Legacy Mist User manual

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Registration
3. Owners Record
4. The Cabinetry / Our Commitment
Setup
5. Unpacking Your Speakers
6. Speaker Placement / Installation
8. Hook up Cables
10. Amplification
13. Speaker Connections
Technology
14. Designer’s Note
16. Specifications

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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.

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Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of MiST’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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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.

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A pair of MiST should be wall mounted approximately 6’ high and to the
sides of the listener. An optional third MiST may be used as a center rear
channel by mounting the unit behind the listener. Because MiST is actually
two independent, opposite facing, side-firing arrays in one cabinet, it
behaves as a bipolar system. When used behind the listener it may be
powered by both the left and right rear channel inputs.
Though the MiST requires only one channel of amplification per unit to
drive it when configured in the standard mode, separate input terminals for
each array allow for future steering versatility.
Instructions for attaching bracket to wall
1. Selecting a mounting site.
Note: Try to find a site with a solid wood backing.
2. Using one of the brackets as a pattern, mark four holes on the wall,
aligning the vertical holes with a stud location.
3. Drill four 1/8” (.32 cm) diameter holes as marked.
4. Fasten one bracket to the wall with four wood screws provided. (See
Figure 1)

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5. Hang the speaker.
WARNING: Woodscrews provided may pull out of sheetrock or wall
paneling without a wood brace. They might also pull out of thin speaker
panels or perforated particle board. See Figure 2 & Figure 3 for alternate
mounting hardware.

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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 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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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%)

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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.

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At the rear of your MiST you will find a terminal plate housing jumpered
pairs of five-way binding posts. Connect the output of the rear channel
amplifier to the loudspeaker via the gold five-way binding posts provided.
Dual banana plugs or gold spade lugs are recommended means of
termination.
Be sure that you observe polarity when making the connections. The
positive (+) terminal (red) of the amplifier should be connected to the
positive terminal of the loudspeaker.
The negative (-) terminal (black) of the amplifier should be connected to
the negative terminal of the loudspeaker.
Bi-Amping MiST
Because MiST is a configurable design, it may be driven as a
progressively steered signal array. More specifically, one may wish to
drive one input with a side signal and the other input with a side rear
signal. This is useful in smaller spaces or in DSP controlled distribution.

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MiST
MiST is a configurable rear channel loudspeaker system designed to
accommodate any of the existing formats* such as DTS, DTS ES, Dolby
Digital and Dolby Pro Logic.
MiST utilizes specialized drivers in its two side firing arrays.
Each array consists of a premium quality 5.25” KEVLAR composite driver
and a 1” Ferro fluid cooled Titanium tweeter.
Unlike most wall mount speakers, MiST is internally equalized for on-wall
placement. This results in a very smooth frequency response. Its
specialized polar pattern prevents “glare” by reducing output by6 dB on
axis, allowing a more heightened sense of ambience. The dynamic
capabilities of MiST will show off the demanding range of today’s
soundtracks.

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Conventional direct firing speakers placed to the sides of the listener can create a
“hot spot,” overcooking the listener seated in proximity and thus drawing
attention to itself. Mounting the speaker higher on the side wall can reduce this
problem but may lead to vertical lobing error in the polar pattern.
Dipolar arrays offer an improved sense of ambience, but can appear phasey when
positioned to the side of a near listener. Small movements of the listener’s head
within the high Q null region can result in tonal aberrations and abrupt apparent
level changes as a function of position. Such arrays also suffer from reduced
dynamic range and poor bass extensions due to the anti-phased woofers.
Our research has shown that a controlled directivity quasi-bipolar array can result
in a radiation pattern which minimizes such phasiness and provides better
continuity in the ambient field. MiST takes advantage of a directivity controlled
bipolar array to fill dead spots and prevent near field listener burnout. The polar
characteristics of MiST are similar to that of a figure-of-8 microphone
arrangement combined with a center omni at -6 dB, reminiscent of Mid-Side
Technique that audiophiles have touted for decades.

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System Type: Configurable 2-way bipolar array.
Dimensions: 11” W x 17 3/8” H x 7 1/4” D
Crossover Frequencies (Hz): 2.8k
Frequency Response: 79-25 kHz +/-3 dB
Sensitivity: 90 dB on axis with each array.
Impedance: 8 ohms/array, 4 ohms with inputs in parallel (jumpered)
Weight: 24 lbs
*Dolby Digital and Pro Logic are trademarks of Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation.
DTS and DTS ES are trademarks of Digital Theater Systems.

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Notes:

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© 2003 Legacy Audio
150 Locust Street.
Macungie, PA 18062
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]