The New Magnepan 1.7's are fabulous

Hey there,
A few weeks ago, I got a chance to audition the new Maggie 1.7's at a dealership in southestern PA called Audio Lab. They allowed me several hours to listen without interupption. I actually asked the salesman to sit in with me to hear how these are on some of my favorite tunes and he had a blast. He then compared them to some Paradigm's of twice the cost and we both liked the Maggie's so much more (despite the massive bass from the P's of course). They used the Krell Evolution preamp, stereo power amp, and a Cambridge CD player (the one for about $1700 or so) I can't remember the model # off hand. It had Kimber cables and interconnect in RCA / SE mode. It was a marvelous sounding system even if it did need a sub as so many are aware of is almost required or standard accessories for them. They only had about 10 hours of use on them, so they were quite tight and stiff, but dreamy in how open, airy, fluid, spacious, luxurious, and fun to listen to. Yes, they are still very inefficient, have no usable bass below about 40Hz in-room, and need much power to really get them to sing well, but they are the first version of the 1.6's (so to say) that ever just took my breath away in amazement. Maggie has truly out-done themselves in this model and then some. They did so much so well for a speaker that was only 10 or so hours old. Yes, they had world class electronics driving them, which always helps of course. They sounded so energetic, alive, vivid, punchy, visceral, dynamic, fast, clear, etc. They made the older 1.6's that we hooked up to compare sound downright lousy in so many ways so quickly. Fantastically done !