New Maggies

[groovyd]

Sold off my ol' Paradigm MilleniaOneCT systems and Maggie .7's for some nice fat 20.7's and the mini maggies on my desktop.  Driving the kit with ...

MacBook Pro -> McIntosh D100 -> MC252 -> 20.7

                                                     +-> PrimaLuna ProLogue Integrated -> mini maggies

 

Sounds amazing!  Thinking of upgrading my WA7/tp for their DiaLogue as a dedicated HP amp.

[swt61]

Pics or it never happened!

[groovyd]

think i need to do some sound treatments on the walls behind the 20.7's 

[swt61]

Nice!

Is that one of their bass panels under the desk?

[groovyd]

yessir  Is normally sold together with the minis since they don't have much bass on their own.  tremendous sound all in with both units dialed in.  i know PrimaLuna's Dialog HP isn't really a 'headphone' amp specifically but I am so impressed by the ProLogue through the minis am seriously considering swapping out the WA7 for a DiaLogue HP and dedicating it to my LCD-X. Step up from the WA7/tp sound-wise?

[swt61]

The best amp I ever heard my K1000 from was a Pioneer M22. 

[groovyd]

awesome amp!  yeah i am sure that thing can put down some sound.  my only concern is at the impedance of the X the Dialogue has quite high distortion (1% i think).  Just not sure if that is something I would even hear and if I did could it maybe even add to the sound?  I love the warm tube sound (due to distortion?) and a lot of people seem to prefer the speaker tap sound which I am assuming this would closely represent since it was designed foremost as a high power speaker amp and switched to a headphone amp with what I am guessing is similar circuitry to speaker tapping inside.

[Wmcmanus]

Any way to get the Maggies away from the wall? They should really open up if you could manage that somehow. I know... rooms... it's never easy, but worth experimenting with if even for just a day.

[EdipisReks1]

Agreed.  I've never owned Maggies*, but I've heard a few models a few times, and they have sounded best when moved well into the space.

*yet.  Not apartment friendly.

Edited February 20, 2017 by EdipisReks1

[Craig Sawyers]

Several speakers ago I owned a pair of Maggie MG1C, which sounded splendid. However, they had a nasty habit of the tweeter wire on the main panel going open circuit (the tweeter on this model was not a ribbon). Awkwardly this was aluminium wire, and I guess failed by work hardening and cracking.

Being a guy who does not admit defeat, I procured some aluminium wire of the right gauge, and made a jig to zig-zag it the same way as the original. I then pulled the old wire off, cleaned the film, and glue bonded the new wire on.

The main difficulty was soldering aluminium wire, which needs a special flux and solder, the details of which I entirely forget!

Eventually they failed entirely when the diaphragm film split. But they had a great innings!

[groovyd]

9 hours ago, Wmcmanus said:

Any way to get the Maggies away from the wall? They should really open up if you could manage that somehow. I know... rooms... it's never easy, but worth experimenting with if even for just a day.

yeah the room is the limiting factor here.  i actually got the biggest maggies possible because i knew the room would be killing the half of it.  Can't really move them much from the wall without them being in the middle of the room.  I was hoping the angle into the corners would reduce the back wave into the driver a bit but think a sheet of some acoustic damper on the wall behind them might be my best option.  They still sound incredible but I know they aren't showing their best at the moment.

[mypasswordis]

That's a very interesting angle to sit at while listening to speakers  

[groovyd]

room is narrow and long. they fire roughly into the middle of the room lengthwise.  there are no chairs there for listening, couch on the side.  they were really meant to just fill the room with high quality sound even at low listening levels since it's a condo.  the mini's are what i 'listen' to while working on the computer (programmer) and when i really care about 'listening' i fire up the WA7 and put on the X's.  the 20.7's are really just for ambience around the mini desktop setup which is the normal place i sit.  stereo is on all day every day. headphones get used maybe an hour a day anymore since the minis + 20.7's do a pretty good job on their own. i have adjusted the mini gain to match the fixed mc252 gain through the 20.7s so the transition from walking around to sitting is seamless. speakers can be muted from D100 for example when i need to answer skype which i do via the MHP1000's which are connected directly to the D100 and always on.  since they are semi-closed it helps isolate for things like computer calls and meetings etc. I much prefer the sound of the X's through the WA7 for any serious listening.

 

if i ever move from here will most likely be to a proper home where i can set them up in more of a listening room fashion and actually turn up the volume

[Craig Sawyers]

Yup. The main consideration (well as far as I was concerned!) in buying where we have lived for the last 20 years was the listening room. It is actually the lounge, but was 6m x 4m with a concrete floor. So I have the luxury of siting dipole speakers 1.6 metres from the end wall. And I have a listening seat that I pull out and put in the sweet spot. Bliss.

[Dusty Chalk]

Because priorities! Damn skippy.

Sent from my mind using id, ego, or superego...

[groovyd]

Purchased full Sonarworks setup for calibration of both headphones and speakers using reference mic.  Has made a pretty significant improvement to my LCD-X already.  Should be interesting to see how the maggies take to it.

[Tachikoma]

On 2/20/2017 at 7:48 AM, swt61 said:

The best amp I ever heard my K1000 from was a Pioneer M22. 

A refurbed Pioneer M22 does have very low noise though - low enough to drive anything short of sensitive IEMs without any hint of noise.

I would love to try my M22 with mini maggies some day.

[groovyd]

Turns out sonarworks does not work with the shure xlr to usb adapter i originally got for it so had to pickup a thunderbolt based zoom audio interface for reduced latency.  this is getting costly to calibrate.  really hope it works and makes a positive change.

[groovyd]

Zoom TAC-2R fixes the latency issue with speaker position estimation but my D100 DAC appears to be sample drifting enough to make it impossible to finish the last 10 calibration measurements.  Have to get some adapter cables to hook the Zoom outputs up directly to my speaker amps thus using the thunderbolt interface for both ADC and DAC.  It is quite a challenge to get this thing calibrated with their very picky software.  I'd say it is trying to be too phase precise in what is ultimately a simple EQ non-phase setting to optimize around a target listening space of about 4' x 4'.  Really I don't need perfect flat, not in this room, maybe a studio but certainly not this room.  Anything even close would do unfortunately it doesn't let you accept what you can get and just make the file from it.  It has to pass all 25 measurement spots and a few more.

[groovyd]

Eventually got it to calibrate but doubting the accuracy of calibration.  Anyway, also finally got my PrimaLuna DiaLogue HP amp to power my headphones but coincidentally the post office seems to have all of my headphones stuck in clearance somewhere in Riga which I sent to be calibrated now a month ago.  Little nervous.