magnepan."
Use	"Regarding mounting the MMG Ws, "Magnepan has designed a clever mounting bracket that enables you to mount the speakers flat against the wall and then swivel them into a "using" position when you want to listen to them." "The MMG W's 100Hz bottom end just doesn't give it a lot of authority," so "these Maggies really want a subwoofer."
Value	"Getting to the magic that live music possesses remains tantalizingly out of reach for almost every loudspeaker, no matter how costly," but "the Maggies capture a piece of that magic, which is a trick speakers costing ten times more have a hard time doing."

The largest Magnepans have different-diameter aluminum wire attached to the Mylar membrane, creating woofers and midrange panels (all models employ quasi-ribbon or true ribbon drivers as line-source tweeters). The new MMG W and MMG C use smaller-diameter tweeter-sized wire throughout their single driver panels.

The MMG W is a compact loudspeaker, measuring only 38" tall by 10 1/2" wide by 3/4" thick. My sample pairs were wrapped in an oatmeal colored fabric with a narrow band of walnut running down the speakers' 3/4" front edge.

The MMG W is designed to be mounted near a boundary (a wall) -- it won't really develop its full frequency response (100Hz-16kHz) without the boost that placement provides. That's not a bug; it's a feature. It allows you to place the MMG W unobtrusively in almost any room. Better yet, Magnepan has designed a clever mounting bracket that enables you to mount the speakers flat against the wall and then swivel them into a "using" position when you want to listen to them. That's about as close to invisible as high-quality loudspeakers get.

Magnepan deserves quite a bit of credit for the design of the MMG W and its mounting bracket. The speaker only weighs about 10 pounds, allowing the bracket to be quite small without sacrificing strength. Even better, the MMG W's hard-wired tail exits the speaker through its bottom bracket-mounting hole. The bottom bracket is drilled so that the wire can be fed through it. It's a neat solution to the cable problem -- and if you really want to make things tidy, you can route the speaker cables through the wall.

So how does this whole "swivel 'em to use 'em" thing work? Simply mount the speakers on the front wall (the one you face when you're listening to music) and store 'em flat against it. (If you're flanking a flat panel TV with them, just place 'em on either side of it; if your TV is in a media cabinet, just screw the speakers to its walls.) When you're ready to listen, just swing 'em out at a 30-degree angle that points the MMG Ws toward your command chair.

If you're using the MMG Ws as surround speakers, mount 'em on the side walls behind your seats. Then swing 'em out when in use so they are perpendicular to the side walls. The front channels should be placed more or less at ear height, and for best performance the surrounds should be as well, although this is less critical. Ideally, the surrounds should be at least three feet from the rear wall.

The MMG C does have a "box" -- sort of. It uses a version of the same panel as the MMG W (and has the same 100Hz-16kHz frequency response), but it's curved, so that the speaker's horizontal dispersion is broader than it would be if it were flat. Because of the panel's curvature, the MMG C is mounted within a bowed framework that is 36" wide by 9 1/4" high by 5 1/2" deep at its front, tapering to 2 1/2" at its tips. Speaker-wire connections are made through small set-screw-tightened sockets, a non-standard but very secure arrangement. The MMG C weighs 18 pounds.

I know that’s a secret, for it’s whispered every where.

Before we proceed, a few comments are called for.

First, you won't see the MMG W and MMG C at audio stores; they're only available direct from Magnepan. The company is hoping to reach new customers, ones who probably wouldn't ever set foot in a specialty audio store. If you've never heard of Magnepan, buying direct from the company might make you uncomfortable, but it shouldn't -- in customer-satisfaction surveys, Magnepan consistently rates at the top of the list. Most Magnepan customers would rather step up to a better model from the company than seek a speaker from anybody else.

But if the MMG W and MMG C aren't your cup of tea, the company offers a 60-day money-back guarantee.

The other thing you need to know is that these Maggies really want a subwoofer. That's the downside to their near-invisibility. A small panel can only do so much, and the MMG W's 100Hz bottom end just doesn't give it a lot of authority.

The MMG W doesn't have a low-pass filter, but that's no big deal. Many audiophiles (such as me, for example) would rather run the speakers full range to avoid the audible effects of filters; if you'd rather employ some form of filtration, most subs have a high-pass filter built in.

