"What's the new Magnepan
speaker? Is it a 20.2? A 3.7?"
I visited Magnepan in the summer of 2006 and
heard a demo there of a radical new speaker -- for Magnepan, that is. It was
"radical" because of its size. While Magnepan speakers are certainly thin, their
planar-magnetic drivers require surface area to generate bass, so most of them are also
rather tall and wide. This new speaker, however, was about the height and width of a legal
pad, though it sounded much larger.
Wendell Diller, the wily marketing manager at
Magnepan, devised a very effective demo for the speaker, code named "the Mini
Maggie." He led me into a completely darkened room. I sat down and he played a few
cuts, leaving my mind to wander about which speaker I was hearing. After a few minutes, he
flipped on the lights and I sat there amazed that such a big, full-range sound was coming
from such small speakers -- with help down low from a pair of small subwoofers.
Wendell ran a variation on that darkened-room
demo at THE Show. Pre-show advertising had caused people to wonder what they would be
hearing. "Is it a 20.2? A 3.7?" Here's what they didn't see until spotlights
revealed it: the new Mini Maggie, which uses a small version of Magnepan's wonderful
ribbon tweeter.
As I had heard at the Magnepan factory, the
speakers were helped in the bass, this time by a pair of Magnepan's planar woofers (shown
above under the lamp), which use the same technology as the MG20.1's bass driver. The demo
pair of Mini Maggies were made two days before the show, which accounts for the ragged
look around back. Wendell lugged them to Las Vegas in his suitcase.
This is the only audio demonstration I've attended during
which one of the products was passed around for closer inspection. No price has been set
for the Mini Maggie, but it is no longer a mystery speaker.
Interestingly, as we were being seated, someone from the
previous demo was telling Wendell, "I own 20.1s and they don't sound this good."
More of Wendell's marketing trickery? Nah, couldn't be.
