Legacy CALIBRE User manual

Owners Manual For The
Loudspeaker System
CALIBRE &
CALIBRE XD
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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
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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”.
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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
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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
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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
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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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