Magnepan

Voyage to the midwestern town of White Bear Lake, just outside of Minneapolis.  Here you see people who are the heartland folks of America.  People who buy Fords and Chevrolets. People who paint their own houses.  People who can start a lawn mower. 

Good People.  People like Magnepan's Sales Manager Wendell Diller who is one of the most trustworthy people I know, or Gary from service. If your thirty year old Magnepan needs service, they actually want to and will help you get it repaired.  

Like the people at Magnepan, the Magnepan speakers themselves embody this midwestern honesty, work ethic, and straightforwardness.  If you buy a Magnepan speaker, you'll own a uniquely designed planar-magnetic technology speaker that was invented by founder Jim Winey. Jim's son Mark Winey now runs Magnepan today and actively works on improving their performance.   

The planar magnetic technology is patented and unique to Magnepan.  You see the 'driver' aka the thing that makes sound, is not a circular cone with a heavy attached metal/wire magnet moving the cone back and fourth to produce sound, but rather a near weightless stretched sheet of thin Mylar with a fine foil strips running top to bottom.  The Mylar sheet lives between two magnetic fields, and when a signal passes through the foil strips, the magentic field around the strips pull the weightless Mylar sheet back and fourth, producing sound with none of the lag that a heavier traditional cone has.

Magnepan's are good, they're smart, and dog-gone it, people like them!

Pearl Audio has been Portland's Magnepan dealer since early 2005.

...see a great factory tour here