It is time to give this set of "entry" Maggie's their due. Simply put they are great when set up correctly. It takes some time to get there, but when you get there it is like being there. They are a great set of speakers that will reveal all the strength and weaknesses of your system. They sound best when straight up and on stands other the what Magnepan ships them with. I got mine on ebay from a seller who goes by cmz48045. Highly recommended. The speakers need to be toed in about 30 degrees to sound simply blissful. Sine I listen in a small room they are just the right size, no more is needed. I did add a Polk sub to the set up. Depending on the recording I can take or leave it. They are powered by a Rotel rb 981 with rc 995 pre. The source is either a modified Rega rp 3, feed through a Bellari phono amp or an Onkyo DX 7555 CD player. I have lived with these for 5 years of joy - still in heaven...

I have had MMG’s for almost 2 years; I did finely put a 2 ohm resister in, but used 12 watt Mills ones I had around. For my room these improved the overall sound - balancing them. With these speakers you could not ask for better sounding ones at their price or any reasonable price, the sound does not improve that much by spending 4 or 5x more with dynamic drivers. If you are not getting the best from the MMG’s then it is your electronics or source material. These speakers are so detailed you can hear the difference in different record pressing of the same record title. I bought my MMG’s from an audio store, I listened to them first, and the 12’s; driven by 5-figure Audio Research electronics with a 4–figure CD player and then some upper end VPI turntable with some really expensive cartridge. A friend and I spend three hours listening with the store owner - great store very old school no TV’s in sight, records lining the walls. I felt guilty spending so much time and then buying the cheapest thing in the store. On the components used for evaluation the interconnect cables cost more than these speakers. My “sweet spot” is about 6’ wide. The speakers have a slight toe-in, maybe 1” across their face, and are 26” out from the wall at the top, up on the rear “stands”.
Amplifiers used since I have owned them;
First was an NAD T773 7.2 Surround receiver, 110 watts in surround and 145 watts in 2 channel. Never had any problems with power and volume; it was a great combination. What I didn’t like was the analog side of the NAD. Sales hype said it could do both…not!
Second Rotel RC-1070 and RB-1050 (70 watts per channel), and on some music the 1050’s peak light would come on briefly. The sound was so clean that I would turn it up running out of power. Keep in mind this would only happen on dynamic peaks in the source, and the 4BX in the system didn’t help. MMG’s were very loud, well beyond normal listening level; you could not talk over them at this volume level. One could live with this level of power for the MMG’s (Room 15 x 16 x 8’, heavy carpet).
Third : switched the Rotel for another amp I have an Adcom 5400 (200watts 4 ohms: MOSFET transistors) did not like the Adcom with the MMG’s, lack of dynamics, mono tone sound. When I had the Adcom on my Infinity RS-IIIB’s would knock one out of the room with the power and punch of the dynamics; I’m not sure why this didn’t work with the MMGs.
Fourth and current: The RB-1050 was replaced with an Emotiva XPR-2 with 500 watts per channel at 4 ohms, (also a bi-polar transistor design amp 12 transistors per channel). The sound is fantastic, nuances, and dynamics are incredible! No RED lights. The preamp is still the RC-1070 Rotel and a dbx 4BX processor.
Source equipment:
• CD player: Tascam CD-RW900SL
• Turntable: Project Expression Classic with a Denon DL-110 cartridge, a DL-301mkII in the box, Project Phono Box SE for the low output 301.
• Tape: Nakamichi LX-3, Akai GX-220D; Pioneer RT-701 Reel to Reel with outboard dbx.
As far as subs go using a pair of Martin Logan Dynamo 300’s down firing (8” woofers; $125.00 each on sale at Amazon) set-up in a ¼ wave spacing, behind and slightly to the left of the MMG’s, 180° out-of –phase, and cross-over at 50Hz then volume matched (separately) to the MMG’s SPL (86db i.e. 2watts). Larger diameter subs are too slow to keep up with the MMG’s. The large subs are meant for home theater where slow, heavy, room shaking, and making distortion from huge cone travels makes the LFE things blowing –up louder - good for movie in poor taste for music. The ML’s only go down to 32 Hz this gets all of the undertones in the music.
If you have good electronics or going to get what they need, buy a set you can’t go wrong. More bottom end, look at an 8” or smaller sub(s). Magnapan’s bass panels maybe good but I’ve already spend my money.

Short review: Incredible speakers.

Longer review: Incredible speakers, so good for classical and easy listening music you won't even miss the bass.

Conventional speakers tire me after an hour or so. Not these Magnepans. Absolutely incredible, and that for $600. Very well made and taking up very little space. The sound quality is just incredible.

This is a fantastic speaker. It has a character that is open and revealing. It is best used in good recordings. I am extremely satisfied with recreation of drums, guitars, vocals and more intimate types of recorded music. I think dynamic speakers do a better job with complex and/or highly compressed music - the speakers seem very capable even with my NAD 50 watt/ch integrated amp. I am sure more power would improve them, but they have more than sufficient loudness. I would say they are comparable to speakers in the $1500 - $3000 range and clearly superior to anything approaching their $600 price.

Still have these puppies. They keep getting better with better equipment. Added tubes some moons ago. Increased the 'staging' and decay, etc. All that good tube stuff. Of course that was in the pre-amp. Power amp, 500wpc emotiva. Another great match, IMO. Been tweaking the digital front end. These suckers are RESOLVING. GIGO. The bass is a challenging blend. You have to really keep the sub crossed over LOW, although the MMG's do need punch in the 30-40hz range. So bottom line is, good power for the low end is essential. High efficiency drivers need not apply. That woofer needs good control and good punch.

I have been an audiophile for more than 50 years.

