Anyone experienced with Magnepan home theater speakers?

[Rakido]

I read an article in a german home theater magazine about them and they basically praised them like nothing else.


Here's the link to their website: http://www.magnepan.com/


Rakido

[Jammrock]

Never listened to them personally, but I have listened the electro static speakers, which is the technology Magnepan uses. ES Speakers sound really crips and clean from the mids to the highs, it's a sound that you either love or hate. Just post a thread about Martin Logan speakers (another electro-static speaker maker) and you'll see about a 50/50 split between MURC's who think they sound the best and those who think a $20 boombox at Best Buy sounds better. I am of the belief that ES speakers sound absolutely fantastic, but they require serious component/cable backing.

Magnepan's, from what I remember and read on the site, are not hybrid speakers, so they have little to no low frequency response. This requires you to get a really nice, and probably really expensive, subwoofer to compliment the smooth as silk mid's and high's.

There are a couple of other downfalls to electro-static speakers.
First off, they are EXPENSIVE!!! That full home theater rig will rape over $5000 USD out of you bank account. Secondly, they consume TONS of power, so just using them is pretty expensive, as they have their own power supply for each speaker. Thirdly, they require lots of maintainence, otherwise they won't last long, or dust will build up in the speakers and hurt the sound.

But...if you have the cash and don't mind cleaning out your speakers once in a while, grab them. But first, give them a listening to...as I said, not everyone likes them.

Jammrock

[rubank]

Jammrock, I don´t know where you got the idea that Magnepan´s are elctrostatic - they´re not. They are ribbon speakers, which is a form of dynamic speakers, i.e. they have permanent magnets and the "coil" flattened out over the entire diaphragm.

They sound great, but to me they only make sense if you primarily listen to music from acoustic instruments, not to mention the human voice. Choir music is really something to listen to from Magnepan´s.

rubank

[Greebe]

Electrostats and Magnaplanars are two entirely different designs Jammy.

The first immerses a thin film conductive ribbon in an electrostatic field and the other immerses a thin film ribbon which has a coil etched onto it (thus weighing much more) in a magnetic field.

The first is relatively easy to make, but the electronics to drive it properly are highly ineffecient, costly and difficult to design. Whereas the latter is difficult to make as not only for the coil etched onto the ribbon, but a massive framework grid must support a dizzing array of magnets (typically rare earth) across both sides of it's interior surface.

Last time I listened to Magnapan's twas some ~20 years ago... and long before any speaker of this type used rare earth magnets. Back then they used "refridgerator magnets" which are greatly inferior to what is used today. Dispite that they still sounded awesome, but were very ineffecient (ie not very loud) because of this. Because of the low gauss strength of these "fridge" magnets it also limited how much input power could be applied.

I would not doubt that Magnapan's sound top notch, and only possibly topped by a couple makers of Electrostats (Martin Logan come to mind). Indeed they can cost equally as much. Adding a high end subwoofer would be neccessary.

[Jammrock]

My bad...don't know why I thought that...bad Jammrock...sit....rollover...play dead...

[KvHagedorn]

Haven't heard Magneplanars in some time now, but one thing I remember about them is a comparative lack of dynamics (this may have been partially due to their inefficiency, but in my experience no planar speaker has ever been able to outdo a traditional transducer in this regard). One thing you do not want to give up in home theater setups is dynamics. If you are into acoustic music though, as was mentioned, they might be just what you want. I listened to Martin-Logans (electrostatic) in a home theater setup recently though, and they weren't really as suited to it as something like a B&W would be.

If you are interested in listening to jazz or chamber music or vocals, give the Magneplanars a serious listen. Also listen to Quad's and Martin Logan's offerings as well if you like the sound of the planar loudspeaker. If you really want to spend this kind of money on speakers though, listen for yourself first, and keep in mind what you will be using them for.