The Magnepan 3.7 was announced at CES this January, to great fanfare, cannonade and flights of angles. Just about every reviewer that has heard them has waxed poetic about the brilliance of the new design. Jonathan Valin, that old rogue, had a blog post where he talked at great length about the Magico Q5 speakers, err, the Magnepan 3.7s (well, to be fair, he does mention the Magico’s at nine different points in the body of the post and it’s subsequent comments).
I spoke to Scot Markwell over at Elite A/V and he suggested that the Magnepan 3.7s might also be a very nice match for my new Plinius gear. Scot had apparently spent some time with Harry Pearson, another big Maggie fan, who has one of the first pairs set up in his home (being one of the Founding Fathers of audio reviewership has it’s privileges). The sound quality was fantastic, says Scot. That is, it’s awesome with the optional Furutech fuse upgrades (which he sells — honestly, I don’t think these guys are able to help themselves. Another visitor to the hallowed HP “Room 2” has posted some comments over on Audio Asylum, “Weekend at Harry’s“.
Let me state that all this has me pretty much all hot-and-bothered as I’ve been wrestling with a decision about my next set of speakers. Should I sell everything I have (and then some) and get a pair of truly reference speakers, like the Joseph Audio Pearl 2s? Or do I get the new Maggies, and take some of that extra money and get myself a much nicer source and a full set of cables?
Part of this is moot — the Maggie folks say that the new 3.7s won’t FCS (that’s “first customer ship”) until the end of this month, assuming all goes well. So, dealers will get theirs, and I (and several hundred of my audiophile brethren) will finally get our first audition at some point next month. And given the way Magnepan suffered through the 1.7 launch last year, it’s quite possible that the 4 month lead time they had last year will mean that any orders might not get filled until July. July? Yes, July.
Ouch.
Well, and well. I suppose the first step is the audition. Assuming that goes gang busters, I already have the subs that would fill out that AWOL bottom end, so at least that’s something. Oh, and yes, before you get all uppity, I know that Maggies do bass, and do it well. And when broken in, do it even better. But 40Hz is not “deep enough”. Got that with the Merlins and yes, I’m running those Rythmiks right along with them to “fill in”. If that makes me a bass junkie, so be it! But at least I know my problems, right? And I’ve taken steps to assure that there won’t be a problem.
But a little part of me just says that those big Josephs are just stunning. A true reference. It’s just a whole pile o’ money ….