Using the usual jargon to describe this loudspeaker is superfluous, this loudspeaker sounds like real music, period.

That's the whole reason for being an audiophile, isn't it? Magnepan got it right, and presented us with the best buy in loudspeaker technology anywhere on the planet.

Yeah, they are a little thin on the last octave of bass. Not to worry, get yourself a pair of good quality sealed subwoofers and don't look back.

The little rascals love power, so I suggest using an amplifier with decent current capacity for the sake of dynamic range. Keep in mind these speakers present a 4 ohm load to your amplifier. For all practical purposes the aforementioned 4 ohms is all but pure resistance at audio frequencies. An power amplifier is quite happy to run into pure resistance as it's job is much easier than running into a varying impedance. Let's hear it for the elegance of simplicity!
The crossover network is minimally invasive by utilizing a first-order configuration (6db per octave) , an inductor for the bass panel and a capacitor for the treble panel. The advantage of a first-order crossover is minimal phase shift. Bottom line, better sound.

In a world of imported products it's hard to find a quality product made in the USA. I'm very happy to know that this loudspeaker is made in the USA in it's entirety.

As for setting up these speakers, common sense prevails. Let them breathe, keep them out from the rear wall by 2 feet if possible. Try to form a listening triangle conformant with your room dimensions and toe them in empirically until you get a consistent 3 dimensional image. The spacial imaging of the MMG's is to die for! You'll bathe in the music and forget that you're listening to loudspeakers.

If you love music and want to hear it as it should be heard, I enthusiastically recommend the Magnepan MMG's.

HI
I have MMG speakers and run it with,McIntosh MC2505 AMP,60W /per ch.
and preamp AR9, CD PAYER McIntosh MVP 861, speakers cable 2,5m-10AWG cooper.
and this speakers, sound amazing !!!No any problem with any type of music ,classic.new age,rock,i do not run SUB-WOOFER!!! i don't need to,i wondering when people have problem with bass,it must be only placement of speakers in the room,
one tip i can gave you is do not stand this speakers up to make 90 angle"in relation with floor!!!because this speakers need to breathe,from the front and back,won't have bass if you stand them strait up, energy from speakers will hit the wall at the back of the speakers at 90"degrees,so you WILL NOT HAVE RETURN WAVES FROM THE BACK,thati s why people cry for bass!!!they need angle which metal stand (comes with speakers)offer to energy to circulate around room,Big Magnepan speakers.YES YOU CAN HAVE IT STRAIT 90' DEGREES,BECAUSE IT HAVE MORE SURFACE OF COMPRESSED AIR,
BUT DO NOT DO THIS TWEAK TO MMG,WON'T WORK!!!BEST YOU CAN DO IS GAVE THEM HEIGHT, 15cm & above.,i have20cm/ 2x wooden blocks,stained with danish oil,with brass legs under wood stand,than on the top of it MMG speakers. have some rubber strip under metal legs of MMG and fix it with 2 screws each leg to the wood stand!!(YOU MUST DRILL THE HOLE IN MMG METAL LEGS/AND PILOT HOLE TO THE WOOD STAND)
second TWEEK you can do it is,,,change in crossover original cheep capacitor, IT IS ONLY ONE!!! with CLARITYCAP,or JANZEN,or MUNDORF,,CAP,change cheep fuses with silver-gold fuse,x2 fuses.leave IRON CORE ALONE!!!won;t change anything,TRUST ME!!
whan you take sock from speaker frame spry some good electrical cleaner and LUBE on the connections wher all wires come under screws!!!and LEAVE ALONE SCREWS.DO NOT UNSCREW IT,BECAUSE UNDERNEATH IS FRAGILE ALUMINUM FOIL FROM TWEETER AND MID-AND BASS,(DO NOT BRAKE IT!!,YOUMUST BUY NEW ONE!!!
THAT IS ALL!! HAVE FUN

You will have a love/hate relationship with these speakers if you choose to buy them. You will be absolutely astounded by the way some music sounds on them and other music will sound completely lifeless. Here's what sounds good: drums, acoustic guitar, chamber music, female vocals (particularly stunning). Here's what doesn't sound good: anything with significant bass, including acoustic bass in jazz, bottom two octaves of piano recordings, tuba and percussion in orchestral recordings. Occasionally, you just hear the bassist play a descending line and it completely disappears. Likewise, frequently the left hand of the piano lacks depth. Orchestral recordings The two most egregious genres that I've tried on these speakers are reggae and psybient. You might as well listen to this kind of music through two cans and a string. People say that these are the best speakers under $1000 and I suspect that this is probably true in some respects, but you have to consider the cost of the amplification that is required to drive these speakers adequately, which is quite a bit greater than many comparably-priced speakers. If you like to listen to anything with bass, including orchestral music, jazz, or particularly organ music, you will need to buy a subwoofer, so plan on another grand disappearing right there. By the time you're done buying a high-powered stero amp and a powered subwoofer, it might have been a much better value to buy a pair of full-range floorstanders.

Well George you call yourself an audiophile, i know no other speaker that will give you so much for $600.00, what do you expect for that kind of money ????? the orchestra in your living room come on be serious, $600.00 will get you a few reasonable power cords, you are expecting WAY to much for $600.00, today good speakers below 5k are very rare. Mr.A, info@magnepan.com mr goldberg or silverberg

PS: George Goldberg a AudioPhile

Well George you call yourself an audiophile, i know no other speaker that will give you so much for $600.00, what do you expect for that kind of money ????? the orchestra in your living room come on be serious, $600.00 will get you a few reasonable power cords, you are expecting WAY to much for $600.00, today good speakers below 5k are very rare. Mr.A