In surround settings, which is how I auditioned the Maggies, you can establish the speaker/subwoofer relationship within your processor. As I said, no big deal -- in fact, leaving out a low-pass circuit makes a lot of sense.

To sin in secret is not to sin at all.

I set the MMG Ws and MMG C up in a multichannel system, using four MMG Ws and a single MMG C. I was impressed by the ease of the setup process. It took less than an hour -- and that included finding my electric screwdriver in the morass of post-move boxes we're currently living amidst.

Digital sources were a TAG McLaren DVD32R DVD player or a Marantz DV-8300 for SACD, the preamp/processor was a Tag McLaren AV192R, and amplifiers were Musical Fidelity M250 monoblocks. The subwoofer was a Polk Audio PSW-650. Everything was connected with Kimber Kable KWIK-16 in-wall loudspeaker cable and KCAG interconnects.

I listened almost exclusively to multichannel music in the context of this review, but I have to confess I slipped a few movies into the DVD 32R as well -- and you home-theater buffs really ought to get in on this particular secret.

Love ceases to be a pleasure, when it ceases to be a secret.

Wow! I get to play with some pretty impressive gear in this job, and it's hard not to get a little jaded. So when a product invokes my gee-whiz response, it tends to be really, really, really exceptional. The MMG Ws had me grinning like a jack-o-lantern from the moment I opened their boxes.

Well, perhaps that's a slight exaggeration. My first response upon opening the first box of MMG Ws was, Huh? That's because I thought Magnepan had sent me two pair of MGMC1s, a $750-per-pair loudspeaker I had already reviewed. True, they were a little smaller than I remembered, but they sure looked like MGMC1s.

The MMG Ws sure sound like 'em, too. In fact, in a multichannel context, paired with a good subwoofer, the differences between the two models might well be vanishingly slight -- without having both speakers on hand for direct comparison, I can't say for sure.

(Magnepan comments -- we appreciate the enthusiasm Mr. Phillips has for the MMG W and MMG C. We carefully compared the MC 1 against the MMG W. While the MMG W is a great value, we would have been "shooting ourselves in the foot" if the MMG W was as good as the MC 1. To name one of several advantages, the MC1 employs a Quasi Ribbon tweeter. Mr Phillips did note that he did not have both systems at the same time for comparison)

The MGMC1s could scrape by without a sub and may produce louder peaks without strain, but I don't imagine most people would notice much qualitative difference between the two models at normal listening levels. That's, ummm, surprising for a $300 loudspeaker.

Perhaps even dumbfounding.

The MMG Ws simply excelled as surround speakers. In fact, as surrounds, their lack of deep bass might even be considered an advantage. If you have a stereo system that you love and you've been hesitating to venture into multichannel, the MMG W just might be the answer to your prayers. It may be the finest speaker I've ever heard at reproducing the subtle ambience cues that give you that U-R-there sensation. You want true dipole non-specificity? The MMG W will give it to you in spades.

The MMG C is a less universal solution, but that has more to do with the nature of center-channel speakers than with any shortcoming on the part of the speaker itself. In my opinion, the one crucial consideration in a center-channel is timbre matching to its left and right partners. One solution is to use three identical loudspeakers for all front-channel applications. In a strict multichannel-music system, this isn't too difficult to accomplish, but add a TV screen or flat-panel monitor and placing an upright center-channel speaker can be come more problematic -- that's why so many center-channel speakers are horizontally inclined.

However, this brings its own set of complications. Multi-driver center-channel speakers tend to have a "picket fence" dispersion pattern, which means that as you move from left to right (or vice versa), you run into sonic hotspots and nulls caused by the different drivers' acoustic cancellations. A single diaphragm, such as that used by the MMG W, avoids the hotspot/null problem, but flat panels work best on-axis -- move to one side or the other and the sound drops off. The answer is to bow the panel so its curve broadcasts sound across a wide pattern. It sounds easy, but it's devilish hard to pull off. Somehow Magnepan has managed this nifty little trick.

The MMG C may not be the best match for every loudspeaker, but it's sheer perfection when mated to a pair (or two) of MMG Ws.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained...

The sound of four MMG Ws and a MMG C, mated to a dynamic, musical subwoofer such as the Polk PSW-650, is robust and seamless, although even the term seamless is a tad deceptive. The reality is that the sound is much more like "no speaker" than any $300-per-pair speaker has any right to sound.

