Legacy AERIS User manual

The Future of
Loudspeakers?
Legacy’s
Innovative
Aeris
We Pick The Best!
ELECTRONICALLY REPRINTED FROM SEPTEMBER 2013

Reinventing the Speaker
as a Hybrid System
By Anthony H. Cordesman
Photography by Cody Hamilton
Legacy
Aeris
Loudspeaker

The
Legacy Aeris is a great speaker by any standard, and I can see why
Robert Harley recommended it so highly after a listening session
at the Rocky Mountain Audio Show [Issue 230]. It is a truly full-
range speaker, with bass deep into the subwoofer region, outstanding performance at
every frequency to the limits of hearing and beyond, excellent denition, outstanding
dynamics, and a visual image that might win it an entry to the Museum of Modern Art
in New York.
It comes with separate 500-watt ampliers dedicated to each bass driver with a
crossover point low enough that you can still get the best sound out of your regular
power amplier, and it has a very well chosen mix of drivers that provides a coherent
and naturally detailed sound at any reasonable listening distance, as well as enough dipole
radiation to widen the stage and reproduce more natural ambience.
And yet, these are only half of the reasons I’m excited about the Aeris. Bill Dudleston,
Legacy’s chief engineer, has produced some other excellent speakers, but the Aeris
breaks new ground in what for me is the most important frontier in high-end audio:
It comes with the Aeris Wavelaunch processor that allows you to tailor the frequency
response to be as musically realistic as possible in a real-world listening room.
The Aeris Wavelaunch processor is an electronic unit that goes between your preamp
and amplier. It gives you up to 30 settings that you can use to adjust the sound of
the speaker to correct room-interaction problems, partly correct for over-bright, close-
miked older recording, and even—if you are fanatic enough—compensate for the
different equalization curves in LPs.
Music vs. Technology
Most experienced audiophiles will already be well aware of just how serious room-
speaker interaction problems are with more conventional speaker designs. Back in the
1960s, Roy Allison pointed out that low-frequency response in any normal listening
room will look like the Alps no matter how accurate the speaker is in an anechoic
chamber, or when measured so neareld that room interaction problems are minimized.
There are always peaks and valleys well in excess of 5dB, and almost always serious
colorations from such peaks and valleys in the midbass, where the impact is clearly
audible. There also are smaller response and reection problems that affect the rest of
the upper bass, midrange, and upper midrange. These can be corrected to some extent
by adjusting the location of the speakers and listening position and by room treatment.
I have never measured anything approaching a normal home listening room, however,
where such preventative measures eliminated such response problems.
Moreover, “at response” measurements inevitably create a musical sound that is too
hard and bright. A single response or target curve also cannot correct for the fact that
recordings differ sharply in timbre. This is particularly a problem for classical music fans
because today’s all-too-typical close-miking, while dramatic in apparent detail, produces
an upper-midrange hardness that is often a cause of listening fatigue when a speaker is
voiced for “at” response and placed in a real-world room.
Designing individual components for at measurements and then voicing them for the
best musical performance has severe limits. First, technical measures cover only a relatively
limited part of the “error budget” of problems detected by the human ear. Second, any
front-to-back walk-through in a concert hall will tell you immediately there is no one “at”
response—and that what you hear on stage is not what you hear live. Third, no one lives in
a concert hall. Even a custom-designed listening room is susceptible to signicant speaker-
room interaction problems unless the system can be equalized to deal with them.
The good news is that we have learned to be tolerant of such colorations, and speaker
designers now almost universally use the crossover in their speakers to act as a passive equal-
izer to both improve frequency response and musicality. The bad news is that audiophiles
as a breed are far less tolerant than others. This helps explain why audiophiles often talk
about speakers as the most colored component in a stereo system, why they keep changing
speakers, and why listening to a speaker in a large showroom where the speaker is precisely
matched to the room doesn’t guarantee that it will sound as good when you get it home.
No one can solve these problems
simply by changing speakers or listening
rooms. Our perceptions are not shaped
by the character of the speaker or
the listening room per se, but by the
interaction between them. Moreover, this
same interaction means no combination
of front-end gear, no matter how good,
will be voiced with the nuances that best
correct for these problems in speaker-
room coloration. As a result, the search
for the best high-end sound inevitably
means consciously or unconsciously
tailoring the system around the speaker-
room interaction problem as well as
nding the best-sounding individual
components.
In the past, most equalizers that tried to
reduce these interactions created as many
problems as they solved. Older analog
equalizers could partly solve truly critical
room problems, but were often badly
colored themselves. They also altered
dynamics, and took some of the life out
of music. Furthermore, they could only
affect timbre and not the other problems
in getting the best signal at the listening
position like phase and time.
A few pioneers have addressed such
problems with considerable success.
Richard Vandersteen, for example,
designed speakers with built-in
subwoofers that could be corrected to
deal with many real-world problems in
the bass below 100Hz without coloring
the rest of the speaker’s response. Firms
like TacT Audio and Audyssey developed
digital equalizers that address most of the
problems in response, make automatic
room corrections, and adjust some
aspects of time and phase.
Manufacturers like Rives have
improved analog equalizers to the point
where any colorations are so inaudible
that the benets outweigh the drawbacks.
As Robert E. Greene points out in a
recent review, the DSpeaker Anti-Mode
2.0 Dual Core room-equalization system
provides the rst truly affordable room-
correction system that can be inserted
into any normal home system, although
it has some limits in digital headroom and
input exibility.

