Legacy VALOR User manual

Owners Manual For The
Loudspeaker System
VALOR
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THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING
LEGACY AUDIO
Valor is a full range loudspeaker system utilizing the present state of
the art in driver, crossover, amplifier and acoustic radiation control
technologies.
The system is designed, assembled and tested in Springfield, Illinois
by a dedicated group of engineers, craftsmen and music lovers.
Please take a few moments to learn more about the features and
controls of these instruments to assure full enjoyment.
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Table of Contents
Page
Registration
Owners Record 4
The Ca inetry / Our Commitment 5
6
Warranty
Setup
Placement 7
Hooking up Cables 8-9
Amplification 10-12
Speaker Connections 13-14
Technology
Behind the Design 15-16
Stereo Unfold Methodology 17
Specifications 18
Wavelet 19-25
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Wavelet Setup 26-43
Imaging & Room Correction 44-47

Owners Record
The serial num er is located on the rear of the unit. Record this num er in the
space provided elow. Refer to this when calling your dealer regarding this
product.
Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System. These handcrafted
instruments will provide you with many years of listening enjoyment.
Register your product at www.legacyaudio.com/register
Model: VALOR
Serial No: _________________________
Date of purchase: ___________________
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.
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The Cabinetry / Our Commitment
Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of VALOR’s elegant exterior lies rigid MDF construction. Interlocking
joinery maximizes the strength of the ca inet parts.
Each ca inet is impecca ly finished on all exposed surfaces with select veneers. The
exquisite finish is hand-ru ed 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
asis.
Your purchase of this product is acked y 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 transfera le.
• 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, distri utor or
dealer, or related shipping damage.
Exclusions from Warranty
The following situations or conditions are not covered y the Legacy Audio warranty:
• Accidental damage, electrical a use or associated equipment failure.
• Use inconsistent with recommended operating instructions and specifications
• Damage caused y 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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Spea er Placement
The Legacy VALOR system is designed to afford maximum flexibility in seating
arrangements and yield a large listening sweet spot by preserving directional cues and
eliminating unwanted room sound. The Legacy Wavelet, included with VALOR, allows the
speakers to operate in a variety of different positions and room setups. Assuming a
listening distance of about 10-12 feet, begin by placing the speakers about 10 feet or more
apart and 1-3 feet from the wall behind them. A slight toe-in is recommended. Because of
the unique room correction abilities of the VALOR system, adhering to the exact
recommended placement guidelines is not as critical as it is with conventional speaker
systems. Your dealer and Legacy Audio will be able to look at your room setup and
recommend the best positioning for your VALOR system.
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The ideal conductor would have negligi le resistance, inductance
and capacitance. The ta le elow shows how a few actual speaker
ca les measure up.
Ca le 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 ca le ecause its ef-
fect is well out of the audio andwidth; inductance can e de-
creased (at the expense of increased capacitance) y keeping the
conductor pair closely spaced.
How long would a ca le have to e efore inductance effects would
impinge on the audio spectrum? Approximately 300 feet of 12 gauge
would e required to esta lish a corner frequency of 20 kHz with an
8 Ohm loudspeaker. As you see, inductance is not a pro lem for
most of us.
Hoo ing Up Cables
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What a out phase shift due to frequency dependent travel times down the speaker
ca le? Measurements show that 100 Hz waves will e delayed a out 20 illionths of a
second ehind 10 kHz waves when traveling to the end of a 10 foot speaker ca le.
Since the cilia of the ear requires 25,000 times longer than this just to transmit phase
information, phase shifting is o viously not the primary concern when considering
speaker ca les.
What a out 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 ca le
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 y onehalf deci-
el.
In summary, there are no perfect ca les. The est way to approximate the ideal
would e to keep loudspeaker leads as short as is practical.
Hoo ing Up Cables
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Ideally the loudspeaker would e among the first components selected when assem ling a play-
ack system. This would allow the user to choose an amplifier capa le of delivering adequate
amounts of current into the frequency dependent load presented y 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 een 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 e under-
stood that the role of the amplifier goes eyond that of driving loudspeakers to a given sound
pressure level. The amplifier should e a le to CONTROL the loudspeakers across the entire mu-
sic spectrum. This means that parameters such as damping factor (values greater than 60 are
accepta le) and dynamic headroom should not e overlooked when comparing amplifiers.
Amplification
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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 ackground music. A
typical 45 watt per channel receiver may fill a room with the compressed
mid- and energy of “heavy metal,” ut seem to lack weight or control with
classical recordings. Some audiophiles feel that 200 watts per channel is the
are minimum to avoid audi le clipping distortion when reproducing music
at “live” play ack levels. Your Legacy speakers are designed to take advan-
tage of “high-powered” amplifiers, so don’t e afraid to put them through
their paces.
