New Magnepan 1.7 system from scratch for 7k

I'm a former Maggie 1.6 owner and can give you some insights based on long experience. BTW, due to several moves for work I sold off my entire system and so will be re-building a system from scratch as well (I've been a computer/headphone guy in the interim). I will likely go Maggie for my speakers once again, after auditioning numerous others--so allow me to echo JV that the 1.7s are one of the best bargains in all of hi-fi. FWIW, here are a couple of key points:
1) You simply must resolve to drive Maggies with a very stout amp (i.e., lots of current and a large power supply able to deal with low impedances); otherwise, you will not get the performance of which they are capable. Krell is known for just such capability, so if you've already auditioned that amp and love it go for it. Whatever you do, audition your amps and push them hard to see if they measure up to your expectations.
2) Beware of adding subs! Most cannot "keep up", i.e., they lag behind the Maggies and are thus obviously separate sources of sound. This kills that astounding Maggie ability to sound truly life-like. I used a REL Storm III sub with my 1.6s and it was absolutely superb--read: I couldn't tell it was on and thus the 1.6s simply sounded like they went down to 25 Hz. In fact, the REL enhanced their performance beyond bass by seemingly expanding the soundstange. I would suggest you check out the lower end of the REL line and perhaps JL or put the sub on hold for a later upgrade.
3) Unless you already have a large SACD collection, I'd go for a DAC hooked up to your computer (which you presumably already have). It's more cost effective since you don't need to pay for a transport and cosmetics. I also don't believe in spending too much $$$ on digital since the SOTA moves forwrard too quickly. In other words, a Benchmark DAC1 ($1,000), Hegel HD10 ($1,200), Ayre DAC ($2,500), or others in that price range give you access to CDs and hi-rez at a world-class performance level (though not absoute SOTA) for a reasonable price. In 2014 you can sell it off and buy the current SOTA, etc. If you need SACD, go for the Sony XA5400 (I forget the exact model designation). It's $1,500 and gives you multi-channel SACD capability at a near-top level of performance.
4) You do not need an external crossover; that's something for much, much later experimentation. As for cables, start with good solid performance and don't sweat the 1,001 choices in cable flavoring. I'd suggess Transparent's entry level cables and power conditioner. Also check out Paul Speltz Anti-Cable and Kimber Hero/8TC cables.
Hope that helps.
4)

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Odyssey is an excellent choice for amplication; by all means audition them.  If budget is an issue, check out Benchmark and Hegel DACs (http://stereomojo.com/Hegel%20HD10%20DAC%20review.htm/HegelHD10DACreview.htm). You can find reviews re the cables I mentioned in TAS. Enjoy.

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After building systems around Maggies for over 25 years (personally & professionally) I have logged some consistent observations that might be of help:  (Your budget constraints are tough, most of the systems that I have designed around Maggies in the 2K bracket needed at least 10K for the rest of the system to be worthy of the speakers/show off what the speakers are capable of. SO within the constraints of $5K after the speakers, let’s see….

First and foremost is the High Current issue which is discussed in the AMP section. This is very important. And then there is the issue of SNYERGY. Some equipment works better with Maggies and in certain combinations than others. For this reason I would STRONGLY advise you to change your, “I would prefer not to mix brands between, amps, tuners, CD players…” mindset!  Within your budget you will go significantly farther in the bang-for-the-buck department if you DO mix brands.  Finally the room/acoustic interface with the Maggies. Be prepared to allocate some budget for room treatments (for such as early reflections). You will NEVER hear the full potential of these speakers without considering the listening room/area as part of the system. (To this end refer to Jim Smith’s excellent and highly respected book, Get Better Sound.)

