Considered by many the finest speaker available under $10,000. These are mint in black on black with box and manual. The soundstaging and superb ribbon tweeter must be heard to be believed. These are quite stunning speakers. $3250.
High end speaker trades considered. I do have 1.6QR rears and a CC3 center as well.
I know of not a single speaker at or near the MG3.6/R’s price that can reproduce music as faithfully. Some speakers may play louder, some deeper, but none can bring the sound of real musicians playing in a real space into the listening room with conviction equal to that of the Magnepan MG3.6/R.
If you’ve got the space and money, and you don’t give a hoot what your decorator thinks, then run out to your local Magnepan dealer and give the MG3.6/R a listen. Simply put, the MG3.6/R is one of the finest loudspeakers I’ve had the pleasure of hearing.
Stereophile:
Their soundstage was huge—extending well outside the speakers, and the deepest of any speaker I've used. Front-to-back layering was superb; in fact, the 3.6s set a new standard in this regard. They didn't just clearly define the position of the instruments on the stage and the surrounding hall boundaries, or even do so with a greater degree of precision and specificity than other speakers—they also quite clearly described the spaces between the performers, and between the instruments and an adjacent hall boundary. A lot of speakers can do this in the lateral plane, but none—in my experience—can do it so well with respect to the front-to-back distances.
Taken on its own, however, the Magnepan Magneplanar MG3.6/R is a sensational speaker. In some respects it's the best speaker I've heard, period. Even in the areas where it's perhaps not the very best, it's awfully close—even when the very best is several times more expensive. Some speakers I admire, some I like...the Magnepan MG3.6/R, I think I'll keep. Very highly recommended!
Ultimate AV Mag:
The MG 3.6, in particular, is possibly the finest speaker ever made for less than $5000/pair—or even for less than $10,000/pair.
Soundstage.com:
All of these peripheral considerations aside, the MG3.6/R is one fine speaker -- the best sub-$10,000 speaker I've heard. So much of its sonic aptitude boils down to the clarity with which it reproduces music throughout its entire range. I've come to associate even the best speakers that use ribbon tweeters, often smallish OEM drivers, with hard, splashy highs that "tizz" even when a brush lightly caresses a cymbal. Not the nearly five-foot-long Magnepan true ribbon. I have heard the MG3.6/R's treble sound hard at shows, but I can say with complete confidence that this is due to the partnering electronics, not the tweeter itself. Driven by Lamm M1.2 Reference amps (a great pairing, by the way), the ribbon's pure, filigreed sound is a revelation. Such extreme high-frequency detail is something listeners usually pay for with fatigue, but not with the MG3.6/Rs and a very good amp. Treble speed, air and delicacy are consummate, but not overblown in order to achieve such performance. Taken on its own, the Magnepan ribbon is the very best tweeter I've heard.
That the planar-magnetic panels keep up with such a fast tweeter is a feat. The panels continue the MG3.6/R's clarity through the mids and into the bass. The MG3.6/R starts and stops in binary fashion. It is seemingly either reproducing the music, without blurring or overhang, or it is not. Each note takes only its space in time and nothing more. As you can guess, this makes even some of the best speakers sound a little blurry and imprecise, and the MG3.6/R does its thing without any tricks -- no goosing of any region to impart an unnatural sense of resolution.
Those who fall in love with the Magneplanar sound often do so because of its exquisitely seductive midrange -- robust, unhurried, natural, personal -- but there was much more to love about the MG3.6/R than its midrange. From the midbass through the midrange, the speaker was as tonally accurate as any in my experience. There was nothing in the slightest bit hi-fi-ish about the MG3.6/R.
And some may equal, but no speaker surpasses, the Magneplanar’s way with the female voice.
The Magnepan MG3.6/Rs did all this without once seeming like a compromise. The speaker embodies a glorious musical vision -- a nearly ideal balance, not a negotiated settlement -- and represents a major sonic achievement. If you love music and aspire to play lots of it of all kinds, then you’ll be hard-pressed to find a better supporter of your listening pleasure than the MG3.6/R. On the other hand, this speaker does not wear all its possibilities on its sleeve. It invites you to explore its capabilities, to dig ever deeper into the listening experience.
The MG3.6/R's ribbon tweeter is a joy to hear. That a simple piece of aluminum thinner than a human hair can be made to reproduce music’s high frequencies with such beauty is a tribute to the engineering prowess of Magnepan chief Jim Winey. Just listen to a well-recorded violin on the MG3.6/R and you’ll see -- er, hear-- what I mean. Gone are the subtle ringing and harshness of even the best dome tweeters, replaced instead by a natural silkiness that is reminiscent of the real thing. The MG3.6/R ribbon is also capable of revealing fine inner detail buried by the faint distortions of lesser drivers, removing a layer of the proverbial scrim between the listener and his music. I listened to literally dozens of jazz, pop and orchestral LPs while looking for a chink in the ribbon’s armor, but I found none. This is certainly one of the finest high-frequency transducers currently available.
While I’ve heard some of the better dynamic speakers reproduce the human voice in fairly convincing fashion, none compared to the MG3.6/R and its planar-magnetic driver. The distortions inherent to cones in boxes, which allow the mind to easily perceive the difference between a real voice and its electronically reproduced counterpart, were largely diminished by the MG3.6/R’s lack of an enclosure and the use of a low-mass midrange panel driven uniformly across its surface.
The Absolute Sound:
It takes only a moment to recognize for music reproduction
that the Maggie 3.6/R is something rare and wonderful.
Few speakers onthe market at any price can match its
seamless bass-to-treble presentation.
While it is open sounding, as is the nature of dipoles, its rendition of tim
bre is meaty, a delightful combination that instantly seduces music lovers.
The 3.6/R’s ribbon tweeter is the finest treble reproducer I have heard.
Gloriously extended and pure,it excels at capturing the delicate
overtones of percussion instruments andstrings.
More striking than this tweeter’s stand-alone performance is the
perfect blend designer Jim Winey hasachieved with the planar- magnetic
line-source midrange driver. I can’t hear the seam. Nor can I hear a dis
continuity when the midrange passes over to the bass panel.
Consequently, you will hear brass reproduced with more natural bite and
brilliance than ever before. On orchestral works, the violin section has the
cohesiveness of a large group, with that flowing silken (not steely) texture
that can only be produced by violins en masse. Descending into the lower
regions, we find a robust presentation that is also subtly shaped, as only live
bass colors can be.
