Marc Mickelson - January 11, 2009

"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.