AMPS/Preamp: High Current amplification is an absolute necessity. Must get beefy amp. Contrary to expectations this is not for loudness, but to ensure good control of the drivers which can be appreciated at low volume levels. SO Your most expensive piece is going to be here. Towards that end the Brystons & Maggies have good synergy. (Maybe why Magnepan showcased the 1.7s with Bryston amplification at the CES Show this year.) Bryston’s 20 year transferrable warranty begs exploring the used market such as Audiogon to accommodate your budget. Do NOT use an integrated amp (trust me on this). The Emotiva XPA-1 works particularly well and is the least expensive amp high current amp I have ever heard that is worthy of Maggie consideration. I would urge exploring this amp. (They are having an Independence Day sale right now which makes them an incredible bargain.) Preamp from Parasound such as the P 3 is an excellent match to complete this trio.

CD PLAYER: In your budget you only have two choices. The Sony SCD-XA5400ES or the Oppo BDP-83SE. The OPPO-83SE, like the Maggies, is a giant killer! You will NOT get better performance than these two until you reach around $4-$5K. SO these are serious Bang-for-the buck equipment just like the Magnepans. Read the reviews and then listen for yourself. The Sony and the Oppo are currently in Stereophile’s Class A list ahead of the units you mentioned, selling for far less money (you choices by the way are not making any sense since if you spend $3,000 on the CD player then you only have $2K left over after the speakers for everything else and that’s not going to work).

CABLES: JPS LABS Cables have excellent synergy with Magnepans. After trying just about every manufacturer I found the JPS Superconductors brings these speakers to life. They sound very smooth, totally dynamic and neutral. They are also very fast so they complement the fast panels in the 1.7s. In fact the consistent theme in my recommendations is components that are neutral and fast. Avoiding bright & etchy (or sluggish electronics) are crucial since the Maggies are very highly resolving and you can very quickly arrive at an overly bright sound if you are not careful about what’s upstream. (One reason why a tube preamp sounds magical with the Maggies especially if your room is bright.)

POWER: PS Audio’s AV Power Center 3000 is the minimum needed with this system since you won’t find a better Power conditioner at this price and you need at least this much conditioning considering your system. 

SUB: Try and configure your room/placement of speakers to maximize bass output WITHOUT a sub.
1.7s have surprising amount of bass if properly setup when driven by a high current amp. A sub is going to compromise their wonderfully fast bass panels at the expense of perhaps a little deeper bass. (In my bedroom system I have managed to get useful output to 25Hz from the smaller MMGs to prove it can be done if one knows how to do it. Again refer to Jim Smith’s Get Better Sound.) If you must have subs then use two in stereo mode (as opposed to dual mono). TWO lesser quality Subs in stereo will give you SUPERIOR performance than ONE of higher quality. This is a fact! I am using two Velodyne DD-10s with a very low 40 Hz crossover in my HT room with excellent results. ONLY fast subs apply. And those are pricey putting them out of your budget for now. Most subs will totally destroy the sound of Maggies because they are not fast enough to keep up with the panels. So FORGET subs for now and save up.

CROSSOVERS: Forget that for now. Going to outboard crossovers and mods for the 1.7 requires experience that you will gain in the years to come. The speakers are already good enough that this requires serious equipment and KNOWING your current system. Let me make something very clear about the Maggie 1.7. They require far better ancillary equipment to realize their full potential than your current budget allows for right out of the box. I would spend the money on the best amp/preamp, cables and SACD player I could afford right now and forget about everything else. Fortunately you are building a two channel system and that’s great. I have approximately $45,000 in my system that I have built around them and they have responded with each change. Eventually I will rip out the existing crossovers and go with external electronic crossovers with separate amps for each individual panel like I did with my older Maggies, but that’s a whole another ball game. 

SO in conclusion,
Speakers - 1.7 = $2,000
Amp - Emotiva XPA-1 Mono Blocks = $1798/pair (on sale right now with free shipping)
Stereo Preamp - Parasound Halo P 3 $800
 SACD/CD/DVD-Audio player - Oppo Digital BDP-83SE = $900
JPS Labs UltraConductor Wires = $1,000
PS Audio AV Power Center 3000 = $500
Must have accessory: PS audio’s Critical Link Fuses to replace the cheap tweeter fuses that come with the Maggies. (Makes a big difference.) = $60
Jim Smith’s Get Better Sound = $40
You are already at = $7,098 + Tax

If you can scrounge up a little more money than move up to the JPS Superconductor line for an additional $1K and after that if you had another $500, the Sony - SCD-XA5400ES SACD player = $1500 (but will give up 24 Bit PCM on DVD-Audio Disks) .

