I've had the MMGs for three weeks now, so I'm not quite half-way through the trial period Magneplaner allows. These baby Maggies are very impressive. With my mid-fi system, (Adcom GFP5300 amp with 125 w/ch into 4 ohm loads, Adcom GFP555II preamp, Denon DP 1250 turntable with a Grace tonearm and Ortofon cartridge, and an 11 year old, soon-to-be-replaced magnavox cd player), I'm hearing midrange and treble details in familiar recordings that I never heard with my 18 year old DCM Timewindows. But I found that in my listening room I had to insert the 1 ohm resistor into each speaker to tone down their overall brightness. I tried the 2 ohm resistor, but that dulled them too much, so I guess that there is no such thing as perfect, at least in this particular room. Bass, when present on the recording, is tight, clean and reasonably deep, but not gut-thumping. I have the MMGs positioned 6 feet apart, 3 feet out from the rear wall, pointed straight into the room, without any toe-in toward my listening position 11 feet away. That is the best placement I've found so far; toeing them in toward my listening chair made the the highs sound beamy. Both male and female voices are reproduced wonderfully; no coloration at all.
So what are the MMGs weaknesses? To my ears, there are several. 1) As noted above, they exhibit a slight bias toward the upper midrange/treble at the expense of the lower frequencies, at least in my listening room. 2) Complex music gets just a bit muddy, as if the speaker's ability to resolve difficult, information-laden waveforms was being overtaxed. 3) The soundstage lacks depth, which I found surprising given what is written in many of the reviews found below. 4) The lack of gut-thumping bass, as noted above. 5) They are very inefficient. I can drive the MMGs cleanly to fairly loud levels, but I wish I had another 100 w/ch or so to really let them open up and sing.

So...am I going to keep them? Well, yes. Unless, of course, I can persuade She Who Must Be Obeyed to allow me to spend almost twice as much on a pair of Magneplaner 12QRs.

If ratings were based on performance alone, I would give the MMGs only 4 stars. But in the real world, I rate on the basis of the tradeoff between price and performance. And on that basis, the MMGs truly rate 5 stars. To my ears, you would have to spend at least twice as much to get any meaningful overall improvement.

If you're in the speaker market, do yourself a favor: take Magneplaner up on its 60 day trial offer and audition the MMGs. I think you will find yourself very surprised.

To say I was impressed by these speakers is an understatement, and had quite high expectations when I ordered them based on the reviews I read here. They've been in my possession for about two weeks now, and I can't stop listening to them. They are unbelievably detailed, articulate and surprisingly strong in the bass. Kick drums have a very solid punch and attack. But where these speakers shine are with vocals and acoustic music. Acoustic guitar sounds amazingly lifelike, and most other music is portrayed with a real sense of space and depth. Good recordings of orchestral music are reproduced with excellent imaging and the size of the speakers re-create the full width and breadth of the orchestra's size. But the clincher is my wife, an absolute non-audiophile and skeptic extraordinaire, loves these speakers. She was actually showing them off to her friends the other night!

I have had the mmg's for about a week now, and I can only say that this is the best purchase I have made yet in building my sound system. The way I had to set them up is worse than ideal. Due to a large 3-piece wall unit, I had to position the speakers almost 11 feet apart, and at a distance of only 10 feet from the seating location. The seperation and soundstage just wasn't happening, so I experimented with toeing them in at small increments. Eventually it magically happened, the soundstage opened up tremendously, and the seperation was more than acceptable. I upgraded from a pair of B&W 600 i-series which I paid almost $450 for nearly 4 years ago, and the difference is incredible. It's almost like having the performance live in your listening room. I have never experienced detail at this level from a speaker at this price, and can only imagine what the 1.6Qrs sound like. Small details like the sound of air passing over the reeds of a sax is breathtaking. I am hearing sounds on cd's that I have had for years that I have never heard before. I highly reccommend the MMG's to anyone interested in trying a panel speaker.
System:
Carver AV705X
Carver A220
B&K Reference 20 pre/pro
Yamaha DVD700
B&W Center Channel
B&W 600 i-series for surround channels
DBX 15" subwoofer. (Used mostly for home theater)

