Legacy CALIBRE User manual

Owners Manual For The
Loudspeaker System
CALIBRE &
CALIBRE XD
1

Table of Contents
Registration
Owners Record 3
The Cabinetry Our Commitment 4
Warranty 5
Setup
Unpacking Your Speakers 6
Speaker Placement 7
Hooking Up Cables 8-9
Amplification 10-12
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Specifications 25
Calibre XD Introduction 17
Calibre XD Connections 18
Configurations 19-21
Wavelet Connections 22
Designer Notes 23
Additional Notes for Calibre (passive/standard users) 24
Calibre Rear Panel 13
Connections 14-16

Owners Record
Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System.
These handcrafted instruments will provide you with many years of
listening enjoyment.
The serial number is located on the rear of the unit. Record this
number in the space provided below. Refer to this when calling your
dealer regarding this product.
Model: CALIBRE or CALIBRE XD
Serial No: _________________________
Date of purchase: ___________________
Register your product at legacyaudio.com/register
3
Share your Legacy speakers with the Legacy community. Post your
Legacy experience and system photos at facebook.com/LegacyAudio
Like the page to continue receiving the latest Legacy announcements.

The Cabinetry / Our Commitment
Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of CALIBRE’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”.
4

Legacy Audio supports its customers and products with pride. We cheerfully warrant our loud-
speaker products we manufacture from defects in materials and workmanship for a period of seven
(7) years. Electronic components such as internal amplifiers and digital processors are covered for
three (3)years. Please register your product with Legacy Audio. Should you require service Legacy
will require a proof of purchase in order to honor the warranty - so please keep your receipt.
• The warranty applies to the original owner and is not transferable.
• The warranty applies to products purchased from an “Authorized Legacy Dealer”.
• The warranty on active components such as digital processors or internal amplifiers is limited to three
(3) years of coverage.
• The warranty on dealer stock will extend for a maximum of two years from invoice.
The warranty does not cover transportation costs of product to or from the customer, distributor or
dealer, or related shipping damage.
Exclusions from Warranty
The following situations or conditions are not covered by the Legacy Audio warranty:
• Accidental damage, electrical abuse or associated equipment failure.
• Use inconsistent with recommended operating instructions and specifications
• Damage caused by modification or unauthorized service
• Costs associated with the removal and reinstallation of defective products. Consequential damage to
other products.
• Normal wear such as fading of finishes due to sunlight.
Warranty
5

Un acking Your S eakers
Your new speaker system has been very carefully packaged to insure
that it travels to you safely. Each speaker is protected by a double-
wall outer carton with heavy V-board corner protectors. Custom fitted
foam end caps are used to protect the elegant cabinetry, and a
custom bag is included to provide further protection. Please save this
packing for future transportation. If cartons become damaged or
misplaced, new ones can be purchased from Legacy Audio.
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S eaker Placement
To allow more flexibility in seating arrangements, your Calibre system 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.
Recommended stand height: 30 inches
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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 ef-
fect is well out of the audio bandwidth; inductance can be de-
creased (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.
Hooking U Cables
8

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 control-
ling factor of the amplifier loudspeaker interface. Excessive resistance can cause ma-
jor shifts of speaker crossover frequencies. The lower the impedance of the loud-
speaker, 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 onehalf deci-
bel.
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.
Hooking U Cables
9

