Planar Magnetic Loudspeaker Aficionados!

Piega… wow never heard of them… The woofer stack should address the Magnepan problem of rear wave cancellations. Interesting…

Peace
Bruce in Philly

I did a quick search and found a reference to an Absolute Sound article/review which said $195K (in 2014)! I saw something else in Europe that said 97K Euro, but no indication if that included VAT. The box is made of aluminum and they weigh over 400 Kg (wasn’t clear is that was preside or total). I think you can safely say they are a Statement product!

wglenn, care to share details of what you built there?

Fell in love with Maggies at first listen. Had Martin Logan SL3 for a while, but I’m back to two systems with Maggies on both. For whatever reason, Maggies and the PS Audio Stellars work really well together. I’ve got an S300 on one system and am saving up for a pair of M700s for my other maggies.

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It always baffles me that Americans don’t know Piega. The marketing in the US seems to be on the low end :slight_smile:

I heard Piega 711 vs Focal Grande Utopia (latest version) vs B&W 800d3 vs Magico S5 last month. The Piega leaves them all in the dust with ease!!

More natural, less grainy, more detailled, better bass due to better box construction, much better spatiality L-R back to front because it’s a Coax.

I will compare them soon with big Quad ESLs but so far I have not heard speakers that can compete also not in the active speaker world as those often have the following problems: digital sounding amps, mediocre box constructions, bad damping, ported bass audible, unwanted AD/DA conversion in the speaker that renders good external DACs pointless…

I don’t know the Infinity IRS system but I can tell from the construction principle how speakers sound previous to having heard them and that’s why I know that they must be sublime. But I’m sure the Piegas are better. Better Ribbons, better enclosures, less colorations, lower distortion…

PSaudio & Piega are the two best HighEnd companies I know of, PSA for electronics & PIE for speakers.

@lmf22-2 here re is the setup.

Magnepan’s are funny speakers. Hook them up to a many channel AVR that is 8 ohms and done and they will sound mediocre. Insert a good 4 ohm amp and they come to life. Hook them up to a a couple PSA M700’s and coming to life gets very real.

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Thanks. Got lost, though, on the actual baffle design. (“Accordion”, “splayed”, “inner”, “outer”, and “waveguide” all confused me). Any better pictures? Or maybe a quick sketch or two?

Will Glenn wrote:

Agree… My 2.5Rs were really weird in that they had an optimal volume setting to sound best… an adequate volume but not a rockin’ volume. My MG20s were more versatile… ribbon tweeter was really nice… bass was odd as is a common complaint with Magnepans in general. Imaging is scary wonderful. While I did not swap in/out alot of amps, the few I had showed this brand to be very sensitive to amp choice.

Tube amps, in my experience, can be flaky and in general, get a powerful one. Transistor, get one that put current into tough loads… look for the 8 ohm spec… say 100 watts, and then look at the 4 ohm spec… if it denotes 200 watts, then you have a current dumping amp that should handle about any speaker. In my experience.

Peace
Bruce in Philly

Agree on the Piega Coax series, just mind blowing sound quality, and also super coherent sounding. @Paul you might also want to check out Apogee, the company was bought 18 years ago by an enthusiast (Graz), he has all the original documents of how the speakers were made, etc. Long story short, they are selling new models (same names as the old, ie Apogee Scintilla, Apogee Full Range) via installers, the speakers have all new and improved construction, CNC machined drivers, options for transformers to up the speaker impedance and active driving via an external active analog crossover (which can be a Pass Labs XVR1, for example). The speakers have none of the problems the originals had. Check out “truesoundworksaudio.com” and “apogeeacoustics.com” An Apogee Full Range as described above, including the pure Class A Pass Labs XVR1 external active analog crossover would run at 30k, more or less. While it is a “niche of a niche”, it may be wise to check them out as a benchmark (and also the Piega models) and comparison to the PS upcoming Audio speaker line, as Apogee is the holy grail of planar/ribbon speakers.

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I’ll send more photos next week. I have the luxury of making them any way that I see fit and don’t need to conform to any industry accepted norms. My goal was to get them as natural and “live” sounding as I could with other issues, like frequency response smoothness and “WAF” taking a back seat. Obviously, my wife is a saint. With the loft being what it is, the speakers are very far apart so in order to get good solid imaging out of them I tweaked the two baffles on the inside edges forward which made a very large improvement. I got this idea from another forum member whose line source speakers have this sort of forward slanting baffle on both sides of the driver (in a carefully designed complex curve, not just flat like mine). In the end, the two “outside” baffles splay back at 17 degrees. I arrived at this carefully derived angle using the, “Hmm, that looks nice” algorithm.:grin: Having both the inside and outside baffles angling forward was too glaring in the midrange (by ear and by analyzer), probably due to resonance created between the baffle surfaces like a poorly designed horn would.
Yes I am a nerd.

Love my Maggie 20.7s. I moved from ML Odysseys - so I guess I just like ‘that sound’ and hey- I can’t spend 195k for a speaker. That would become - well I didn’t see god so they suck!! :slight_smile:

:joy:

Here is my little brother Paul … lol 41.284,10 USD par - Drives them with ML
20604207_10214825467536643_8631271206147389925_n

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Nice!

Anyone know the music played on the Piega demo video?
Kev

Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramirez. There are several versions, the one I have is on Philips CD. Excellent recording!

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Thanks pmotz. I downloaded a version from Pro Studio Masters, but am looking for a another one. If anyone can offer some more guidance on the different versions that are available I would appreciate it. It seems that most recordings have very different material as a supplement to Misa Criolla. The one I purchased has 12 tracks of more traditional Argentine music, I think, in addition to the 5 tracks of Misa Criolla.
THX,
Kev

I agree too. I use the 3.7i and I am very happy with them. Tube amplifiers are not the right solution for Magnepans. I have some ones 150W but they don’t drive them well. I use now the Magtech Amplifier from Sanders and I am very happy. Additionally I use 2 subs from Elac 2070 witch are placed behind the Maggies.

Have a grate listening

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