The Legacy Aeris System
And here we get back to the Aeris system. The Legacy Aeris is not a speaker as much
as a system for ensuring the speaker can be adjusted to solve room-speaker interaction
problems in a musically realistic way. This is the single most important area for advances
in high-end audio, and Bill Dudleston has pushed further into this area than any designer
I’m aware of to date.
You can get a full description of the Aeris on the Legacy Web page, along with its
manual and a technical paper on its design. Its technical specication are shown below.
In sound, however, the following features dene a unique approach to speaker design:
• The signal going to the speaker is shaped by an outboard electronic unit called the
Aeris Wavelaunch processor that goes between your preamp and amplier. It provides
40-bit DSP room correction with a 24-bit CODEC and features balanced analog
inputs and outputs, level adjustment, and a USB port to interface with your computer
for optimizing performance. It not only provides room correction but also equalizes
and time-compensates the sound at the listening position.
• The Wave Launch provides up to 30 different adjustable settings for different frequency
response curves.
• The electronics provide signal routing and
processing via the 4-input by 8-output matrix
and XConsole software. Each balanced
input and output of the routing matrix
has independent level adjustment and each
output can be congured as a submix of any
of the inputs.
• The included Aeris algorithm divides the left
and right inputs with a customized high-pass
and low-pass network to form a stereo two-
way crossover. The transfer function for each
loudspeaker is pre-programmed at Legacy
for linear output from each driver, correcting
minor anomalies inherent in the combined
array. The output side of the matrix is factory
congured for Aeris, the input side (left side
of the matrix display in the software) is to
make adjustments in your room
• Software with an empirically derived
algorithm is integrated into the speaker
design to compensate for losses in low-frequency separation by increasing the ratio
of difference information in bass frequencies to more closely approximate half space
(free space with ground plane).
• The Aeris Wavelaunch processor provides the necessary amplitude and time-domain
adjustments to utilize benecial low-frequency boundary gain while reducing anti-
modal resonance. This, in turn, signicantly reduces cone excursion requirements, thus
decreasing distortion.
• Reverberation is minimized by reducing sidewall reections via the radiation nulls to the
side of the speaker. This open-air arrangement behaves as a dipole from 80Hz to 3kHz,
summing into a cardioid pattern with the bass drivers in the band from 80Hz to 200Hz.
According to Legacy listening panels in controlled trials have felt that imaging precision
and soundstage width are consistently improved over the Legacy Focus system.
• Separate 500-watt full-bandwidth ICE power amplier modules are provided for each
of the two 12" woofers to reduce intermodulation distortion and prevent the user’s
main amplier from encountering up to 40 volts of EMF back-generated by the Aura
motor system used in the woofers.
• Increased dynamic range and waveform tracing accuracy are ensured by employing
drivers with higher sensitivity and greater acceleration. The high-ux magnetic motors
of the midrange drivers are larger than those on most bass drivers.
• The cardioid-shaped radiation pattern
decreases boundary coloration from
sidewalls while also decreasing modal
sensitivity at low frequencies.
• A new dual tweeter based on the Heil
Air-Motion Transformer with a range
of seven octaves and a sensitivity of
98dB is integrated with a high-sensitivity
8" midrange.
In short, the Aeris is not so much a
speaker as a hybrid system that integrates
speaker design and electronics to a degree
I’ve never encountered before, and with
remarkable success. I’ve had some great
speakers in my listening rooms over the
years, but I have never before been able to
get around so many room-inter-
action problems. The difference
is striking.
Setup
Your dealer will do the initial
setup with you and you can listen
to music as well as test tones.
Setup is not only measured; it
is also interactive. You can hear
what is happening. You can
have the bass adjusted to be as
musically natural as possible and
then add new settings to the
equalization options the dealer
installs by using a PC or Mac
and experimenting as you listen.
You can also work with your
dealer to make sure the initial
setup does not overcorrect
or undercorrect. Every good
automated system I know of does not
try to make things truly at because this
over-equalizes the speaker and creates new
room interaction problems. But even the
best correction system with automated
setup has to be designed for all rooms, all
speakers and subwoofers, all music.
Working with the dealer to tailor the
setup while you are actually listening
to music makes a critical difference,
particularly because this is an area where
measurement alone produces uncertain
results. Every FFT and RTA measurement
system I have produces at least slightly
different measurements at the same
listening spot with the same electronics
and speaker and the same bass material.
One may be “right,” but there is no way to
know from the measurements alone.
LEGACY AERIS LOUDSPEAKER