If that sounds elitist, I apologize. I have absolutely nothing against inexpensive loudspeakers. In fact, I adore 'em. I think the contemporary music lover lives in a golden age when it comes to loudspeaker choices. It has become decidedly difficult to buy a bad-sounding loudspeaker. But getting to the magic that live music possesses remains tantalizingly out of reach for almost every loudspeaker, no matter how costly. The Maggies capture a piece of that magic, which is a trick speakers costing ten times more have a hard time doing.

I suspect a big reason for this is that the speakers are so darn simple. There are a lot of things they don't have: no crossover, no box, no individual drivers. As a result, there's no crossover distortion, no box coloration, no cancellation -- which means that sound is generated over the whole panel and dispersed into the room in a manner that is closer to the way a musical instrument resonates in free air than conventional designs manage.

Maybe that's just my overactive imagination, but the Maggies disappeared sonically like $10,000 loudspeakers -- and even if I was using a $997 system to pull that trick off, it still seems like a bargain.

With a truly great multichannel performance, such as the Atlanta Symphony's Beethoven Symphony No. 9 [Telarc SACD-60653], the sound was literally engrossing. The orchestral sound from the front three speakers was cut from the whole cloth -- it was rich, warm, and dynamic. The surround channels added a subtle touch of ambience, which seems like a small thing, but it added a convincing element of solidity to the entire experience. It transformed my 2200-cubic-foot listening room into the Woodruff Arts Center's Symphony Hall -- truly an alchemical transmutation.

The secret of happiness is to admire without desiring.

I recently reviewed the Athena Technologies Micra speaker system, which at $549 set a pretty impressive standard for affordable surround-sound systems. Although it manages to include a subwoofer and five loudspeakers at that price point, it seemed like a logical point of comparison for the MMG W/MMG C system.

For complete system simplicity, the Micra is pretty nigh impossible to beat. You get the subwoofer, of course, which you'll have to supply yourself with the Maggies, and you get five compact loudspeakers for less than the price of four MMG Ws (or a pair of MMG Ws and an MMG C). A subwoofer like the Polk PSW-650 and five of the Magnepan speakers puts the total cost of the system at $2100.

Like the Maggies, the Micra system includes wall-mount brackets and is pretty unobtrusive, although nothing beats the MMG W when it comes to blending into the décor.

The same proved to be true of the sound, although the Athena system acquitted itself pretty well. About the only way a multiple-driver dynamic loudspeaker can compete with the broad dispersion of a single-panel speaker like the Magnepans is to place the drivers incredibly close to one another, simulating a point-source as closely as possible -- and that's precisely what the Micras do. They have to -- they're tiny.

That may be a matter of practicality and cost, but the result is a soundfield that is almost as open and airy as that of the Magnepan speakers. The only thing it lacks is the same sense of effortless ease the Maggies show on the big climaxes in the Beethoven symphony's final movement. Of course, some of that was unquestionably due to the dual 10" drivers of the Polk subwoofer, which all by itself cost more than the entire Athena system. If I turned the Polk off, the comparison was closer, but as I said earlier, a subwoofer is not an accessory with the MMG W/MMG C system -- it's a requirement.

The MMG C showed its mettle in the solo and massed voices of the Ninth's final movement. It centered the voices right in the middle of the stage (although not too precisely in the center) and it revealed the stage's depth to a far greater extent than the Micra's center-channel did.

The Empire Brass Quintet's superb Baroque Music for Brass and Organ [Telarc SACD-60614] showed just how well the MMG W handled the reverberant character of sparsely orchestrated music in a vast room. The Contrapunctus I from Bach's The Art of the Fugue pitted the five brass voices against that of Luther College's pipe organ, and the MMG Ws did a fabulous job of placing the instruments in a real space -- but it was the way that space informed and acted upon the music that took my breath away. The Micras reproduced the sound (no small feat that), but the four MMG Ws re-created it. My room disappeared; I was taken somewhere else for four minutes.

You really want to go somewhere else? Listen to The Dark Side of the Moon's multichannel mix on its 30th-anniversary SACD [Capitol CDP 82136 2]. It doesn't sound real (not that that's a bad thing), but it will surely dazzle you -- the ability of the rear MMG Ws to create surround effects without appearing to be present at all was nothing but dazzling. The Micras tended to be a tad more apparent in the localization of the effects -- and in this case, not being there was a lot better than almost not being there.

