Legacy Studio User manual

Registration

3. Owners Record

4. The Cabinetry / Our Commitment

Setup

5. Unpacking Your Speakers

6. Speaker Placement

7. Hook up Cables

9. Amplification

12. Speaker Connections

13. Fine-tuning

Technology

14. Designer’s Note

17. Specifications

The model and serial numbers are located on the rear of the unit. Record

these numbers in the spaces provided below. Refer to them when calling

upon your dealer regarding this product.

Model No. _______________________________

Serial No. _______________________________

Date of purchase: _________________________

Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System. These hand-

crafted instruments will provide you with many years of listening

enjoyment. Please take a few moments to read this brief manual to insure

maximum benefit from your speaker system.

Handcrafted

Beneath the surface of Studio’s elegant exterior lies rigid MDF

construction. Interlocking joinery maximizes the strength of the cabinet

parts. Polyester fiberfill is selected for internal damping. A sharp rap on

the enclosure will leave you with little more than bruised knuckles.

Each cabinet is impeccably finished on all exposed surfaces with select

veneers. The exquisite finish is hand-rubbed several times to assure a

patina at home with the most elegant decor.

Our Commitment

A great deal of forethought, love and satisfaction is instilled in each piece

of Legacy workmanship. We take pride in getting to know many of our

customers on a first name basis.

Your purchase of this product is backed by the renowned “Legacy

Satisfaction Guarantee”.

Your new speaker system has been very carefully packaged to insure that

it travels to you safely. Each speaker is protected by a heavy outer carton

with V-board corner protectors. Molded foam end caps are used to protect

the elegant cabinetry, and a plastic liner is provided as waterproofing.

Please save this packing for future transportation. If cartons become

damaged or misplaced, new ones can be purchased from Legacy Audio.

To allow more flexibility in seating arrangements, your Legacy

loudspeaker is designed for broad lateral coverage. Optimal listener

position is actually about 5 to 15 degrees off the axis normal to the

loudspeaker baffle. Assuming a listener distance of about ten feet, begin

by placing the speakers approximately 7 feet apart and about 1 – 3 feet

from the wall behind them. In most rooms this will afford a speaker

position at least 2 feet or more from the side walls. The amount of

recommended "toe-in" is a function of the listening angle. As the overall

listening angle increases from 40 degrees, the amount of toe-in should

increase. Your Legacy speaker is optimized for a flat response in the far

field. Best results are obtained vertically with the listener's ear at tweeter

level with the loudspeakers gently toed in toward the listener. Increasing

the degree of toe-in is recommended when placement next to sidewalls is

required. Placing the loudspeaker or the listener near a room boundary

will generally increase low frequency impact. If you are forced to position

one or both of your loudspeakers in a corner, be prepared to reduce bass

output via the control switches on the rear terminal plate of each

loudspeaker. You may also wish to reduce low frequency output with your

preamp's bass tone control.

The ideal conductor would have negligible resistance, inductance and

capacitance. The table below shows how a few actual speaker cables

measure up.

Cable Ωs/ft pF/ft µH/ft

12 ga. 0.0033 24 0.21

14 ga. 0.0048 17 0.13

16 ga. 0.0079 16 0.18

18 ga. 0.0128 28 0.21

Capacitance is considered insignificant in each cable because its effect is

well out of the audio bandwidth; inductance can be decreased (at the

expense of increased capacitance) by keeping the conductor pair closely

spaced.

How long would a cable have to be before inductance effects would

impinge on the audio spectrum? Approximately 300 feet of 12 gauge

would be required to establish a corner frequency of 20 kHz with an 8

Ohm loudspeaker. As you see, inductance is not a problem for most of us.

What about phase shift due to frequency dependent travel times down the

speaker cable? Measurements show that 100 Hz waves will be delayed

about 20 billionths of a second behind 10 kHz waves when traveling to the

end of a 10 foot speaker cable. Since the cilia of the ear requires 25,000

times longer than this just to transmit phase information, phase shifting is

obviously not the primary concern when considering speaker cables.

What about resistance? Finally we are getting somewhere.

Resistance is the controlling factor of the amplifier/loudspeaker interface.

Excessive resistance can cause major shifts of speaker crossover

frequencies. The lower the impedance of the loudspeaker, the greater the

effects of series resistance. A 20 foot run of 18 gauge cable can cause up

to 10% deviations of crossover center frequencies. That same 20 feet can

un-damp your damping factor and reduce your systems’ output by one-

half decibel.

In summary, there are no perfect cables. The best way to approximate the

ideal would be to keep loudspeaker leads as short as is practical.

Ideally the loudspeaker would be among the first components selected

when assembling a playback system. This would allow the user to choose

an amplifier capable of delivering adequate amounts of current into the

frequency dependent load presented by the loudspeaker. However, when

upgrading a system, audiophiles may find themselves matching their new

loudspeakers to their existing amplification. For this reason, extensive

measures have been taken to ensure that each Legacy speaker system

represents a smooth, non-reactive load to virtually any amplifier.

Often there is much confusion regarding amplification and loudness levels.

It should be understood that the role of the amplifier goes beyond that of

driving loudspeakers to a given sound pressure level. The amplifier should

be able to CONTROL the loudspeakers across the entire music spectrum.

This means that parameters such as damping factor (values greater than

60 are acceptable) and dynamic headroom should not be overlooked

when comparing amplifiers.

