Quote Originally Posted by RGA
The Maggies are not carried by my dealer though they were years ago and he even owned their top of the line for a short while. These were in on trade - looked like big White scratching posts. The model he told me but I forget - something with a 2 in it - it was supposedly the 2nd from the top. Quite large actually - wider than me and maybe ~5.5 feet high.
Actually, they would be at least three down from the top. 20.1 then 3.6 then the now discontined 2.6. Or even further down as the 12s. A visit to the magnepan.com site might help. My first planars was a pair of MG-IIs thirty years ago. While they were definitely frequency extreme restricted, their presentation was very coherent. The current top three all use ribbon tweeters which does transform their high frequency capability over those that were not. Having said that, you do need to get some distance from them for the drivers to blend. One small "fix" is simply to place the tweeters "inboard" rather than "outboard" as the different ffrequency drivers run vertically in the panels. I could very easily live with a pair of 20.1s - I heard HP's nicely driven pair in Seacliff.

You are most correct in that folks have different listening priorities when it comes to speakers. As for me, I cherish coherency, transient response, and imaging. As Feanor suggested, imaging contains a sub-category of characteristics that involve priorities as well. For me the live experience involves a large image. While it is not simply a question of height, I have yet to hear a satisfying large image from a small speaker, whether it is on stands or not. I am most aware that the sound is rising to meet me and it is perceived to be more distant. My 'stats run floor to ceiling. The image completely fills my listening space in height, width, and depth. Mine are situated eight feet from the back wall. While they are certainly not perfect, they do those things that I cherish most right. Since they are full range, they bypass the whole crossover question altogether. Yet, they beam big time. Move from the center listening chair and the image changes significantly. Positioning them took lots of experimentation. They requires lots of power to deliver realistic SPLs (my amps are 200/450 watt tube monoblocks). But they are able to "float" a very coherent image of a voice, strings, woodwinds, or whatever in a most convincing manner. I find planars better able to reproduce the timbre of bass instruments than most cones with their lower mass and uniform drive. The speakers I aspire to get some day are the Soundlabs A-1s.

To each his own.

rw