The Micras continue to impress me, but the several-times-more-expensive Magnepans astonish me.

To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

Here's the best part of Magnepan's little secret: No one will ever know the MMG W/MMG C system is affordable if you don't tell them. Just let your friends ogle 'em -- they'll never have seen anything like 'em. Then let 'em hear 'em. Chances are they'll never have heard anything like 'em, either.

If they have, they'll assume you spent a fortune on those little wonders. If they haven't, well, they'll probably think the same thing. They'll assume you just went and bought the best-sounding loudspeaker money can buy. They won't be off by much -- you will have gone and bought the best loudspeakers that not all that much money can buy.

And that'll be our little secret.

Magnepan MMG W and MMG C Loudspeakers
Prices: MMG W, $325 USD per pair; MMG C, $299 each.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor; 60-day money-back guarantee.

1645 Ninth Street
White Bear, MN 55110
Phone: (800) 474-1646

All Contents Copyright © 2003 SoundStage!
All Rights Reserved.
Used with permission.
Current Issue Equipment Reviews

Features SnapShot!
Description	Features
Model: MMG W main and surround speaker Price: $325 USD per pair Dimensions: 38.25"H x 10.25"W x 1"D Weight: 20 pounds per pair Model: MMG C center-channel speaker Price: $299 USD Dimensions: 36"W x 9.25"H x 5.25"D Weight: 18 pounds System Price: $949 USD Warranty: Three years parts and labor; 60-day money-back guarantee	· Flat-panel, wall-mounted design · Planar-magnetic diaphragm · No crossover · Fabric grilles · Oak frames

Magnepan Inc., of White Bear Lake, Minnesota, has gone its own way from the beginning. They’re one of the few manufacturers of planar-magnetic speakers, which have a unique, flat-panel shape that produces a distinctive sound-radiation pattern craved by many audiophiles. This audiophile following is warranted -- in my experience, conventional cone-and-dome speakers can’t match the coherence of sound at the low prices at which Magnepan sells its speakers.

With the MMG W, Magnepan has found a way to offer a pair of Maggies for $325 USD, and the MMG C center-channel speaker for $299 each. The home-theater enthusiast looking for a fantastic-sounding speaker system costing well south of $1000 would be making a big mistake in ignoring the MMGs.

Magnepan MMG W

The Magnepan MMG W looks like no other speaker I’ve auditioned -- it’s more like a window shutter than a speaker. The smallest panel that Magnepan makes, it still measures more than 3’ tall. But the MMG W’s most remarkable dimension is its depth, or thickness: just 1"! The speaker is covered in a nonremovable off-white cloth, and the panel’s outside edge is finished in oak. There isn’t a stand to speak of -- the W’s top and bottom have holes for brackets that are designed for wall mounting. Magnepan also sells a wall adjustment bracket to ease setup; it allowed me to mount the MMG Ws in my room without drilling holes in my walls.

Instead of speaker binding posts, each MMG W has two wires that connect to the plus and minus connectors of your receiver. These wires are 2’ long, which is too short for most applications. I wish that Magnepan provided proper binding posts; I had to improvise with banana plugs to enable these speakers to be set up with my regular speaker cables.

Planar-magnetic speakers are essentially dipoles, which move sound to the speaker’s front and rear. The moving part, or diaphragm, is a sheet of Mylar with wires applied to its surface. Permanent magnets beneath the surface of the Mylar attract or repel these wires, which causes the Mylar sheet to vibrate, which produces sound. This is called a quasi-ribbon driver -- it’s the wires that are conductive, not the Mylar itself. (In true ribbon drivers, which Magnepan uses in its more expensive speakers, a conductive aluminum ribbon is bonded to the Mylar instead of wires.) Because of the low mass of the Mylar sheet, planar-magnetic speakers are able to respond more quickly to an input signal and stop more quickly when the signal is gone, with little decay time compared to conventional cone speakers.

In other Magnepan speakers, part of the Mylar sheet has thicker wires and part has thinner wires, which creates, essentially, woofer and midrange drivers. Not so with the MMG W -- its single-diameter conductor makes it a crossoverless, or one-way, design.