Am lification
Ideally the loudspeaker would be among the first components selected when assembling a play-
back 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 under-
stood 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 mu-
sic 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.
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Am lification
How much power will your new speakers need? That ultimately depends on
your listening environment and musical tastes. As little as 15 watts per
channel should drive them to a level satisfactory for background music.
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 noto-
riously inefficient transducers, requiring huge amounts of power to recreate
the impact of the live performance. Typically less than 1% of electrical
power is converted into acoustic output. (For example, an omnidirectional
transducer with an anechoic sensitivity of 90 dB @ 1w 1m has a full space
efficiency of only 0.63%)
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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.
Am lification
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.
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Calibre Rear Panel
Connections:
At the rear of your loudspeakers you will find two
rows of jumpered binding posts.
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.
When driving Calibre with a single channel of
amplification, you may use either set of jumpered
binding posts. When bi-wiring or bi-amping, remove
the jumper strips completely.
Dual banana plugs or gold plated spade lugs are
recommended means of termination. Be sure you
observe polarity when making the connections.
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S eaker Connections
Bi-wiring
Bi-wiring allows one to minimize the cable losses between the amplifier and the loud-
speaker. This is accomplished with a single stereo amplifier by running separate sets
of cables to the satellite section and the subwoofer section from the same channel of
amplification. When bi-wiring, we recommend the use of gold spade lugs or dual ba-
nana plugs. This can make the task much easier and safer than bare wire connec-
tions. Again, the major reasons for bi-wiring over conventional wiring are greater
power transfer (improved efficiency) and tighter control over the drivers (better
damping).
Passive Bi-am ing
This option can yield even better results than bi-wiring due to broader distribution of
power requirements. Passive bi-amplification allows low frequency current to be
routed to a separate channel of amplification, reducing strain on the satellite ampli-
fier and preventing subwoofer back-EMF from modulating with the upper frequencies.
There are two types of passive bi-amplification; Vertical bi-amping (which requires
two identical stereo amplifiers or four MonoBlocs) and Horizontal bi-amping (which
does not require identical amplifiers).
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S eaker Connections
Vertical bi-amplification requires the dedication of a single stereo amplifier for the left
speaker, and another stereo amplifier for the right speaker. This configuration im-
proves channel separation and can improve imaging slightly. If your preamp does not
have two sets of left right outputs, you will need a pair of Y-adapters or a signal split-
ter, such as a dual amp balancer, which will also allow adjustment of subwoofer
satellite input levels.
Any two stereo amplifiers may be utilized in horizontal bi-amplification. Many audio-
philes prefer the "sweetness" of tubes on the satellite portion of the loudspeaker
while favoring the "control and weight" of solid state amplifiers on the subwoofer
section. The biggest drawback of such a marriage of amplification is that the two am-
plifiers may have different input sensitivities or output polarities. Differences in the
input sensitivities may be overcome by using a dual amp balancer. This unit allows in-
dependent balancing of the left subwoofer satellite ratio and right subwoofer satellite
ratio. It's also a good idea to check the owner's manuals to establish if the amplifiers
are inverting or non-inverting. If the two amplifiers are of opposite polarity, then you
should reverse the polarity at the inputs of either the subwoofer or satellite binding
posts. NOTE: This only applies to loudspeakers that incorporate the subwoofer and
satellite section in a single enclosure. It does not apply towards the separate
powered subwoofer/satellite configuration. You must always observe the polarity
when connecting the speaker wire to a powered subwoofer.
2. Horizontal Bi-amping
1. Vertical Bi-amping
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The Calibre loudspeaker may also benefit from active bi-amplification and the virtues
of DSP room correction. Adding the Legacy Wavelet processor can extend bass
response, prevent excursion overload, and avoid room resonances.
Maximize Performance
The versatile Wavelet processor can also integrate a subwoofer or stereo pair of
subwoofers with the Calibre. Please contact our technical staff with any questions you
may have.
S eaker Connections
16

