Fooled Ya!

CES 2009

By John Atkinson • Posted: Jan 13, 2009

When I went into the Magnepan room at T.H.E. Show, the speakers were hidden behind a curtain. Magnepan's Wendell Diller ushered me into the sweet spot and started playing some sounds on the all-Bryston front-end: BCD-1 CD player (which LKG raves about in our February 2009 issue), BP-26 preamp, and a pair of 7B-SST monoblocks.

Hmm. The sound was spacious, with a well-defined soundstage. The balance was a little lightweight, though lows extended down to the mid-bass. The system was having to work hard to produce high spls, as the Bryston amps' red clip LEDs were occasionally flashing on snare-drum transients, but there was no other signs of strain.

Imagine my surprise when Mark Winey drew back the curtain to reveal a pair of these tiny panels that he is holding in the photo. Yes, they were being helped out below 300Hz by a Magnepan subwoofer module, but they were still punching way above their class, Provisionally dubbed the "Mini Maggie," the speaker combines a ribbon tweeter with a small Magneplanar panel. Price is still to be decided, but the Mini would make a superb desktop speaker,

Comments

Submitted by Joel Kozlowski on January 13, 2009 - 2:21pm.

"Way above their class" is an understatement. My friends and I thought this demo was the most impressive and best sounding of the entire show! The fact that the loudspeakers are what you see above is not only impressive, but well neigh unbelivable! Just don't get greedy Wendell. ;)

Submitted by JIMV on January 13, 2009 - 7:26pm.

Price please????

Submitted by Stephen Scharf on January 13, 2009 - 11:39pm.

Very interesting and clever. Maggies provide so much value for money it's nice to know these minis won't cost $3500!John, could you please explain what you meant by the balance being a little lightweight? Did you mean high to low frequency balance or ???Thanks,Stephen

Submitted by John Atkinson on January 14, 2009 - 9:06am.

Ligtweight in the sense of both the bottom octave being a little suppressed and the top two octaves being _very_ slightly too high in level.

Submitted by KBK on January 14, 2009 - 1:19pm.

Ever since the better of the Monsoon Ribbon/sub desktop sets went away..I've been waiting for something better to come along.

Submitted by simon on January 18, 2009 - 7:57pm.

Simply stunning! This is the real musically correct playback system which brings me the joyfulness back to me.I enjoyed the demo with my son (who plays guitar in a band) and hope the pricing is not stunning also! Did a good job, Maggie~

Submitted by Bill Lewis on January 20, 2009 - 7:25pm.

Mini Maggies used as surround speakers maybe??? I have Magneplaner 1.6 QR's as main speakers. Great for 2 channel music listening, but not for HT. I have expensive, but totally different ( and therefore totally mismatched) surround speakers. The lack of timbre is way too much to overcome. The bedroom's little SONY HT in a box sounds better. Any possibilities here?

Submitted by Peter on January 25, 2009 - 10:48pm.

I have MG-10's and would love to see these on my desk but I am thinking that "superb desktop speaker" that requires 900w monoblocks might be a hard sell.

Submitted by Robert on February 19, 2009 - 6:57pm.

I've been following the CES reports on the "Mini Maggies" and have been waiting for a system like this forever. I've had SMGb's in the past as well as Acoustat 2+2's and appreciate these kind of designs. They aren't for everyone and not as flexible for the masses as conventional designs, but provided they're respectfully given the proper environment, truly have unmatched capabilities. With the precedence set by the MMG-W's at a real-world working man's price, this diminutive size should also follow a similar pricing scheme given it's even smaller yet. As the first post said, one can only hope that the manufacturer will be reasonable. Of course that's subjective, isn't it? Since no one has offered any "suggestions" for Magnapan to ponder, I'd seriously consider $500-$600 including subwoofer as reasonable. Any more and I'm afraid it's just another expensive small speaker system with a twist. Will be interesting to see who the intened ma