More CES Excitement: Magnepan Introduces the MG 1.7!

SHOW
by Jonathan Valin
Jan 05, 2010

As curious as I am about the Magico Q5 intro–and I’m deadly curious–I’ve gotta admit that were I restricted to attending just one premier at the upcoming CES, I would have to skip the Q5 in favor of the unveiling of the MG 1.7 from Magnepan–Maggie’s replacement for the speaker I consider to be the single best buy in all of high-end audio, the MG 1.6. Yep, after years and years in the Magnepan line, Maggie’s superb wooden-framed two-way quasi-ribbon/planar-magnetic 1.6 floorstander is being put out to pasture and in its place comes the aluminum-framed entirely quasi-ribbon three-way 1.7 floorstander with improved parts, crossovers, and panels. And all this for a mere $100 more than the classic 1.6. (The 1.7 is priced at $1995 per pair.)

Here is Magnepan’s press release on the MG 1.7:

The First Full-Range Ribbon Speaker from Magnepan

Announcing the successor to the iconic MG1.6 which was selected [by yours truly] as “Best Value in High-End Audio” in the recent Absolute Sound magazine for loudspeakers over $650 per pair. The MG1.7 is a full-range quasi-ribbon loudspeaker that should continue the tradition of awards for Best Value.

The MG 1.7 os a departure from Magnepan’s forty-year history of using planar-magnetic for the bass or lower midrange. The use of quasi-ribbon technology down into the lower midrange and bass will provide a new level of coherence.

The MG 1.7 also boast a quasi-ribbon supertweeter with a wider “sweet spot [taking it] one step closer to the delicacy and detail of Magnepan’s true ribbon tweetern.

A new modern styling with wrap-around aluminum trim on the MG 1.7 is also a departure from Magnepan’s more conservative cosmetics….

I have been told on the best authority (by someone who actually participated in the blind listening sessions where the 1.7’s voicing was compared to that of the 1.6) that the new model is, indeed, all that Magnepan claims it is, setting a new standard in coherence for a quasi-ribbon Maggie, reproducing more detail top-to-bottom, improving low-level resolution and large-scale dynamics, and simply sounding more realistic than the already-quite-realistic-sounding 1.6. Of course, the proof of this pudding will be the listening, and to that end I’ve already put in my bid to be the first to review the 1.7. (I believe I was the first to review the 1.6.) However, when you consider how much of the absolute sound the 1.6 delivered and how much more you may end up getting from the 1.7 for under $2k…well, that’s precisely why the Maggie intro would take precedence over the Magico intro if I could only attend one (which, happily, isnt the case). I can’t afford a Q5, no matter how great it turns out to be; I (and a lot you guys) can afford a 1.7.

Frankly, between Q5s and Maggie 1.7s, this CES is shaping up to be one of the best in years. The MG 1.7 will be shown at T.H.E. Show in the Flamingo Hotel in Conference Room A on the 4th floor.

Tags: MAGNEPAN

By Jonathan Valin

I’ve been a creative writer for most of life. Throughout the 80s and 90s, I wrote eleven novels and many stories—some of which were nominated for (and won) prizes, one of which was made into a not-very-good movie by Paramount, and all of which are still available hardbound and via download on Amazon. At the same time I taught creative writing at a couple of universities and worked brief stints in Hollywood. It looked as if teaching and writing more novels, stories, reviews, and scripts was going to be my life. Then HP called me up out of the blue, and everything changed. I’ve told this story several times, but it’s worth repeating because the second half of my life hinged on it. I’d been an audiophile since I was in my mid-teens, and did all the things a young audiophile did back then, buying what I could afford (mainly on the used market), hanging with audiophile friends almost exclusively, and poring over J. Gordon Holt’s Stereophile and Harry Pearson’s Absolute Sound. Come the early 90s, I took a year and a half off from writing my next novel and, music lover that I was, researched and wrote a book (now out of print) about my favorite classical records on the RCA label. Somehow Harry found out about that book (The RCA Bible), got my phone number (which was unlisted, so to this day I don’t know how he unearthed it), and called. Since I’d been reading him since I was a kid, I was shocked. “I feel like I’m talking to God,” I told him. “No,” said he, in that deep rumbling voice of his, “God is talking to you.” I laughed, of course. But in a way it worked out to be true, since from almost that moment forward I’ve devoted my life to writing about audio and music—first for Harry at TAS, then for Fi (the magazine I founded alongside Wayne Garcia), and in the new millennium at TAS again, when HP hired me back after Fi folded. It’s been an odd and, for the most part, serendipitous career, in which things have simply come my way, like Harry’s phone call, without me planning for them. For better and worse I’ve just gone with them on instinct and my talent to spin words, which is as close to being musical as I come.