Magnepan’s wall brackets have been cleverly designed. Once drilled into a wall, the brackets hold the panel in place with top and bottom pins that let you swivel the speakers out when listening, then swing them back against the wall when not in use. The bottom pin allows the connector wires from the panel to be threaded through, which results in a clean appearance.

Magnepan MMG C

As in the MMG W, the MMG C center speaker’s Mylar sheet sits in a wooden frame covered in cloth, with an open front and back. Unlike the MMG W, the MMG C is designed to be mounted on a stand or atop your TV, not on a wall. Another difference is that the MMG C is curved for better off-axis dispersion. It’s 3’ wide and more than five times as deep as the MMG W -- a whole 5.25". The MMG C is covered in black cloth with oak accents on the sides and a single set of binding posts centered on the rear.

Setup

Because the four MMG Ws had to be mounted on walls, the system proved a bit challenging to set up. The front speakers went in easy -- I had bookshelves, which worked quite nicely for mounting the panels. All I had to do was screw the brackets to the bookshelves so that the panels would be at the recommended 2’ above the floor, and I was in business. This pair ended up around 9’ from my listening seat, at 45 degrees from the center-channel speaker -- wider than the 30-35 degrees that I normally use. The MMG C center-channel was also 9’ away, on a low stand. Because I didn’t want to drill holes in my walls for the rear speakers, I had to use the supplied wall adjustment brackets with a couple of pine boards 8’ long and 1" x 4". I needed to fiddle with these brackets to get them to lie flat against the wall. Once secured, the bottoms of the rear speakers were mounted 2’ above the floor and about 6’ from and slightly behind my listening position.

Because the MMG W and C put out no bass below 100Hz, I set up my receiver’s crossovers to 100Hz. I was a bit worried that such a high crossover point would be difficult to match with a subwoofer, but I found that both the Paradigm Seismic 12 and the Outlaw LFM-1 subs worked well.

Magnepan rates the impedance of the MMGs at 4 ohms, their sensitivity at 88dB/W/m. These numbers, especially the 4-ohm load, would indicate a moderately difficult load for an amplifier. I found that this was the case. Using my Sony receiver, I was able to drive the speakers to satisfyingly loud levels, but I had to crank the volume control higher than usual. My receiver displayed no signs of distress during the auditioning; I’m confident that if your receiver puts out enough current, you shouldn’t have any problems.

Performance

One standout trait of the Magnepan "house sound" is coherence, and the MMG W and C did not disappoint in this regard. This coherence was evident while listening to "Fly Me to the Moon," from the SACD Ray Brown, Monty Alexander, Russell Malone [Telarc SACD-63562]. As Alexander played lows and highs on the piano, I wasn’t surprised that I didn’t hear the transition from midrange driver to tweeter that I can sometimes hear from conventional cone speakers -- after all, the MMGs are one-way speakers. Because the MMGs’ bass response extends to only around 100Hz, I expected the sound of Ray Brown’s double bass to be more disjointed as he played up and down the full range of the instrument. But the transition was nearly seamless, no matter which subwoofer I used -- both the Paradigm Seismic 12 and Outlaw LFM-1 were excellent matches.

Another high point of the Magnepans was the enormous soundstage they put forth. Dipole speakers send sound to the front and rear: the rear soundwaves bounce off the walls (in my case, the bookshelves) behind the speakers to contribute to this large soundstage. This enhanced such DVDs as The Matrix Reloaded. Chapter 4 has a scene in which Morpheus makes a speech to a large crowd. I got a convincing sense of the arena-like space, the Magnepans seeming to push out the walls of my listening room. It helped that all of the speakers in this system are dipoles -- the surround envelopment was seamless from speaker to speaker.

The MMG W and C thrilled me with their transient response. In chapter 3 of the DVD of Kill Bill: Vol. 1, there is a fight scene between The Bride and Vernita Green. During the scene, a glass coffee table is broken when one combatant lands on it. The shattering glass sounded more realistic through the Magnepans than through most other speakers I’ve heard. And a gunshot in chapter 4 sounded particularly startling through the MMGs.

