Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Magnepan's Wendell Diller discusses Sound Power

Guys - Wendell Diller, the man who arranged for me to test the Magnepan LRS (a wonderful $650 speaker) is discussing how they used the Sound Power Curve (he calls it power response) in developing their $30,000 per pair flagship speakers: the 30.7

The Youtube video is here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_-uw3KpxxE&feature=youtu.be

He even gives credit to Floyd Toole

Thanks for sharing

Cool how popular Jay from Audio Excellence\Next Best Thing Studio has gotten in a mere couple years. I've been subscribed for a while.

Did you see the vids. of them with the McIntosh Mc901s Dual mono they got in store?
Massive Mono block with 300 Watt tubes with a 600 Watt solid state.
The stuff Audiophile dreams are made from.

I have not seen any of their other videos, but will definitely look for them.

The Sound Power Curve science is really solid. Magnepan, like Axiom/Bryston, does a lot of double blind testing with their speakers during development - even the little $650 per pair LRS that I have here for a review.

I was just looking at the Maggies, always wanted a pair. How does the LRS compare to the Axioms and how much power do they need ?

Rick - They need a solid 100 WPC amp. It's hard to describe them against anything Axiom. Price wise, at $650, they are close to the $598 M3's.

The M3's won't do the magic with classical music that the Maggies will, but the M3's will play much louder and cleaner with rock music.

The M3's are wider in sound stage, but the Maggies are deeper.

If someone wanted to spend $1200 on a pair of speakers, going with a pair of each would not be a bad way to go, if one had the room for 2 systems. This would be in lieu of a pair of $1200 speakers in one system.

All the reviews of the LRS I've seen recommend lots of power. Most all have said they didn't get all the hype until they got enough power. Which may actually make the M3 much cheaper as they don't really need a butt load of power to open up.

The Maggies do need a boatload - I am using a pair of $3000 PS Audio M700 mono amps, rated at 350/700 WPC into 8/4 ohms.

I will be trying them with an Akitika GR-102 amp pair, running parallel, in the next few weeks - a pair of those amps is around $1000.

You make a solid point - the M5HP and an ADA-1000-2 would make for a pretty close total price to the LRS plus suitable amp.

I have what should be a decent amp to push the LRS. The Rotel RB 1080 rated at 200 wpc into 8 ohm. Not sure of the 4 ohm rating but I believe I seen it is somewhere around 300 in 4

Rick - When Stereophile tested the RB 1080, it delivered 584 watts with one channel driven into 4 ohms - so 300 WPC with 2 channels driven will be achieved.

The only caveat - the Rotel clips hard after that. The Maggies are susceptible to blown tweeters under clipping conditions - shouldn't be a problem for you, as the speakers will likely start showing issues at about 150 watts.

They are a tremendous speaker - but won't get loud.

Still haven't heard a pair of Magnepans in house or even in store for long. Once heard a pair at a local company but for all of two minutes (and with whatever music they had playing and in a very full room of gear) as we were there searching for something for a friend.
I was long intrigued with them but backed off because of three things:
-cost
-requires something separate for bass
-more cost and space for components (to buy massive amps to feed them)