How much power will your new speakers need? That ultimately depends

on your listening environment and musical tastes. As little as five watts per

channel should drive them to a level satisfactory for background music. A

typical 45 watt per channel receiver may fill a room with the compressed

mid-band energy of “heavy metal,” but seem to lack weight or control with

classical recordings. Some audiophiles feel that 200 watts per channel is

the bare minimum to avoid audible clipping distortion when reproducing

music at “live” playback levels. Your Legacy speakers are designed to

take advantage of “high-powered” amplifiers, so don’t be afraid to put

them through their paces.

How much is too much power? Rarely is a drive unit damaged by large

doses of music power. More often than not the villain is amplifier clipping

distortion. Even through decades of refinement, loudspeakers are still

notoriously inefficient transducers, requiring huge amounts of power to

recreate the impact of the live performance. Typically less that 1% of

electrical power is converted into acoustic output. (For example, an omni-

directional transducer with an anechoic sensitivity of 90 dB @ 1w/1m has

a full space efficiency of only 0.63%)

When an amplifier is unable to fulfill your loudspeakers demands, a

damaging harmonic spike may be leaked to the high frequency drivers.

Another important point regarding loudness is that the dB scale is a

logarithmic one. This means that a 150 Watt amplifier will potentially

sound only twice as loud as a 15 Watt amplifier. If all of this discussion of

power and loudness seems a bit abstract, consider the example below.

The average acoustical power developed by a person speaking in a

conversational tone corresponds to a mere 0.00001 Watts. The power that

would be developed by the entire population of the city of New York

speaking at once would barely illuminate a single 100 Watt light bulb.

The Terminal Plate

At the rear of each of your loudspeakers you will find a terminal plate

housing two gold binding posts and two heavy duty toggle switches.

Connect each channel of your amplifier to a loudspeaker via the five-way

gold binding posts provided. Dual banana plugs or gold plated spade lugs

are recommended means of termination. Be sure that you observe polarity

when making the connections. The positive (+) terminal of the amplifier

should be connected to the positive terminal of the loudspeaker. The

negative (-) terminal of the amplifier should be connected to the negative

terminal of the loudspeaker.

To facilitate proper set-up of your speakers in a variety of room situations,

we have included several heavy duty toggle switches on the terminal plate,

located on the back of the loudspeaker. All switches in the “up” position

represent the “anechoic flat” position.

Switch 1: can be used in the “down” position to activate the 80

Hz first order high pass filter, which blends the Studios with the subwoofer.

Switch 2: can be used in the “down” position to reduce edginess in the

treble region due to room flutter or bright program material.

The Studio loudspeaker system is among the finest compact monitors

available. Capable of reproducing even the most subtle nuances, the

Studio is a perfect addition to any stereo or multi-channel system.

Each Studio contains a 8” Kevlar® mid bass driver.

Speed, articulation and impact are exceptional for a speaker of this size.

The high frequency section is delivered by our own 1” Titanium dome

tweeter. Custom tuned networks are supplied to assure that the treble

stays open and airy.

Studio is Flexible!

Studio’s acoustic polar pattern is uniquely optimized to cover both seated

and standing listeners. This prevents major tonal changes from occurring

when moving about the listening environment and allows Studio to be

used as an elevated center or rear channel speaker with mounting heights

as high as six feet.

When used as main front channels, stands with a height of 20” to 24” are

ideal for listener distances of 8 feet or greater. The design objectives are

to provide good sensitivity and broad dynamic range in a compact and

affordable design while maintaining uniform power response on axis.

The two-way system is crossed over at 2.8 kHz and has a minimum

impedance of 4.5 ohms. Sensitivity exceeds 90 dB at 2.83 volts/1m.

The vertical lobbing pattern is designed to provide a 30” listening window,

about 18 degrees, (from 30” to 60” off the floor when speakers are located

on 24” H stands at a listener distance of 2.5 meters).

Quite unusual for a two-way, the drivers are polarized in-phase/ in-phase,

thus providing exceptional transient response. The high pass section is

second order with a level pad and two equalization stages. The low pass

section is effectively first order electrically with phase compensation (not a

conventional Zobel) to marry the, drivers together.

In addition, there is a LF high pass section for the woofer (switch 1) which

simply allows some shelving if utilized with a subwoofer.

When coupled with an active high pass filter, this switch will allow a bit of

slope contouring for acoustically blending with the sub.

The system also compensates diffraction loss by applying approximately a

1 dB/octave roll-out (with rising frequency) in the woofer stage. This is

verified by near-field measurement of the woofer. While the impedance

curve implies a box tuning frequency of 32 Hz, the rear port actually

achieves maximum output at 45 Hz. Tuning the system a bit lower allows

a slightly lower cutoff frequency at the expense of some output, thus

allowing the speaker to take advantage of a bit more room gain without

peaking the frequency response. Switch 2 provides a tweeter pad of 2.5

dB for near field listening.

In set-up, I recommend a speaker spread of about 7 ft for a listener

distance of about 12 feet. The speakers should cross behind the listeners

head (don’t toe-in excessively).

The bottom end will be determined primarily by the distance from rear wall.

I feel they can reach down to low E as anything near the size.

System Type: 2-way, vented

Tweeter: 1”Titanium dome

Midwoofer: 8” KEVLAR ®

Sensitivity: 90.5 dB.

Frequency response: 44 Hz - 22 kHz +/- 2 dB

Crossover frequency (Hz): 2.4 k

Recommended Amplification: 10 - 200 watts/channel

Impedance: 4 ohms

Dimensions: 13.5” H x 9.8”W x 10.2” D

Weight: 28 lbs

150 Locust Street.

Macungie, PA 18062

Phone: 610 965 0494

Fax: 610 965 4915

Legacy studio User manual