How much is too much power? Rarely is a drive unit damaged y 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 that 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%)
Amplification
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When an amplifier is una le to fulfill your loudspeakers demands, a
damaging harmonic spike may e 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 it a stract, consider the example elow.
The average acoustical power developed y a person speaking in a
conversational tone corresponds to a mere 0.00001 Watts. The power that
would e developed y the entire population of the city of New York
speaking at once would arely illuminate a single 100 Watt light ul .
Amplification
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Spea er Connections
The standard VALOR system provides four channels of amplification internally for the
subwoofers, bass drivers, midwoofer and ambient array. You will need to supply one
channel of amplification of 60 watts or greater, for the midrange and tweeter section of
each speaker. VALOR can be built with internal amplification for the entire speaker, or with
fewer internal amplifiers - should the listener prefer to use external amps. Three
professional grade 15 foot balanced XLR cables are provided for each speaker.
Wavelet processor output connections:
1 Left speaker subwoofer amplifier (internal 1000 watts)
2 Left speaker bass (internal 750 watts)
3 Left speaker midwoofer (internal 500 watts)
4 Left midrange/tweeters amplifier (user provided)
5 Right speaker subwoofer amplifier (internal 1000 watts)
6 Right speaker bass (internal 750 watts)
7 Right speaker midwoofer (internal 500 watts0
8 Right speaker midrange/tweeters amplifier (user provided)
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Spea er Connections
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Behind
with Chief Designer,
the Design
Bill Dudleston
The two 12" subs, front and bottom loaded are hefty dual voice-coil units
with aluminum cones and 30 lb. motor structures. The two 12" passives
are on the rear of the cabinets and utilize a patented dual symmetric
suspension and a damped diaphragm with 4" peak to peak travel.
Much like a directional microphone the VALOR's output is carefully shaped
into a cardioid pattern to reduce early reflections to side and rear. This
sculpting occurs as two of the 14" dipolar 'open air' drivers acoustically
combine with a third closed back driver. The central 14" is a coaxial from
Italy where a 2" polyester/titanium HF driver sets in a precision machined
aluminum throat that aligns output within the 3.5" voice coil of the woofer.
Placement is dead center of the triple 14" driver array where a horizontal
bridge with a central lens splays a pair of 4" AMT super tweeters. The
drivers' output angles trade off intensity to maintain uniform output with
varying listener positions.
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Proper understanding of the time domain finds that equalization introduces time smear .
Time vs. Phase
Another noteworthy aspect of phase, timing and polarity is you cannot compensate a time delay with any amount of phase shift.
Time delay represents an infinite number of phase shifts at an infinite range of frequencies. Similarly, a waveform cannot be truly
out of phase unless it’s a single frequency (think sine or cosine wave). Therefore, the terms “reverse polarity” and “180 degrees
out of phase” are not interchangeable when discussing music waveforms.
Music Reproduction: It’s all in the Timing
The stereo effect is a fragile illusion based on the interference of the acoustic arrivals at the left and right ear. Timing and
amplitude differences over the audible frequency bandwidth for the arrival to each ear is the basis of the head related
transfer function (HRTF).
The brain has an uncanny ability to process and triangulate acoustic source locations from these combined arrivals.
However, this is not the only way that we localize sounds. In fact, completely covering one ear does not prevent you
from localizing sound. Give it a shot.
However, the perception of sound from only one ear will radically reduce one’s ability to the map out the acoustic
environment and will make speech seemingly less articulate in even a moderately reverberant environment. It is key to
have sound arrive to both ears for the brain to selectively focus on a source and while working to subjectively reduce the
masking background noise.
There are some often misunderstood aspects of phase, polarity and time. We know we can hear the acoustic cancellations and
summations that occur when soundwaves interfere in space on the path to our ears. This interference introduces frequency
response changes. However, put on a set of headphones and flip polarity on one channel and you might be in for a surprise.
You might logically expect the bass to become thin or weak. But the brain does not process this phase difference in the way that
you might think when the waveforms have not interfered acoustically. No audible comb filtering is introduced.
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Stereo Unfold Methodology
The 3D measurement below allows us to view how a particular transient (in this case a simple clap of hands) decays over
time within the recording environment. Shown on the axis pointing left is the composite energy that is the direct plus diffuse
energy. The diffuse energy of the recording environment is shown isolated on the axis pointing right. Observe that for each
instant there is a unique tail of reverberant information for this recording channel.
STEREO UNFOLD separates the diffuse energy of each stereo channel and restores it to the natural level and time
relationship within the particular listening room. This allows the direct energy to be articulated more clearly and the directional
vectors to be analyzed by the brain as matrixed in the left, right arrivals.