I found the Magnepan MMG C a thoroughly convincing center-channel speaker. Throughout Kill Bill: Vol. 1, the engrossing dialogue was captured well. I didn’t have to strain to hear the actors’ speech, both male and female voices sounding clear and natural. The MMG C’s curved panel helped as well -- dialogue was as clear in the sweet spot directly in front of the MMG C as it was at the ends of the couch. As mentioned earlier, the C and the four Ws matched well. During any front-to-center transitions, such as in chapter 14, "Swarm of Smiths," of The Matrix Reloaded, the MMG C was the equal of the MMG W, which is seldom the case with home-theater systems. Great job, Magnepan.

Comparison

I didn’t have another flat-panel system with which to compare the Magnepans, but I did have a comparably priced bookshelf speaker -- the Axiom M3ti, which retails for $275/pair. The Axiom M3ti stands about 14" high, with a 1" titanium-dome tweeter and a 6.5" aluminum-cone woofer. This speaker is a conventional, direct-radiating design similar to most speakers built today.

The first thing that struck me while comparing the Magnepan and Axiom systems was the difference in the size of the soundstage. While listening to "Stop This World," from the SACD of Diana Krall’s The Girl in the Other Room [Verve B0002293-36], the MMG W/C filled in the entire front wall; the M3ti could not match this width and depth. When I listened to the two-channel SACD track, the piano sounded large through MMG W/C, Krall’s voice filling in the center of the front soundstage. Through the Axioms, the piano sounded much more closed-in, although the phantom center image was stronger.

The two-channel SACD mode does not invoke the subwoofer. When I listened to "Temptation" from the Krall album, it was evident that the Maggies needed a sub; the Axioms could get along without one. This difference can be eliminated with an external crossover for SACD or DVD-Audio listening, such as the Outlaw ICBM. In direct comparison with the Axioms, the MMG W/Cs’ high frequencies sounded rolled-off. When I listened to "Chuck E.’s in Love," from Rickie Lee Jones [CD, Warner Bros. 3296], the guitar didn’t have the bite though the Magnepans that it had through the Axioms.

The MMG W/C combination truly shone as a home-theater system. The Magnepans’ huge, seamless envelopment was advantageous with DVDs with lots of atmosphere, such as Gothika, which has stormy scenes throughout. The ability of the MMGs to convey the sense of space made for a more involving listening experience than with the Axiom M3ti system.

Conclusion

Magnepan’s MMG W and MMG C comprise a unique flat-panel speaker system in a price range dominated by conventional cone-and-dome speakers. In my experience, however, even conventional speakers costing many times the Maggies’ price cannot match their coherence. The huge soundstage they produced was mesmerizing. Combine these two standout traits with class-leading transient response, and you have the bargain of the century. I don’t see how Magnepan can make any money selling this system for $949.

Final words of advice: Give the Magnepan MMG W and MMG C an audition before word gets out and you end up on a long waiting list.

Review System
Receivers - Outlaw Model 1050, Sony STR-DA5ES
Subwoofers - Paradigm Seismic 12, Outlaw LFM-1
Source - JVC XV-721 DVD player, Pioneer Elite PD-65 CD player, Sony DVP-NS650V SACD player
Cables - Sonic Horizons, TARA Labs, Nordost, Siltech
Monitor/Projector - JVC 32" direct-view TV, InFocus X1 front projector

Magnepan
1645 Ninth Street
White Bear, MN 55110
USA
Phone: 1-800-474-1646

"We’re getting Maggies! Cool!" That was my wife’s reaction when she learned we were getting a full five-channel review system from Magnepan. The first time she’d heard Magnepans, on a trip to Chicago a year or so before, had made her an instant convert. Never mind that the MG20.1, at nearly 6.5’ tall by 2.5’ wide, needs lots of room to breathe and would require a complete rethinking of her decorating scheme. "We’ll make room," she said. Unfortunately, the MG20.1’s used-Accord price was an instant deterrent.

I felt duty-bound to tell her that, at $949 USD, the five-channel MMG W/C system we were getting was at the opposite end of the price/performance spectrum from the MG20.1. Then there was the fact that we might have to drill holes in her freshly painted walls to mount them. It didn’t make a bit of difference.