This system will perform well beyond its price level with good synergy but you are still missing a good audio rack for equipment isolation & possible room treatment options.  These are fundamental to a good system and cannot be overlooked since 50% of the ultimate sound of your system is room and voicing dependent. Since you said you were new to this hi-fi game I can’t stress enough how important it is that you go out and buy the best audio manual there is on the planet, Jim Smith’s Get Better Sound, and absorb it before you spend any more money.

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For all practical purposes using musical input there really isn’t an upper limit. (Just don't go hooking up a signal generator or a test disc and feed a sine wave into them with that much power.) With music I routinely send 1,000 watts peaks into my Maggies and they respond with tremendous dynamics. Remember we are talking about momentary peaks of a fraction of a second while the average power (RMS) being sent is usually less than 50 watts. Most of the excitement of live music resides in these very fast peaks. Today’s well recorded (read uncompressed) Jazz and classical recordings on the DSD & 24 Bit PCM format are very dynamic. The Maggies being planar magnetic will love the extra current since this translates to good control of the diaphragms which leads to tighter, more focused sound even at low levels. The fast current delivery of an amp is of real consequence to all Magneplanars.

I have found that Tube preamps from Audio Research Corporation have great synergy with Maggies due to their fast and clean circuitry. So do the Musical Fidelity products. However I am not sure a decent tube preamp to match the 1.7s within your budget exists since that would be out of proportion with the quality of the transducers. Your “newness” to the hobby demands the following disclosure. Tube gear especially lower priced tube gear requires additional responsibilities such as having to protect the tubes from microphonic affects of airborne and rack-borne acoustic energy which can be heard. There are also electromagnetic noise issues too complex to go into here. To this end there are accessories which you will need. Also tubes have to be tested frequently and replaced anywhere from 6 to 24 month etc. Contrary to common belief I have seen tubes degrade as fast as 6 months with most audiophiles not being aware of it since it’s a gradual tiny incremental daily/weekly change that is not detected easily. But having dropped new tubes in equipment throughout my life, I have been shocked at the difference even within 6 months and got tired of keeping up with it, eventually replacing my tube equipment for this reason. However going this route with this extra diligence has its rewards since a god tube preamp is simply wonderful with Maggies. I would suggest starting with the Halo Preamp and then in due time upgrading it (the Parasound Halo products retain 60-75% of their value on the second-hand market so you should be able to recoup some of your investment to apply towards a better preamp later).

Yes, the Oppo 83 Special Edition is a very special piece of equipment. This thing has the highest bang for the buck I have ever seen. Quite a few high-end manufacturers have lined up to make their products based on this little jewel. It has state of the art convertors, USB ports for hard-drive based music & video files as well as wired & wireless network connectivity options for usage as part of a home media network. Nothing even comes close! (Every reviewer on the planet that has heard it has awarded it with the ‘best equipment in its category’ award and has bought the review sample, which says something.) In reality you should start with this piece since you need a good source to set up the rest of your system as you move along. This is particularly helpful since Oppo includes two good test/demo discs to help you analyze and set up your system with the player.

No, amps don’t have subwoofer outputs. (Not any that I am aware of.) It would be available from the preamp. Also a simple (but good quality) Y interconnect solves that problem as well. (I myself prefer taking a parallel output from the amps directly to the subs Speaker Level inputs and running the Maggies full range. This gives me the best sound.)  So this is irrelevant to your amp choices.

