[ylee]

I heard the 30.7s again today. For about 2 hours mostly by myself to play whatever I wanted. I played a movement or a couple songs from a wide variety of classical and rock albums: Savall's sublime interpretation of Beethoven's Eroica, Harnoncourt/COE Beethoven's 8th, Kleiber's Verdi La Traviata, Pinnock's Bach Brandenburg Concertos, U2 Joshua Tree, Boston's eponymous album, Stevie Wonder's Talking Book, Allman Brothers' Eat a Peach, Led Zeppelin's IV "Zoso," the Rush album Moving Pictures, and Don Henley's Building The Perfect Beast.

Today's audition reinforced my positive opinion of this speaker. I always ask myself with components and especially speakers I hear - "Are these transducers revealing something new to me about music I've listened to all my life?" With the 30.7, the answer is a definitive "Yes!" There is a fullness of tone and a relative absence of stridency without any rounding off of transients. The mandolin in "Battle of Evermore" by Zeppelin sounded, well, like a life-size mandolin resonant with color. U2's Joshua Tree came out when I was a freshman in college. Hearing it thru the 30.7s took me back in time to when I just turned 19. Duane Allman and Dickey Betts individual guitar lines from Allman Brothers "Blue Sky" have never stood out with respect to each other as clearly as I heard them today.

I will say that Magnepan's in general have a distinct "house sound." All speakers and components do. There is a certain rose-colored tint to Magnepans to my ears, and the 30.7s certainly have a sonic family resemblance. They are not quite as neutral as my Vandersteen Quatro Wood CTs. But they sound beautiful to me.

So, what's an audiophile to do when experiencing such greatness? I said to my dealer "It's a matter of when, not if, I get these speakers." My thinking is I will buy them sometime next year.

Time to approach the wife with the idea...