Magnepan at Cloney Audio
When it comes to loudspeaker design, two basic approaches are possible. The first and vastly more common way is to put a number of cone type drive units in a box. The second, is to use a thin film panel of material such that the drive unit effectively becomes the loudspeaker. This second approach is much less common because it requires a level of bespoke engineering that is beyond the reach of most loudspeaker makers, who rely on bought in components from OEM suppliers.
Panel loudspeakers have much to recommend them. First, doing away with the speaker “box” removes one of the main sources of colouration. Second, the thin film drive unit can be energised across pretty much its entire surface rather than a single point as in a cone unit. Of course, in design and engineering, there are no free lunches, so the compromise in a panel speaker is that the planar drive unit has much less freedom of movement, so to ensure adequate volume and bass extension, it necessarily has to be relatively large.
But we must emphasise the term “relatively”. Yes, a panel speaker will be larger than a box type speaker of equivalent frequency response. But it can still be sized to fit comfortably in a normal domestic environment. And thus we get to Magnepan!
Magnepan, from White Bear Lake Minnesota have been making great sounding panel speakers for close to fifty years. And while many such designs fall into the room filling cost-no-object category, Magnepan has always offered more compact and affordable designs. As you’d expect from a company with such history and continuity, they have been progressively refining their designs over many decades. The best so far is the LRS (Little Ribbon Speaker).
By flat panel speaker standards the LRS (Little Ribbon Speaker) is very compact at just 48” tall 14.5 “ wide and, being a planar design which requires no “box” it is just one inch deep.
At only €1,299 the LRS is capable of astonishing results used in the right system. It is fair to say a decent entry level to mid priced amp such as Quad’s Vena 2 will drive the speaker well and provide more than adequate volume levels and sound quality. Indeed as the LRS is so keenly priced that it will have great appeal to owners of moderately priced systems looking for a taste of high end sound.
But the LRS will also provide the perfect platform for future upgrades and on the end of really revealing amplifiers from our stable of brands such as Pass Labs and McIntosh, the LRS really sings.
Further up the range we find the Magnepan 1.7i which is a true three way speaker, bass/mid, treble and super tweeter. The 1.7i uses a quasi-ribbon which bonds an aluminium foil ribbon to a layer of mylar film - delivering true ribbon levels of delicacy and detail, without the sometimes fragility of true ribbons. Again, this is a speaker that will fit in most domestic rooms. It is tall but not overly wide and, remember, it is only a few inches (it is American after all!) deep.
As well as delicacy, detail and freedom from colouration, Magneplanar speakers deliver an astonishingly realistic sense of musical scale. A grand piano sounds, well, grand - just as it does in real life. It is hard to describe this quality until you hear it. But listeners, especially if one’s taste includes music featuring acoustic instruments will instantly appreciate it.
Panel speakers offer a unique perspective on recorded music and for some listeners there is just no substitute. In a very small field of manufacturers, Magnepan are right up there with the best in terms of performance and are class leading in the value for money they offer.
For more info on Magnepan, visit their website magnepan.com or visit us for a demo!
DESCRIPTION
This giant, four-panel (two panels per side), four-way, ribbon/quasi-ribbon line source loudspeaker from Magnepan is the best Maggie JV has heard, which is tantamount to saying it is the best planar JV has ever heard (and right up there with the best six-figure dynamics JV has heard). With its highly coherent wave-launch, free standing imaging, vast soundstage, phenomenal resolution of inner detail, lightning transient response, incomparable naturalness of timbre, and total lack of box coloration and diffraction, the 30.7 is markedly less “there” as a sound source (and markedly more lifelike on voice and acoustic instruments) than almost every dynamic-speaker-in-a-box, no matter its price.