New STEREO UNFOLD TechnologyTM advances
the art of music reproduction by restoring the natural
timing and level relationships of direct and late
arrivals. The spectral balance of ambient
information is returned to a natural level while early
reflections that cloud spatial information are
minimized. This is made possible by first reducing
the masking effect the listening room has on the
actual recording environment by applying the
Bohmer Room Correction which realigns acoustic
arrivals to the listeners in the time domain.
STEREO UNFOLD Technology then examines and
identifies the related ambient components following
the initial wave-front and restores this diffuse field
information to the proper level in your listening room.
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Specifications
Application: Sequential sound field reconstruction system, auto-setup
with calibrated microphone
System Type: 8 Driver, 4 way system with specialized 3 driver ambient array
Tweeter: Dual 4" AMT bridge-mounted in post convergent array
Midrange: 1.5" coaxial, titanium/polyester diaphragm, precision waveguide
Midwoofer: 14" carbon/pulp curvilinear cone, neo motor, dipolar
Bass: Dual 14" carbon/pulp curvilinear cone, neo motor in super cardioid array
Subwoofer: Dual 12" aluminum diaphragms, 480oz motors, cast frame, 3" dual 4 layer
voice coils
Passive Radiator: Dual 12" patented symmetrically loaded with 2" travel
Low Freq. Align: Hybrid cardioid pattern, dual rear radiators, down-firing sub
Inputs: 1 pr binding posts for upper range, 2 XLR balanced for bass, sub,
1 XLR for STEREO UNFOLD
Internal Amp: Subs- 1kW, Bass- 750W, Mid- 500W, Ambient Array- 500W
Recom. Amp: 1 external channel of 60 watts or greater required for high frequencies
Freq. Response: 12Hz-30kHz
Impedance: XLR 10k, binding posts 4 ohms
Sensitivity: 100.5 dB (2.83V @1m)
Crossover: 65, 800, 6k
Cabinet Size: Cabinet 67" H x 16.25" W x 18" D, Base 1.5" H x 20.75" W x 20.75" D
Weight: 288 lbs each
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True digital flexibility
SPDIF (opticalTosLink, coaxial): up to 96kHz/24bit
USB: All file formats up to 96kHz/24bit are sent directly from the PC to the Wavelet without any conversion. Higher resolution files such as PCM
and DXD can be readily played back using software such as J-River (select: Greater than 192kHz under DSP STUDIO.)
Analog Friendly
Already have a favorite DAC with a volume control? How about a big vinyl collection? Analog lovers can take advantage of balanced XLR or
unbalanced RCA inputs without concern of digital artifacts. An apodizing circuit corrects for the pre-ringing native to CODECs. Wavelet has
adequate headroom to handle these higher level signals while functioning as a crossover and compensating for room resonances. Wavelet
processes at 56 bits of depth in a domain more than one trillion times finer in resolution than that of a 16 bit CD.
The Wavelet is by design upgradable. The unit can download firmware updates directly when you choose.
While the Wavelet offers high quality/ low noise balanced inputs to accept the analog output from any SACD player, ideally one would instead
stream PCM versions of these files to the processor via the USB input. Within software such as J-River, the 1 bit DSD is converted to 64 bit PCM at
1/8 the sample rate. The total amount of data from this conversion grows by 8x, so the process is effectively lossless / perfect. The conversion is
necessary as DSD is inefficient for sophisticated DSP operations.
Wavelet
Wavelet is a control preamp, a premium DAC, a digital
crossover with time alignment for each driver section and
an acoustic correction system that will literally ‘learn’ your
room.
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PCM is the universal format of studios and digital signal processing. Most
recordings released in other formats were actually recorded in PCM format.
In the J-River software this configuration is located in the Player -> DSP Studio - Output Format section. Setup all sample rates up to and including
96kHz to “No Change”. Then set input 176,400 to output 88,000, 192,000 to 96,000 and greater than 192,000 to 96,000. DSD is converted
automatically in the software to PCM. Once you have PCM, it will be 64bit @ 352.8 kHz for DSD, and 64bit @ 705.6 kHz for DSD 2x. The option
'Greater than 192kHz' in DSP Studio > Output Format should be selected.
Why PCM?
This is a format issue and has nothing to do with the Wavelet in particular. As professional studios rely on PCM based equipment such as Pro Tools
to mix, pan and balance recordings, the vast majority of SACDs are in fact mixed in PCM, or mixed analog and recorded in PCM. They may then be
converted to DSD for SACD mastering stages. The PCM format is far more efficient where DSP is in use. Recently a newer studio format, DSD-
wide, has been developed to allow DSP operations that can be down-converted to DSD for SACD production. Pro DAWs such as SADiE are now
using this technology.
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