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Magneplanar MG 1.6

Maggie, music and me

By Craig Fenemor

July 2004

Magneplanar MG 1.6 loudspeakers. $4300

Let's cut to the chase. I don't know of any other product at anywhere near this price that gives such a big glimpse of the high end as the Magneplanar 1.6 quasi ribbon speaker.

Magneplaner theory 101

Required reading at this point is Michael Jones review of the 1.6's little brother, the MG12. The same negatives apply to the 1.6 as to their little brother - they're big and dominating, they need space around them due to their dipole radiation, and with a 4 ohm resistive load and 86db sensitivity they have a high tolerance level for power. Some use less than my 225, 4 ohm watts, most use more. Simply put, audition these speakers with your amp before buying.

The hi-fi stuff

Let's get past this quickly. The tops, while slightly soft are as grainless as you're going to find short of spending big money. The mids are smooth and seductive treating vocals with particular love and care. The bass (down to 40Hz in my room) is nothing short of spectacular, capturing all the subtleties of technique and texture in a way that very few box speakers at any price can.

The imaging and soundstaging are either realistic or merely good depending on your perspective. (I'll expand on this later.) Detail wise and dynamically they're great although they do seem to need a bit of welly to really come alive. All in all you can put a tick in most of your hi-fi boxes and then move on to…

The important stuff

All of the above is well and good but there're a number of speakers than can do most or all of the hi-fi things mentioned, so why do I consider the 1.6 to be any different? Because they allow me to forget hi-fi and simply enjoy listening to music.

Let's start with coherence. The blending of bass, mids and tops is stunningly well achieved perhaps due to the use of Mylar for both drivers. This ensures that you have a consistent sonic fingerprint from top to bottom. The 600Hz crossover point means that any associated distortions are kept out of the most sensitive frequency range. To me the results of all this are best evidenced listening to piano. Ever noticed how on many box speakers the character of a piano isn't the same at the top, middle and bottom of it's range? On Maggies pianos retain the same tone, dynamics and scale no matter which note is played - that's coherence.

Another important aspect to the sound is the imaging and soundstaging. My Epos M15's are astounding in the usual hi-fi sense with very precise, sharply defined images. What the Maggies do is to somewhat blur the edges of each instrument, merging the soundfields slightly so that although you know where the bass player is as opposed to the drummer, they're not always distinct entities. In real life instruments aren't demarcated pools of music, it all mingles and joins together, presenting you with the unified sound of people playing together. This is what you get with the Maggies.

Now lets look at size and scale. The 1.6's create images that are bigger and more lifelike than most speakers, making the images of many boxes seem more like cardboard cutouts. Add to this the ability for the music to swell when required - not just get louder, it gets bigger as well - and what you're left with sounds eerily like music.

So we've got seamlessly coherent top to bottom performance, very good detail and dynamics, lifelike imaging, and wonderful size and scale. Why doesn’t everybody have them? As stated earlier they need lots of space, plenty of good current and an understanding significant other. (I'd sooner aesthetically fight with their size than sonically fight with a box.) Also some argue that Maggies aren't the best rock speaker but like anything in hi-fi I think you should try them and check that out for yourself. 

One plus one equals five??

Add all the above pluses together and I believe you end up with more than the not inconsiderable sum of the parts. If you can meet the physical requirements then these could well be your ticket off the upgrade treadmill. I can't urge you strongly enough to have a listen to the 1.6's, or any in the Magneplanar range as they all share similar attributes to a greater or lesser degree. The Magneplanar 1.6 is a sensational speaker and at $4300 one of the great bargains in hi-fi. Highly recommended.

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