For those of you unfamiliar with Magnepan, they’re a great example of a company that thinks outside the box -- literally: They have eliminated the speaker enclosure. The basic Magnepan Magneplanar speaker is a large panel consisting of a Mylar diaphragm stretched over a frame. The voice "coil" is an aluminum wire glued to the Mylar, arranged in a grid of long rows from the top to the bottom of the panel. Precisely aligned strips of magnets on one side of the panel complete the required elements of the speaker. The main physical difference between Magnepan models is the size of the panel, and the models MG3.6/R and above include a true ribbon driver to reproduce the high frequencies. The MMG W consists of a single panel 38" high by 10.375" wide and 0.75" thick. This is quite small by Magnepan standards; once mounted, the speakers are very unobtrusive. The MMG C center-channel is only slightly smaller, and is bowed to improve dispersion from side to side.

Magnepan speakers are so different from the cone-and-dome speakers most people are used to that 95% of the general population will have no idea what they’re looking at. Be prepared to answer questions: What is that? Where does the sound come from? How does it work? As you answer, you’ll find such words as dipole and planar creeping into your vocabulary. And you need to know the following: Magnepan is the name of the company, Magneplanar is the name of the technology, and Maggies is what everyone who owns them affectionately calls the speakers.

The hard part

You might be tempted to install the MMG Ws right away, in whatever locations look convenient. Don’t do it. While you’ll probably get acceptable results, a little work put into placing Maggies can pay huge dividends in the overall sound quality. Besides, the MMG W is designed to be mounted on a wall; once that’s done, it isn’t easy to move. Magnepan realized this early on and developed a temporary mounting kit ($18/pair) that allows the purchaser to move the speakers from one location to another without having to drill holes in the wall. I had to make a minor modification in the kit to account for the crown molding in my listening room, but once I’d done that, moving the MMGs around to find the best positions was a fairly simple task.

Where those optimal positions will be will depend a lot on your room, but it probably won’t be where you first place the MMGs. My experience suggests that you should think wide placement -- 50% farther apart than your conventional speakers isn’t unreasonable. That’s where the MMGs ended up in my two-channel listening room, to form an almost perfectly equilateral triangle with my listening position. Given a little more space, I might have set them even farther apart. In a narrow room, you might even consider placing the speakers on the side walls.

When the Maggies arrived, my home-theater system, where I would do my multichannel listening, was already occupied by another system. Not to be denied, my wife asked if I could hook them up in the family room. This was when I broke the first rule of planar speakers: I hooked them up to the 4-ohm taps of the relatively low-powered Cayin TA-30 integrated amplifier ($799), which pushes all of 30Wpc to the speakers. The conventional wisdom is that planar speakers require lots of power and don’t get along well with tube amps. But I bowed to conjugal pressure and my own curiosity and went ahead. If you try this at home, be aware that you might risk melting a little Mylar if you don’t exercise caution with the volume control.

When I moved the system into my theater room, a door on the left side of the front wall prevented me from placing the MMG Ws in the optimum positions. For a variety of reasons, a side-wall installation wouldn’t work, so I ended up with the MMGs about 3’ closer together than I would have liked. To compensate, I listened to the system from about 2’ farther from the rear wall than normal. After some experimentation, the surrounds ended up on the rear wall, 6’ from the listening position and angled out into the room at about 60 degrees.

The MMGs require a subwoofer. Throughout my listening sessions, a Rocket UFW-10 provided the low-frequency reinforcement for the system. Other equipment used in the review included the Adcom GCD-600 and Rotel RCD-1072 CD players, Anthem AVM 20 preamp-processor, and Rotel RB-976 power amp.

Tubes ’n’ planars?

Wow! That’s what my wife and I said when we first heard two MMG Ws hooked up to the Cayin TA-30 tube amp. It also describes the response of each of my friends who heard them. It was one of those things you have to hear to believe. About two minutes into "Don’t Fence Me In," from The Frank and Joe Show’s 33 1/3 [Hyena 9320], there’s a guitar flourish that extends well outside the speakers and ended up almost to my immediate left. Now that was depth of soundstage. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have thought I had surround speakers hidden somewhere in the room. As with everything else I threw at them, the Maggies were the very model of clarity. Witness Dr. John’s voice, on "Sheik of Araby" from the same disc: slightly nasal and a little edgy, but very immediate, almost as if he were standing right there. The most expensive speakers I have in the house, at more than ten times the price, couldn’t match the Maggies’ soundstage or sense of presence.

