Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
  • CNET
  • All magneplanars posts

magneplanars

Desktop audio never sounded this good before

Desktop audio has never been important to me. I already have a high-end hi-fi in my apartment, so while I occasionally play music on my Audioengine P4 speakers that live on my desktop, I'm not really listening. The music is just there in the background. When I want to listen, I turn on my hi-fi.

That's me, but for some 21st-century audiophiles, the computer is the primary music source at home. That's why Magnepan has designed the all-new Mini-Maggie system. I was the very first reviewer to audition it, and to say I was impressed would be … Read more

Radically innovative speakers from Minnesota?

Most speakers--from the affordable models to state-of-the-art contenders--are box designs. Some are tall, slender boxes, some are tiny cubes or spheres, but they all have some type of cabinet. Unless you're an audiophile, just about every speaker you've ever heard has dome tweeters and cone drivers, so you might conclude that all speakers are made that way. Standing apart from the crowd, Magnepan speakers are slender, flat-panel designs, less than a couple of inches thick. The speakers don't rely on conventional tweeters and woofers; Magnepan speakers' sound-producing elements are proprietary thin-film drivers.

Magnepan's Jim Winey started … Read more

World's most 'perfect' speaker gets even better

Every year product life cycles in the consumer marketplace grow ever shorter and we see ever faster turnover in cameras, phones computers, and so on. On the audio side, the latest and greatest receivers become yesterday's news faster than you can say "HDMI 1.4." It seems like no receiver can stay current for more than a year or so.

Speaker companies show a little more restraint and "refresh" their lines every few years, but even then new models rarely demonstrate actual performance improvements over the previous generations' models. Speaker manufacturer Magnepan doesn't play by those rules; it invests years of development in each of its models before introducing a new speaker. It has to sound better--a lot better--than the outgoing model before it's released to the world.

And not just in the opinion of the designers. New-model Magnepans undergo extensive "blind" listening tests with a wide range of audiophile and non-audiophile listeners (the listeners don't know whether they're hearing the old or new model). The new speaker must consistently score better than the old model before it goes into production.

When I first heard the Magneplanar 1.6 back in 2008 I said it was the best under-$2,000 speaker on the market. Incredibly enough it was 10 years old at the time! The Magneplanar 1.6 has stayed in production for 12 years, but now it's about to be replaced with the new Magneplanar 1.7.

Magnepan, based in White Bear Lake, Minn., builds nothing but panel (boxless) speakers. Not only that, Magnepan designs forgo conventional dome tweeters and cone-type woofers. As I pointed out in my August 14, 2008, blog that's why the company's Magneplanar 1.6 speaker mostly avoids sounding like a speaker. The speaker earned the top position in my Top 10 greatest audiophile speakers blog earlier this year.

The new Magneplanar 1.7 is also a flat-panel design, 64.5 inches tall and a mere 2 inches thick! The new speaker looks a little more contemporary, thanks to its aluminum, wrap-around edge molding. The old model was a two-way design, with a 48-inch-tall aluminum ribbon tweeter and a 442-square-inch mid/bass panel. The Magneplanar 1.7 is a three-way design, with a woofer, tweeter, and super-tweeter. The super-tweeter comes in around 10,000 hertz and is said to produce wider dispersion and better-resolved treble than the Magneplanar 1.6 did.

The other big difference is the Magneplanar 1.7 is a "full-range" ribbon design.… Read more