Listening to a “Dealer” Setup
Bill Dudleston set up my review pair just as a dealer would. He measured my room and
the speaker response, and then worked with me—just as a dealer would—to ensure
the musical results were at least as good as the measured settings. He then tailored the
resulting equalization and time adjustments to provide a musically realistic at setting,
a “warm” setting, and a “recessed” setting that compensated in part for the excessive
brightness or hardness of close-miked recordings.
The results are typical of what an audiophile who does not want to create his own
settings would get, and they were exceptional from the start. The treble and upper
midrange were very extended and provided all the air I could want without hardness.
The Legacy Dual Air Motion Transformer (the Heil AMT) tweeter was smoother than
any previous Legacy I have heard, but did not soften detail in any respect. It was equal to
the best ribbons and electrostatics. I have heard speakers that rival the Aeris’ capability
to get the very best out of the best SACDs and high-resolution downloads, but I have
not heard better top-octave sound at any price.
Equally important, the transition to the lower midrange of the “titanium-encrusted”
8" midrange did not encrust any aspect of the music. Many designs I’ve heard that mix
driver technologies have at least minor sonic
anomalies in the transition areas between
them. The Aeris reproduced the midrange
of my best piano and violin recordings
seamlessly and with the kind of accuracy
that is sometime missing in even the most
expensive competition. It did equally well
with ute and clarinet and soprano voice,
reproducing the difcult passage in voice in
ways that showed the strain a given singer
was under but that added nothing in hardness
or coloration. I can’t say that it could salvage
mediocre harpsichord recordings, but it did
as accurate a job of reproducing the most
difcult instruments in the sonic repertoire as
I’ve heard, and it was as natural with cymbals
as my recordings allow.
Bach is often synonymous with great music
and bad recordings. I know—I have several
hundred recordings of Bach chamber music.
I found the Aeris did an exceptional job of
ensuring all of the detail came through without adding the kind of coloration I often
hear even from very expensive speakers. The same was true of Vivaldi and recordings
with original instruments, which often are more a curse than a blessing.
You don’t have to love classical music or the Baroque, however, to hear the Aeris’
sound quality. Try Jazz at the Pawnshop and you may well hear even more detail
than you thought was on the recording. The same is true with acoustic guitarist Bruce
Dunlap’s jazz recordings and with classic, pre-digital, naturally miked pop recordings like
young Joan Baez or Judy Collins. I don’t imply that the Aeris is not equally revealing with
modern rock and jazz recording, but it is much harder to guess at what is accurate when
the recording is not acoustic.
As for the bass, the Aeris will reproduce all of the bass detail that is actually on
even the most demanding bass spectaculars. Saint-Saëns, the deepest organ music, Kodo
drums, Telarc bass spectaculars, bass guitar, synthesizer—take your pick. What is more
important is that the Aeris Wavelaunch processor smoothed out the midbass and upper
bass and created a smooth transition into the midrange to well over 500Hz—one of the
great advantages of a system that is not automatic and not limited to frequencies below
80 or 100Hz.
The Aeris can overdrive my room at every bass frequency that is musically relevant,
although you will still need a subwoofer for earthquakes, thunderstorms, explosions,
and communication with elephants. The
Aeris has exceptional bass detail from the
deepest musical bass smoothly up into
the midrange, and yes, the claims about
reducing boundary problems are true.
The Aeris not only provides great bass
detail, it does so more evenly throughout
the room. I normally can hear and
measure far more room-boundary effects
in the bass both with music and test tones.
The dynamics are just as good as
everything else. The Aeris does not have any
sweet spot in loudness. The upper-octave
drivers and midrange do an outstanding
job with low-level detail in even the most
complex orchestral material. The same is
true at levels well over 110dB, although
my tolerance does not extend
beyond a few brief moments at
that level. I left it to friends to
abuse their favorites at sustained
listening levels with deep bass
being played at well over 100dB.
They were as impressed with
the Aeris as I was unimpressed
with their judgment.
The soundstage was roughly
the equivalent of a point source,
but broadened by the dipole
feature of the speaker and given
impact by the exceptional bass.
The Aeris holds an excellent
center image and stable overall
stage with very good width and
depth. If you want exaggerated
width you won’t get it, but you
will get what is on the recording
and get a relatively wide
listening area, as well. The driver height
of the AMT tweeter is also almost perfect
for a seated listener, and imaging depth,
width, and proportion have a realistic
balance that does not favor one good
recording’s soundstage over another. A
pleasure regardless of whether the music
is solo guitar or the new Cyrus-Beiber
version of the Ring cycle.
And if You Are Willing to Experiment
I did have two complaints. One is that the
LEDs, which can easily be switched off,
should be blue to match my electronics.
The second is that adjusting the Aeris
Wavelaunch processor can become
addictive.
Bill Dudleston did warn me that he had
clients who tried to adjust the Wavelaunch
LEGACY AERIS LOUDSPEAKER