Calibre XD Enhances Versatility Adding 500Watts of Internal Power
• Use this internal ICEpower amp with its 30 amp peak current capability to drive the
• Use this internal ICEpower amp with its 30 amp peak current capability to drive the
entire speaker full range via the passive internal crossover. Merely a source and a
preamplifier are required to drive Calibre XD to breathtaking levels. This is a common
configuration for studios and those with DAC/Preamps.
• Allocate the internal amp’s 500 watts entirely to the bass section to power the top
firing 8” woofer of Calibre XD, while driving the upper section with your external
amplifier. This method of passive bi-amplification minimizes current demands from the
upper range amplifier and reduces the presence of back EMF from the woofers. Your
amplifier will work less hard and the speaker will sound more effortless.
• Utilize an external crossover such as the Legacy Wavelet or Wavelaunch processors.
Link the woofer directly to the internal amp, eliminating the passive crossover from the
path. This improves coupling with the woofers and increases drive efficiency by nearly
30%. Both the Wavelet and Wavelaunch processors are presently available with
customized settings for the Calibre XD.
The new Calibre XD version includes a high quality internal 500 watts amplifier which
provides some unique performance options:
The Legacy Calibre is now available in both the standard version and the powered XD
version. Be careful to understand the Calibre XD is not a replacement for the Calibre,
but a more versatile internally amplified version of the same, facilitating both passive
and active bi-amplification. The fully passive Calibre will continue to hold its position in
the Legacy line-up.
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Calibre XD Rear Panel
18
Connections:
Before configuring the Calibre XD and
making cable connections, be sure both
the internal amplifiers and any external
amplifiers are powered completely off.
Disconnect from AC outlet if uncertain.

Configuration: Full Range Powered
The internal amplifier will power the entire loudspeaker.
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1. With the AC power switch in the OFF (0) position, set the rocker switch of Calibre
XD in the downward position.
2. Connect the female end (with 3 holes) of a balanced XLR cable to your Preamplifier’s
LEFT channel balanced output. Be sure it is pressed in fully
3. Connect the male end (with 3 pins) on the same cable to the BALANCED INPUT
receptacle on the rear panel of the Left Calibre XD rear panel.
4. Connect the female end of a balanced XLR cable to your Preamplifier’s RIGHT
channel balanced output.
5. Connect the male end of the same cable to the BALANCED INPUT receptacle on the
rear panel of the RIGHT Calibre XD rear panel.
6. Turn on your preamplifier, leaving it in a mute mode, or without source playing.
7. Connect the provided power cord into rear AC receptacle of both Calibre XD,
8. Connect the other end of the power cords into a household AC receptacle (100-240
VAC, 50-60Hz) or power center.
9. Flip the rectangular rocker switch on the rear AC socket to the ON (1) position to
turn-on power to each speaker, thus illuminating the blue LED in the top corner of the panel.
10. Activate the music source taking your preamp out of mute mode, raising the volume
slowly to verify all connections.

driving the upper range.
The internal amplifier will power the bass section and your external amplifier will be
Configuration: Bi-Amplification with Internal Passive Crossover
1. Set the rocker switch of each Calibre XD in the upward position.
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2. Connect the female end (with 3 holes) of a balanced XLR cable to your Preamplifier's LEFT channel
balanced output. Be sure it is pressed in fully. You may require a signal splitter (balanced Y-adapter,
available for Legacy Audio) if you do not have dual outputs on your preamplifier.
3. Connect the male end (with 3 pins) of the same cable to the BALANCED INPUT receptacle on the rear
panel of the Left Calibre XD rear panel. Be sure it is pressed in fully.
4. Connect another cable from the same Preamplifier output (or Y-adapter) to the LEFT input of your
external amplifier.
5. Connect the female end of a balanced XLR cable to your Preamplifier's RIGHT channel balanced
output.
6. Connect the male end (with 3 pins) of the same cable to the BALANCED INPUT receptacle on the rear
panel of the RIGHT Calibre XD rear panel.
7. Connect another cable from the same Preamplifier output (or Y-adapter) to the RIGHT input of your
external amplifier.
8. Connect the speaker cables from your external power amplifier's LEFT channel output to the LEFT
Calibre XD binding posts. The red post is positive and the black post is negative.
9. Connect the speaker cables from your external power amplifier's RIGHT channel output to the RIGHT
Calibre XD binding posts.
10. Turn on your preamplifier, leaving it in a mute mode, or without source playing.
11. Connect the provided power cord into rear AC receptacle of both Calibre XD.
12. Connect the other end of the power cords into a household AC receptacle (100-240 VAC, 50-60Hz) or
power center.
13. Flip the rectangular rocker switch on the rear AC socket to the ON (1) position to turn-on power to each
speaker.
14. Power on your external amplifier.
15. Activate the music source taking your preamp out of mute mode, initially raising the volume slowly to
verify all connections.