Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater mini review of mm12's and m60's

todd, the person who came and listened to my set up finally got his mm12's? (correct model?) and i visited sunday morning. when i was unloading the 60's from the car, his wife said the 60's looked better than what he bought. when i entered his family room and saw those flat speakers, i was dumb struck. about 5 foot tall and maybe 18 inches wide with two L brackets keeping them upright. i noticed he had weights over the legs of the brackets. i though to myself they would never fly with my wife. white in color, and about 2 feet from the wall. we placed the 60's beside each maggie on the outer sides. todd has an older yammi avr which has 70 watts, and a 563a player. we threw in gaucho on dvd-a and his player would not play it; bummer. todd does have the player wired for 6.1 with analog cables, but i noticed he had no toslink or coax to the receiver, and explained why he needed them and planned a trip to ratshack that afternoon. brought the spl along and did our best to calibrate. tunes were played flat. i noticed the maggies were not as crisp sounding, but did put out more bass than the 60's. the maggies also sounded fuller which we concluded was because of the rear firing driver. i said that i preferred the 60's because i always max out the treble on what ever i'm listening to, in the car, truck, office, etc. when asked if he could swap them out if he wasn't happy, i was told the dealer gave him a 7 day trial period, not very generous i must say. he loves the sound of the maggies, but upset the center channel will cost more than the pair he has now.
this was not critical listening, but just changing discs, gabbing and enjoyment. i couldn't wait to get home and throw in gaucho, hit the 6 channel input and wake the 20 year old daughter at noon. so, when people ask, and the usual answer is that one needs to listen to make a decision, it's true. he's happy, and i'm happy and we both have different sounding speakers.
dan

Great comparison! BTW, they're MG12s... It's obvious that I did not do a critical comparison when I likened the M22s to the MG1.6 and MG12s in terms of clarity. I think I must have been reacting to the gut feeling of WOW that I got from both speakers (and from Hales Revelation 2s, btw...) I must admit that I find your conclusions pretty interesting. I never would have thought that the Maggies would have better bass than M60s, and I recall that they were pretty crisp. Maybe not...

Anyway, thanks for the comparision! The WAF of the Maggies is pretty low, isn't it.

Makes for good reading, Dan. Thanks for posting it.

Magnepan says that the MG12 will play down to 45Hz but in my experience with them that 45Hz is very optimistic. Using a 1Khz test tone as a reference set to 75db I get; -4db at 63Hz, -6db at 50Hz and -11db at 40Hz. So I think that for any real bass below 63Hz(or there abouts according to the room) a sub is a must. The upper bass on the MG12 is really quite nice and (as 2x6spds would describe) has that tight "plosive" quality.

I've not heard the M60s but I would have thought that the bass would go much lower than the MG12. I'm not sure what "crisp" is describing in this instance, but the MG12s and the M22s have very simular timbre attributes especially in the sparkling highs dept. In fact, when used as a center channel between the Maggies, it(M22) matches very well. Both of these speakers have attributes that I look for in a speaker. I mostly listen to the Maggies not so much that they are more accurate(frequency wise) than the M22s, because I don't think they(Maggies) are, but for the sensation of a fuller, more accurate illusion(and its all an lllusion ain't it) of a 3D sound stage (IMO).

Another difference I hear between the Maggies and most box speakers is that the sound seems to come from...well ...a box. I've gotten so used to the dipole nature of the Maggies that I don't care to go back to conventional speakers especially for critical 2ch listening. (I'm not saying it's what everyone needs...just expressing my preferences and taste)

In reply to:

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The WAF of the Maggies is pretty low, isn't it

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I guess it depends on the wife. My wife thinks they are cool but then so is my wife. Although she is not really into "home audio" equipment, she sure does like the end result and she understands my hobby/obsession with it.