After much research and debate, I finally ordered the MMG's. They arrived just 4 days after I ordered them. First of all, the fit and finish of these babies is way above what you should expect at this price. The real wood trim looks nicer than the trim on my Maggie 2.5R's that I just sold. Some background. I have owned the Tympani 1D, MGII, MGI, and most recently the MG 2.5R. I thought I would never leave the 2.5R's due to the large soundstage and 40-inch true ribbon. However, in my current listening room (living room) the large 2.5's blocked my windows. The WAF forced the 2.5R's to go. But if I traded the 2.5R's for the MMG's what about that huge soundstage and ultra-clean ribbon, would I miss these? Well, I am very happy to report that in my system (bi-amped with subs) I am thrilled with the MMGs even after living with the 2.5R's for years. The soundstage size is about 85%, not a major difference. There is slightly less air in the extreme top end, but this is minor. You do lose some of the highs when moving from a seated to standing position but who listens critically standing up anyway? These do not suffer the extreme beaming effect that other ribbons and electrostatics do. They do run out of resolution before my old 2.5's did but they still play plenty loud for me. The upside is that the midrange is superior to the old 2.5R's. I would guess that Magnepan has made significant improvements to the planer driver technology over the last several years. The QR sounds pretty close the the true ribbon drivers too. Some of the reviews on this site warn that you need a really fast sub to properly integrate with these speakers. This may be true but my home-made 12-inch subs blend seamlessly because (in my opinion) they are crossed over at 65 Hz (24 db/octave). It is this low crossover point and fast slope that allows the drivers to blend well. I may put the MMGs on stands or hang from the ceiling to raise the soundstage, that might improve things further.
In summary, these speakers get 4 stars due to their lack of extreme low bass, 5 stars if you use them with a subwoofer. And 5 stars for absolute value. No other speaker under $1K can touch these for the illusion of live music.

I got the MMGs a couple of weeks ago. No need to repeat what has already been said below. On the first day that I received them, I decided that I would probably never buy another brand of speaker. When putting on different CDs to try the new sound, I finally found myself getting into the music - no more wondering how to make it better. The vocals may be just a bit dim, but clear - definitely better. These replaced B&W DM 310s. I don't mind trading depth in the imaging for a much more realistic sound in every other way. All types of music are enjoyable. I no longer need to look for audiophile CDs - even regular ones sound great now like early '70s Elton John. A symphony sounds like a symphony now. They work for Metal and everything else.Equipment: NAD 314 int. amp (it has been as loud as I need so far), NAD 512 CD player, DH Labs interconnects both places, Original Monster Cable speaker cables which will soon be replaced w/ DH Labs or Nordost just to make sure that the Monster cable is not interfering w/ the sound like my old Monster interlink 400s did.

Three months i have my MMG. They sound better and better. In fact, the sound is truely high-end, the sound you can expect from far more expensive speakers. Dynamic is beautiful, very tiny details are brought under the sunlight and, except for very deep basses, they play exactly as the amplifier drives them (i have a Wadia 6 + Aragon 4004 MKII). I have added Magan Cables, definitely the most natural cables around. A marriage made in heaven for Instrumental Music.Waiting for my Townshend Amp-Stand....

I have what I thought was a "difficult" room...you know-the kind wherein youcan't get the sound right no matter what you do. I've been thru Spica TC-50's,
Vandersteen 2ce's, NHT 1.3A's, and Epos ES-11's. All good speakers, all just
didn't sound "right", despite all their audiophile approved attributes. So I
started thinking...maybe it's the WAY these speakers are loading/exciting the
room that's wrong.Dynamic speakers, trying to emulate a point source, tend to
radiate outwards in an amorphous blob-very difficult to control. Planars, like
the MMG, radiate in a fairly coherent wave-relatively little radiation off to
the sides, where early reflections from a "difficult" room tend to confuse things. To make a long story short, YES, YES, YES!
When I dropped the needle on Brahms 4th, the sound of the massed strings
gave me lump in my throat. Gone...just gone, were all the colorations and distortions I'd thought were just part and parcel of the playback process. I'd
heard treble like this, but only in expensive electrostats, driven by expensive
tube amps...You mean I can have sound like THIS, for $500.00/?!! Then I actually
got angry, at all the years I've wasted, all the money, all the time, when I just could have had these. I'd heard of Magnepan, of course. But everyone "knows" that Maggies are expensive, dominate the room, need lots of expensive
power, and are touchy to set up. Well, I'm here to tell you that THESE Maggies
aren't expensive, don't dominate the room, do well with any medium power amp,
and are no more difficult to setup than any dynamic speaker I've owned-just
different. They ended up imaging and sounding the best in the same place all my
other speakers did, ironically, only without their problems. Gone is the sense
of strain with dynamic peaks-my system no longer "shouts" at me. Gone is the sense that "Something's not right-I need more bass, I need more imaging, I need
more..."-fill in the blank. I think our minds glom onto these things when we know that there's something fundamentally not right, but we don't know what it is, so we focus on these things instead.I'm having all kinds of musical detail
and sense GENTLY revealed to me by these little wonders that I had no idea were
there. Sure, I could still use more bass, more slam, more vividness but you know
what? I don't care. My system has a rightness I've strived for all these years-all it needed was these little puppies. Jim Winey is a genius, and if this ever
catches on (God, I hope so), it just might get the highend focus back on music
again. Listen-this is the SAFEST $500.00 you'll ever spend...learn from my
mistakes!

