Becky and I stayed in room 542 at the Renaissance Schaumburg Hotel. On Thursday evening, we heard some loud music with lots of bass coming from the room next door. This is a tradeoff in staying at the show hotel. Yes, you’re close to the show, but you don’t know who your neighbor might be, or I should say how loud they might be.
When we left for breakfast on Friday morning, I checked to see who was showing in the room since it wasn’t listed in the show catalog. There also wasn’t any information on or around the door. Later in the day, I came back to the room for a minute, and there was a lady sitting outside the door taking reservations for hearing what was in the room. Now that’s unusual!
As it turned out, Wendell Diller, one of the founders of Magnepan, was doing a demo of Magnepan’s newest speaker, the LRS. The demo was limited to three people at a time, and you had to sign up in advance for a listening time.
On Saturday afternoon we were so tired, we had to take a break. So when we went back to our room, I asked this nice lady if she would knock on my door when there was an opening. And, a little while later, she did.
Behind the Door
Once inside, it had to be the most unimpressive-looking room at AXPONA. There were two little panel speakers and an unidentified amp. When I asked about the amp, Dillard said it was a Magnepan prototype that produced 300 watts into 4 ohms and 200 watts into 8 ohms. He did not mention a price, but he did say that it was meant to be competitive with amps made in China.
As they say on the Magnepan website, ” These are not your father’s Magnepans.” The LRS speakers are all quasi-ribbon speakers, and not planar magnetic with a ribbon tweeter like most Maggies. They are 48 inches tall, 14.5 inches wide and a whole 1.25 inches thick. At this size, it would be very easy to put them up against the wall and then set them out into the room when you’re ready to listen.
They certainly didn’t sound small. In fact, think huge, beautiful tonality and fast without ever sounding the least bit etched or bright. They also played really loud without a hint of sounding strained. It was the kind of sound that was easy to listen to and hard to forget.
There were very few rooms at the show where the music was close to being this musical, but what makes these the most
