The same held true for Blossom Dearie’s singularly girlish voice on "At Last" from the CD reissue of her self-titled 1959  album [Verve 837 934-2], confirming the "reach out and touch it" quality of these speakers, leaving her airy preciousness intact. As song after song unfolded, I felt transported to an intimate supper club in Manhattan where fine china and polished silver flatware sat on white linen tablecloths. In contrast, and moving forward nearly 40 years, the achingly idiosyncratic voice of Mary Margaret O’Hara was captured in all its unsettling purity on her original song "Dark Dear Heart" from the album Puerto Angel by The Henrys [Bar/None Records AHAON-079-2]. The synergy between the quality of the recording and the MMGi's was such that her image was projected just a few feet in front of my nose, creating a quite involving and satisfying listen.

It has been said that the inherent design of planar speakers places them at a disadvantage when it comes to dynamic slam and presence. Granted, as opposed to head-bangers who routinely play and enjoy their AC/DC and Metallic albums at volumes well past 12:00 and might prefer more testosterone-infused speakers, I found the Maggies perfectly suitable for my listening tastes and not lacking one iota of excitement. During my listening, I never felt the urge to place the resistors in the signal path to tame the treble -- I welcomed the crystal clarity of the highs and did not at all find them overpowering.

Although I was not disappointed with the bass of the MMGi's, I was nonetheless curious to hear what my modest Pioneer SW-8MK2 subwoofer might add (or subtract) from the sound. After making a few connections and adjustments to crossover points, I gave a listen. What I heard made me even more enthusiastic about the Maggies. With the simple addition of a subwoofer costing a hundred dollars and change, the system was transformed into something closer to a truly full-range music reproducer. The low, low bass only implied before the addition of the sub was now explicitly stated. Granted, even though the lowest bass did not have the panache embodied in subs costing much more, extracting the lowest synthesizer notes from electronic music was now possible.

For example, I could easily hear the plodding, stomach-churning bass synth on the title song from SBTRKT’s 2014 two-record set Wonder Where We Land [Young Turks YTLP120X] and the insistent bass on "The Light" from that album’s second side. Similarly, the subterranean pulse propelling the song "Raphael" from Torch Song’s 1995 CD Toward the Unknown Region [N-Gram 4509 98969 2] took on an organic life of its own as it pressurized my listening room. I started grinning as I played through a handful of randomly chosen record LPs and CDs. Here, for a price considerably under a grand, was a speaker system that was kicking butt and taking names. At the sane listening levels I embrace, I couldn’t have been a happier listener.

But with my pair of SMGa's within easy reach, I couldn’t resist the temptation to compare them to the MMGi's. Placed where the MMGi's had been, the SMGa's were not upstaged by their newer brethren -- a factor lending validity to Jim Winey’s initial vision. In fact, I was truly impressed by just how similar the elderly Magnepans sounded to the MMGi's, especially in terms to their overall transparency and resolution. No detail of the presentation went unnoticed, a characteristic of the sound distracting not in the least from the music’s emotional impact. I noticed that the SMGa's were slightly less sensitive than the MMGi's, requiring a higher setting of the volume control. They also seemed to reduce the depth of the soundstage, though the width remained the same, with sounds coming from well beyond the speakers’ outer frames on some recordings.

The vintage Maggies did have a less refined top end with a noticeable edge to the upper mid-treble. With certain recordings, this made listening a bit more exciting but the overall sound less neutral. Their bass was also less well-defined and coherent, having less impact, extension and pace than that of their newer cousins. And yet, despite the shortcomings of the aging Maggies, the rendering of Heidi Happy’s vocals and Til Brönner’s horns on Yello’s Touch Yello was to die for. There was real magic in the vintage panels, a quality retained, and improved upon, in the current iteration. Ultimately though, even though the sound of the two generations of loudspeakers seemed cut from the same cloth, I preferred the spectral balance of the MMGi's to that of their predecessors, the SMGa's lacking the finesse of the newer speakers.

A final test of the MMGi's came when I sought to re-create an event recently experienced in New York City. A month before this review was submitted, my significant other and I were treated to the Joe Lovano Nonet performing just a few feet from our ears in the claustrophobic cellar of Max Gordon’s iconic Village Vanguard. With ten musicians -- five saxes (including the leader), trumpet, trombone and rhythm cutting loose on tunes inspired by the late, great Tadd Dameron, the sound came close to overpowering the room. It was hair-raising, but in a good way. Nothing went unheard, including the occasional subway train.

How close could the MMGi's come to bringing us back to that evening? How much suspension of disbelief would be required to bring satisfaction? I put the Joe Lovano Nonet 52nd Street Themes [Blue Note Records 7243 4 96667 2 6] into the drawer of the Sony player, queued up "If You Could See Me Now" (heard live that night at the Vanguard) and hit Play. Wow! The visceral sound of this live-to-two-track, all-analog recording hit me right in the gut. It was crisp and tight, with scads of texture. The more I advanced the volume control, the closer I got to that point where wildest expectations were met. I was hesitant to go much beyond 12:00 with the volume knob -- a setting at which sound levels approached 105dB -- fearing speaker damage. I was grinning from ear to ear, however, when my partner shouted from another room, "Didn’t we hear that song in New York? It sounds like we’re still in the club." Enough said.

It seems odd that speakers selling for so little can sound so good. Hell, you can spend considerably more than the asking price of a pair of MMGi's for a record weight! I simply cannot fault these speakers. Over the several months I listened to them, they brought me continuing pleasure with a wide variety of music drawn from various sources and formats. As each LP, CD or file played, the consistent "thereness" of the sound compelled me to listen all the way through before playing another LP, CD or file. There’s a reach-out-and-touch-it immediacy to the sound that I found captivating. On certain recordings, the sense of sound emerging as an entity in three-dimensional space around, above and between the speakers was sometimes unsettling. And not once did I feel deprived of any of the visceral power of the music.

The single best word I can use to describe the sound of the MMGi's is unencumbered, although clear, free and open fit too. In addition, their crystalline treble and lack of bass overhang contributed heavily to the pacing of the music. Few speakers in my experience possess this characteristic, and none at this price. You’d have to spend four to five times this amount to even begin to approach the MMGi's sound. Add a modest subwoofer to the mix and be prepared to be amazed. My only complaint is that I can’t lay record jackets on top of the MMGi, as I can on conventional box loudspeakers, but that's a very small price to pay for such sonic splendor.

Kudos to Magnepan for delivering the MMGi into a market rife with upward-spiraling costs and offering an impossibly high-value product in the process. With Magnepan’s liberal 60-day home-trial policy, you’d be doing yourself a huge disservice by not giving the MMGi's a listen.

Price: $650 per pair.
Warranty: Three years parts and labor; 60-day money-back trial period.

Magnepan
1645 Ninth Street
White Bear Lake, MN 55110
(651) 426-1645
www.magnepan.com

Associated Equipment

© www.theaudiobeat.com