I listened to the MG12's today. They were connected to a Classé CAP-151 integrated amp (225wpc into 4 ohms) fed by the Classé CDT-1/DAC-1. The room was well set up, and the MG12's properly positioned.
Rather than listing what is good about these, as so many people have done, here I will list what I found lacking.

After listening to quite a few CDs, I feel that the MG12's lack dynamics and excitement. They sound too mellow for my taste. With NHT speakers, for example, I could get into the music considerably more. They also didn't play as loud as I would sometimes like them to. On full orchestral selections, the bass was well balanced, but didn't go as low as I would have liked. On Robert Miles "Dreamland" CD, the bass was plenty strong, but just didn't sound as good as it might. They also made some slightly inferior CDs sound unnecessarily thin and/or shallow. I'd give four stars for their performance on certain music, but they are lacking on some other pieces.


Some, but not all of the CDs used in this test were:

"The Rock" soundtrack
Space and Beyond (Disk 1)
Days of Future Passed (The Moody Blues)
Robert Miles - Dreamland
"Braveheart" soundtrack
"Titanic" soundtrack

And various pieces by:

Smetana, Dvorak, Rachmaninoff, Holst, Mussorgsky, and John Williams.

I've seen the Maggie fanatics on some of the audio newsgroups and figgured "yeah, yeah," but I guess I'm a convert now. My old speakers had just died after 20 years and was planning on being frugal and picking up a set of B&W 603's. So, I wandered into the store and wound up with a pair of these after auditioning Boston's VR-970s, B&W's 300 and 600 lines as well as the CDM-1, Infinity Delta's, Polk's RT series and several other's in the < $1,000.00 range. Some pretty good speakers there but none quite touched the Maggies. Wished I could have afforded the 1.6's but after hooking these up to my Yammie RX-V995, I find myself wishing I could afford another pair for the rear's. Don't know how they perform for HT yet since I haven't been able to stop playing my CD and LP collection for the last 5 hours. Room placement is a bit critical but once you get them set... they vanish and you find yourself too busy listening to the music to be able to listen to the speakers. They're picky about where you put them and the bass doesn't go really deep so they probably aren't the best for difficult rooms or for heavy metal/head-banger freaks (unless used with a sub woofer), but they're great for classical, folk, Celtic, and even punk, Enigma (love their 2nd and 3rd CDs... eerie with the sub turned on), Indian classical, anime soundtracks, jazz and most of the things I usually listen to. Maybe I'll even get around to trying them out for DVD in a few days if I can manage to turn the CD player off ;) Was a bit worried my 995 might have trouble driving these rather insensitive 4 ohm jobs but they easily reached 90db, which is 10-20 db louder than I usually listen anyway (the dealer mentioned that they tend to make a few amps unstable and mentioned a couple of Denon's they'd had trouble running them with, but my Yammie, and the Rotel they had them hooked to in the store, had no problems... probably best to check it out before you buy). Natch, there are better speakers out there but for the price (and making me spend twice as much as I wanted to), I'll have to give them 5 stars.

open airy realistic sound

hard to tune in

Once I got these puppies tuned in they were a dream.Its amazing what an inch can do for these things.It was to the point where I was ready to send them back after screwing with them for 2 days.The high end was tearing my face off.I tried baffling them which took away the high end.Finally I started inching them away from the wall & a whole new world opened up for me.They were airy & very lifelike.If theirs a flaw in the recording it'll let you know in a hurry but the detail is wonderful.I'm running them with a Yamaha RV1103(100 watts per) & a Marantz CD67se CD player with Music Fidelity X10-D.SMOOTH!!!!!

Detail, Transparancy, Stage image

Dynamics (only for Rock)

I must agree with other reviewers: these speakers are, once setup correctly and used for the "right" music, perfect. Their dynamics are indeed limited, but used for acoustical music they come very close to perfection.

I played around with the setup for a while and found out that I could widen the narrow hotspot many reviewers are complaining about by just moving the speakers 10cm further apart!
Also the stage image could be manipulated by moving them just an inch. Talking about critical placement! You really need to experiment!
I finally came to a setup with the speakers 0.7m from the rear wall and 1m from the side walls. Space between the speakers is about 2.5-3m. Listening position is 3-3.5m from the speakers. The speakers are a few degrees pointing to the listening position.

I don´t know if the MG12 really needs a powerful and stable amp since I only used them with the Sphinx which has plenty of power.

My set consists of:
Cd player: Sony XA50 ES
Preamp: Sphinx project 2 (modified)
Power amp: 2x Sphinx project 12 mono (250W per channel at 4 ohm)
Interlink: Monster M1000
LS cable: Linn K400

Similar Products Used:

none

big sound as usual by Maggies, upper bass, mid and top is perfect, relatively small

no punch in the low bass

I can best compare it to my older MG1s and IIs Maggies: improved performance in high and mid sound, but bass is certanly not as as good. They miss out on the older Maggies "magic touch" - its more clinical and extremely accurate and neutral. Dispersion has also been improved a lot. However, placement seems to be a lot more critical - indeed very critical. MG12s needs power to rock the boat, and may need a SUB anyway.

EQC used: Music Fidelity X-A1 + X-A50, And the X-Ray CD player

Similar Products Used:

Magnepan MG1s and MGIIs