ARC + Maggie 1.7 = Bliss by Jonathan Valin from avguide.com
 

ARC + Maggie 1.7 = Bliss by Jonathan Valin from avguide.com

ARC + Maggie 1.7 = Bliss | AVguide

I am looking forward to hearing the 1.7s when my local dealer gets them in. Coupled with synergistic gear, I've always found Magnepans to be great performers and a great value for the money.The 1.7s should be a hot seller in that price range. :yes:

I have never heard Maggies. I had a chance to hear Quad 2805s and just didn't find them engaging. They sounded thin to me and lacked any dynamics - kind of a boring presentation. Are the Maggies very different from Quads? I am curious but never got a chance to listen to them.

In my opinion YES. The Quads are like intraverts to me and Maggies can be considered extraverts. :D Maggies can also sound a bit thin and lean if the gear driving them is not up to par. Dynamics are not really their strongest suit per say, although the bigger Maggies do OK. Transparency, transient speed, purity, better top to bottom coherence (as compared to similar priced box speakers) is their charm. I think Maggies may be a bit easier to drive than many electrostats overall but still need a fairly robust tube amp since they are not very efficient. I'd go for a Class A biased amp/mosfets if I couldn't do a tube amp with them or try to find a warmer/more laid back solid state amp to balance them to my preference. Conrad Johnson works well with them, I heard that combo many times and liked it.

Thx Serge...I'll let you know how the Wilson demo goes in a week and a bit. :thumbsup:

Looking forward to your impression Cyril.

My Magnepan MGIII's while over 23 years old still sound fantastic and have a surprising amount of dynamics. The ribbon tweeter was way ahead of its time ie 1987 . They now look and sound like new. If you buy a older pair of MGIII's don't be scared off by the age, they are audiophile bargains. Doing 3 dollar dap repair before putting them back in service and ordered new covers from Magnepan is easy and inexpensive.

The 1.7 is priced at $1995 per pair.
The average user is not going to spend 39K on a pair of ARC 610T tube monoblocks to drive them. Plus 12K for the ARC Reference 5 preamp.

There has to be something for 3K-4K that will sound almost as good to drive them in an average size room.

Has anyone used 1.6's or 1.7's for front speaker theatre setups? I want to upgrade my front speakers in my HT because I listen to so much music there in 2 channel.

That's always been the unfortunate part of the magnepan story, to get them to sound really good, you have to throw a lot of HIGH QUALITY power at them. I've had the same experience with my mac MC 1.2kw's, and the Burmester 911 mk. 3. Totally different presentation than hooking them up with a $3000 amp. Not even the same speaker.