Soundstaging and imaging were again the big story on "Time After Time," from David "Fathead" Newman’s Song for the New Man [Highnote 7120]. The cymbal at the left was just inside the left speaker, but the decay reverberated out into the room. This seemed very natural to me, and is something that no conventional speaker has quite gotten right in this space. Newman’s sax was nailed in place just to the left of center and a bit out in front. Clarity was again stellar, with a slight edge to the horns on "Shakabu" that’s missing with all too many speakers. Besides their trademark soundstaging, it’s this remarkably clear and coherent midrange that sets Magneplanars apart from nearly every conventional speaker on the market.

We’ve got you surrounded

Once I’d freed up space, I moved the MMGs into my home-theater system for a little multichannel listening. During "On the Run," from the SACD release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon [Capitol CDP 82136 2], the Maggies completely "disappeared" and let the music flow, leaving me immersed in a seamless soundstage. The footsteps early in this track began well to the left of the front left speaker, traveled across the front, then turned the corner to the right rear and finally crossed behind me, to exit stage right. Never was there a break in the progress of the footsteps or in the Maggies’ ability to put them in exactly the right spot. Nor did the sound ever seem to be coming from any given speaker.

No examination of DSOM is complete without checking out "Time." Normally, I’m no big fan of the "sound everywhere" form of musical surround; I feel it gets in the way of the performance. However, DSOM is no ordinary album, and on "Time," the feeling of being enclosed in a room full of clocks is nothing short of a revelation. With the Maggies properly set up and balanced, the clocks were here, there, everywhere -- yet I felt I could reach out and touch one, had it been just a few feet closer.

The clarity of Alison Krauss’s voice in "We Hide and Seek," from the SACD of Alison Krauss + Union Station’s Live [Rounder 11661-0515-6], gives me goose bumps. There’s something about it that just sounded real through the MMG system. This album is a prime example of how to record a multichannel audio disc: The surrounds are used mostly for ambience and, on this live recording, the sounds of the audience. It was very effective and believable through the MMGs on such tracks as "New Favorite," where the stroking of the guitar reverberates slightly through the listening space but doesn’t stand out as a distinct sound. I almost had to listen for it to hear the reverberation, but it was there.

At the opposite end of the surround spectrum is the SACD of The Police’s Every Breath You Take [A&M 069 493 607-2]: The guitars in "Can’t Stand Losing You" come from all over the place. The MMGs made the best of a bad situation, suspending the instruments properly in space, albeit in utterly unnatural places. On the other hand, the way the rim shots in "Walking on the Moon" decayed out into space worked nicely, even if the occasional obvious reverberation behind me and to the right was distracting.

The competition

If you’re looking for the particular sound of a planar speaker, then the MMG W/C system has no competition at the price. The closest conventional competitor I’ve heard recently is the Ascend Acoustics CBM-170 ($328 per pair) with matching CMT-340 center ($298 each), which is very nearly the same price as the Magnepan system at $858. Both systems are impressive for the money, but each represents a totally different approach to sound reproduction. The Ascend system has flat frequency response with good high-frequency extension, while the Maggies tend to roll off a bit at the top end. Also, the Ascend system is more efficient, will play louder without strain, and is easier to drive with a lower-powered amp. On the other hand, nothing else I’ve heard anywhere near this price can approach the Magnepan system in terms of soundstaging and midrange coherence.

My single caveat is that the MMG W/C system is not as forgiving of placement as are conventional speakers. If conditions force you to place them closer together than is optimal, you’ll lose much of their expansiveness and depth of soundstage. But if you’ve got room to tinker, the MMGs should reward you with an audio experience unlike any other.

To sum up

As I complete this review, a debate is going on in my house: Should we buy the MMG W/C review samples? They could be just the ticket for the basement theater I’m planning. Or should we jump in with both feet and build a system based on Magnepan’s more expensive 1.6/QR? One thing is certain: We’ll soon count ourselves among those fortunate souls who own Maggies and listen to them daily.

It isn’t often that I sit down in front of a new speaker system and say "Wow!" But during the course of this review I did just that, over and over. When Magnepan set out to build the MMG W/C, they didn’t end up with only a budget entry for the planar loudspeaker market; they rewrote the rules of what budget speakers can sound like. To understand how brilliantly they’ve succeeded, you’ll have to hear the MMG W and C for yourself.

...Jeff Van Dyne

Prices of equipment reviewed

Magnepan MMG W - $325 USD per pair

Magnepan MMG C - $299 USD each