Instruction manual

WWW.THEABSOLUTESOUND.COM 65
In a sense, to roll out an old
cliché,I’m putting the cart before the
h o rse in describing some of t h e
changes that Winey has made to the
20s. These changes were perfectly
obvious from the outset in my listen-
ing sessions.
The most significant one, from
both a sonic and dynamic stand-
point, lay in his decision (finally!) to
operate the midrange driver in push-
pull fashion, rather than single-end-
edly. To me, it was a curiosity that he
designed the bass drive to work push-
pull,but did not apply the same prin-
ciple in the critical midrange.
In push-pull operat i o n , he said,h e
got an increase in flux density “wh i ch
b rought the eff i c i e n cy up, and with a
little adjusting, we increased the
s p e a ke r ’s transient cap ab i l i t i e s . I also
t h o u g h t , let us use a little lowe r
c ro s s o ver point (to the bass drive r ) ,
going from 250Hz to 200Hz and fa i r-
ly gra d u a l ly, with a knee under
150Hz in an 18dB-per- o c t ave slope.
This gave us a wider bandwidth in the
m i d ra n g e.” Since there was more fl u x
ava i l abl e, “the midra n ge was more
l i n e a r, with a considerable increase in
dy n a m i c s. The speaker didn’t ‘ p o o p
o u t ’ on loud passage s.”
At the other end of the spectrum,
Winey limited the ribbon tweeter’s
re s p o n s e, c rossing over at 3kHz,
using a quasi 12dB-per-octave slope
(it drops off at 6dB the first octave
and then 12dB below that point). In
olden Maggie designs, Winey would
sometimes run the tweeter dow n
close to the 1kHz point, with the
result of many a burned-out ribbon.
Now, he says, the ribbon is much the
more foolproof.
For the moment, one more
p o i n t : I asked wh at happened to the
sound of the tweeter since the 7kHz
shimmer was go n e. Wi n ey said that
t h at resonance was caused by a
mounting pro bl e m . He modified the
mounting design and the sonic ab e r-
ration disap p e a re d .
I am not certain which of the
design changes he described would
account for the improvement we
heard in the Point One’s imaging
d ep i c t i o n . With many a Magg i e
design, including that of the original
2 0 , the speake rs would cre ate a
soundstage that would place near-
field instrumental images in places
where they didn’t belong (and where
no other speaker system did). With
the Point Ones, the near-field images
are where they are supposed to be on
the orchestral soundstage.
Th at said, at least up until this
point in my eva l u at i o n s, the Magg i e s
( d rapes closed) have not re c re ated a
d e ep s o u n d i n g f i e l d . L a ye r ed depth I
h ave not yet ach i e ve d ,nor that sense of
the volume of a soundspace. C a n t i n g
the speake rs, as Mag n epan sugge s t s ,
m ay have played a role in this spat i a l
p e c u l i a r i t y : In my ex p e r i e n c e, t o e-
ing speake rs inwa rd compro m i s e s
the width of the stage, but not the
d ep t h . So this is another of the my s-
teries I have not been able to
re s o l ve, along with that of t h e
anomalies with some component
combos in the cro s s over reg i o n .
So wh e re does that leave us?
We l l , it leaves this writer cert a i n
t h at even if the Point One is touchy
about the things behind it in the ch a i n
and even if t h e re are some as yet unre-
s o l ved spatial anomalies in the sound-
f i e l d ,it stands alone among contempo-
ra ry speaker design.
Ten ye a rs ago,the original MG-20
sold for $8,600, wh i c h we thought as
close to a steal as you could get short
o f bu rgl a ry. To d ay ’ s Point One sells
for just $4,000 more and is far superi-
or sonically to the impre s s ive original.
It is, in short , the best wo r k that
designer Wi n e y has done in his 30 or
so ye a rs at the drafting board . H e
h i m s e l f s ay s : “ N ow, I don’t know why
it took me 30 ye a rs to do certain things
I did here. Th at ’ s part of the art of i t ;
it isn’t all science you know. You learn
things that are n’t in the books.”
The first thing the experienced lis-
tener is going to note upon listening to
the Point One is its re m a rk able fre e d o m
f r om the colorations I sum up as “ch a r-
a c t e r.” Wh i ch is to say the speaker is
neither wa rm nor cold, yin nor ya n g,
d ry not we t .N ow,these are some of t h e
same wo r ds I used to describe the orig-
inal MG-20 back then and it was the
i m p r ession I took away with me and it
was the way I have re m e m b e red the
s p e a k er over the ye a r s. But in this case,
the purity and freedom from any dis-
c e rn i b le ch a racter has been pushed fo r-
wa rd even furt h e r.It wa s ,we might say,
the most uncolored speaker of its day,
t h at being a day when speaker col-
o rations we r e more re a d i l y perc e ive d .
I f you listened to the original ove r
t i m e ,you could have detected the node
in the ribbon twe e t e rs re s p o n s e , yo u
would have become awa re of a dis-
c o n t i n uity in sound between the purity
and tra n s p a re n cy of the top octave s
and the slightly veiled, somewhat
cl o u d e d , and slower midra n ge, a l o n g
with a less than perfect art i c u l a tion of
the lower midra n g e fundamentals.
So how does one, an audio writer
for instance, come to grips with and
describe even less of wh at alre a d y wa s
in short supply?
Part II will run in an upcoming issue.
M A N U F A C T U R E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Magnepan, Inc.
1645 Ninth Street
White Bear Lake, Minnesota 55110
Phone: [phone]
www.magnepan.com
Warranty: limited three years to original
owner, extendable to five years
Price: $11,500/light oak; $12,000/cherry
S P E C S
Frequency response: 25Hz–40kHz +/-3dB
Recommended power: 100–250 watts
Sensitivity: 85dB/500Hz/2.83v
Impedance: 4 ohms
Dimensions: 29 x 79 x 2.062 inches
h p ’ s w o r k s h o p