not for many years have i just enjoyed listening to the music as i have since i bought these speakers.gone are the days when i had to sit in the sweet spot not daring to move my head.think about it , whens the last time you went to a club and sat exactly in the middle of the stage exactly 10 feet from the stage not moving for fear the image would deteriorate.my point? with these speakers i truly just sit back and enjoy the music.sometimes i even sit off to the sides of the room ,can you imagin that? seriously if your looking for a truly fun listening experience try these you'll love them.associated equipment is as follows,adcom gfp750 PREAMP,adcom 555II poweramp,rotel 971 cd player,kimbercable throughout.

For most of us it is a myth to contend that these speakers 1) demand careful placement, 2) require expensive amplification and 3) lack low-end production. Does the sound from these speakers vary with placement? Yes, but even terrible placement generally results a wonderful listening experience. (Perhaps if you put them in a cardboard box, the imaging and clarity would be lost.) Not withstanding the Magnepan warning about ensuring compatibility with 4 ohm loads, the MMGs are extremely forgiving of source. They sound great with every mid-fi receiver I’ve tried. An old 60 wpc Sansui receiver easily produces sufficient volume at about 30% gain in a 12 by 14 room. Okay, so a subwoofer might provide more rumble for the few sounds my ears can still detect below 50 Hz. But I'd still like to believe that there are listeners in the world who appreciate accurate bass - not the junk that makes the teenager’s car trunk waggle. I have never heard bass that is cleaner or crisper than what emanates from these speakers.
The most amazing thing about the MMGs is their ability to make listening so unequivocally pleasant. Old acoustic guitar, symphonic, folk, and jazz CDs provide spectacular new experiences, and rock music sounds at least as good as on any other similarly-priced speakers I’ve encountered. The final proof of pleasant listening comes from my wife, who normally doesn’t care about differences in sound equipment, and my 17-yr-old son, who typically prefers tooth-rattling volume to detailed sound. Neither of them can stop listening to the Maggies.

I know, I know...only one review. Consider this brief note an update of my review posted below. After a few more weeks break in, these things have gottenso much better that it demands an update. The amount, and especially the quality
of bass coming from these things is nothing short of ASTOUNDING!! Subwoofers?
We don't NEED no stinkin' subwoofers! I wouldn't dream of mucking 'em up with one. They now put out more bass in absolute terms, and especially a lot higher
quality bass, than my Vandersteen 2ce's did, which were my benchmark for quality bass in an affordable speaker. I think something else is going on besides just the speakers breaking in, which very obviously happened. I think it
takes awhile for your brain/ear system to recognize what's happened-the bass is
there, but with absolutely no cabinet resonances of any kind, you think something's missing. Well, something IS missing, and it's WONDERFUL-you've just
ditched a whole bunch of coloration, and it takes awhile to adjust. It's NOT TRUE that Maggies are light on bass-you just have to set 'em up right...it's there, in full measure, and higher quality than any dynamic speaker anywhere near the price. These things are the steal of the century, and I don't know why Sam Tellig hasn't written about them. Probably because if he did, and these caught on, there'd be no need for things like Stereophile anymore-we'd all be too busy just listening to the music. Terrifying thought!