Your equipment rack sounds (pun indented) reasonably adequate. Yes you are correct. Wood is definitely preferable to metal in audio racks since metal is generally more resonant (unless it is to be filled with sand, ballast etc).  But just because your rack is heavy and you can’t move it doesn’t mean it’s good for audio. The biggest problem is acoustic energy from the Speakers (and reflections from nearby walls) that is invariably going to vibrate the shelves. You do not want this vibration to reach any of the audio circuitry in any of the equipment especially the optical drive mechanism of the player. A good test is the “knuckle test”. Rap the middle (unsupported part) of the shelves with you knuckle. If it goes “clangggg” with a trailing decay then that’s bad and you are going to need additional dampening/decoupling. It should sound more like a dead “thud” as if you were knuckling a bag of mulch.  This is why one should NOT keep their equipment between/behind the Speakers contrary to the majority of the audiophiles. (A good exploration of this subject can be had in the manual “Get Better Sound”.)

Lastly the subject of Specs or Specifications. I don’t recall giving you any specs and I don’t want to. My classical education as an Electronics Engineer taught me specs were everything. But when it comes to Audio, a lifetime of experiences has proven otherwise! Use Specifications only as a guideline. As you grow as an Audiophile you will come to realize that spec tell you nothing about how good (or bad) a component is going to sound or how it is going to synergize with your particular system/room. This is a fundamental fact of Audio since we have yet to standardize a set of meaningful and accurate set of tests to correlate what we hear and how we perceive sound. This is as much Electrical as it is Acoustical AND Psychoacoustical. In my younger days I used to do consulting work as an Acoustical Engineer where I would routinely set up large venues for rock concerts. During those years I found that certain equipment (especially pro gear) that had fantastic specs sounded utterly horrible. What I heard from the actual instruments from the musicians on stage had no resemblance to what was coming out of the main monitors, the signal being seriously altered by the so called great gear boasting distortions in the .ooo% specs! I actually starting using studio recording consoles and audiophile gear in the field for pro use and these had a thousand times more distortion (on paper) but sounded much more natural and cleaner. Take Neilson Pass’s amps from Pass Labs for example. I think he produces some of the best sounding amplifiers on the planet. All his amps including $30,000 mono-blocks are spec’ed at 1% distortion. Now compare that to a mass market Japanese component that boasts .0001% distortion and within 5 seconds you will learn that .0001% distortion sounds broken, nothing like real music. There is a lot more to music reproduction that equipment specs. The room itself is the biggest component; the one most misunderstood and paid littlest attention to.

Let your ears be the judge (and read Get Better Sound). The most sure fire test I know of is to find good recordings of your favorite artists (the ones you have seen live), and see how close to the emotional involvement, that you felt during the live event, a particular component or system takes you. (Unfortunately an audio dealer's showroom is one of the worst places to get this. A better place is to get join/get involved with your local audiophile chapters (most cities has them and is easy to find on the internet) and listen to good systems properly set up in the owners’ homes.) A particular area of this test is image depth. My experiences have shown me with consistency that a better room, component and/or system will always generate a DEEPER, more three dimensional soundstage than an inferior one. The best stuff should take you closer to the real thing.  And that’s what this hobby of ours is all about.

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I second the W4S amplification. You really can't do better at anywhere near the price. I use the W4S 4 channel MC 250/500 amp to drive my Magnepan 3.5Rs (and gold fuses).
My source is a Raysonic 228, which replaced a Raysonic 168. In addiion to great value they are  both fully balanced designs (as are W4S amps). Both include a terrific variable output stage (tube) that easily compares to a $2-3K preamp, but has no inputs.Later on you can add a preamp, but will have a hard time finding one as good for under $2K, plus you would need  another power cord, set of interconnects, shelf... increasing your real world cost significantly!  My 168 needs a good home (see AudioGon ad).
I replaceed the Maggie XO with a Behringer active XO ($200). Do this before considering parts upgrades. The Behringer also has a sub I/O which helps blend the sub into the Maggies. I have done a lot of testing various isolation devices, the changes are very apparent, so the XO is not in the way at all.
Speaker Cables/Interconnects- Clear Day Audio cables (pure silver)  replaced PS Audio/DH Labs and various expensive speaker cables. They are light weight, extremely flexible with fantastic sound reproduction.
I use an SVS Ultra sub.
If possible install a dedicated A/C line, and most def put a PLC on your short list. Mine is a PS Audio Premier Power Plant.

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