processor for individual recordings. I
found, as I began serious listening, that I
was using my computer to do something
very close to this. I started by slightly
adjusting the frequency extremes for
older recordings and then created another
setting to deal with the excessive midrange
energy in far too many recent recordings.
My addiction grew once I found I
could tweak the sound as I listened and
come close to correcting for different LP
equalization curves, improving the sound
of poor or mediocre recordings on the y.
In the process I learned more and more
about the equalization and compensation
process. As a result, I started creating
individual settings for different types of
music.
About the only thing that saved me
from a major intervention was the fact
the Wavelaunch processor settings have
to be recalled manually (no remote yet)
to select the different curves. As a result of the immense effort in walking 30 feet,
and having to actually reach out my arm to reach the switches, I was able to bring my
addiction under control. I got my settings down to a reasonable number in addition to
Bill Dudleston’s set-up options, and restricted my tendency to tweak the recording as it
played to a few recordings that actually justify the attention.
In all seriousness, it is one thing to buy one great speaker with one set of trade-offs
and sonic nuances and another to be able to keep a at setting as a reference and branch
out to adjustments that allow you to explore a wide range of sounds and choose the most
musically realistic mixes. You will eventually have to either trust your judgment or the
dealer’s setup, but do remember there is no way you can get truly accurate response—or
the most musically natural results—from a given speaker in a given listening room unless
you do make such adjustments.
Given the fact there is no one recording standard, no one recording equalization, and
Type: Six-driver, 4.5-way loudspeaker
with integral woofer amplification and
DSP speaker/room correction
Tweeter: Dual Air Motion Transformer
System (one 4" AMT tweeter, 1" AMT
super-tweeter)
Midrange: 8" titanium-encrusted,
accordion-edge
Midwoofer: 10" accordion-edge
Subwoofer: Two 12" spun-aluminum
diaphragm with cast frame
Internal amplification: Two 500-watt
ICEpower modules for bass section
Frequency response (+/-2dB): 16Hz–30k
Impedance: 4 ohms
Sensitivity: 95.4 dB
Cabinet dimensions: 14.5" x 58" x 16"
Base dimensions: 19" x 1" x 15"
Weight: Approximately 200 lbs.
Price: $18,500; premium finish,
$19,750; exotic finish, $20,800
LEgACY AuDIO
3023 E Sangamon Ave.
Springfield, IL 62702
[phone] or [phone]
[email protected]
SPECS &
PRICINg
Comment: www.theabsolutesound.com
LEGACY AERIS LOUDSPEAKER

no predictable room-speaker interaction,
this really does make a difference and I
suspect many other audiophiles are going
to go through the same experience. Best
of all, it really is easy. If you want see
what I mean, just go to the video demos
on the Legacy Web site or on YouTube.
If you can download the videos, you have
the smarts to operate the Wavelaunch.
Compatibility and Setup
This is a complex system to install and
weighs about 200 pounds a side. Dealer
help and support will be critical, and you
need to make sure the dealer will work
with you during setup. I’d also consider
paying for a revisit after a month of
listening if you don’t want to adjust the
unit yourself.
Other than that, the Aeris’ built-in
bass ampliers simplify the load and the
speakers’ high efciency simplies their
power needs. I would not use single-
ended triodes, but any amp of over 50
watts is in the ballpark and a 100-watter
is more than safe.
I did not experience any particularly
sensitivity to speaker cables. My reference
AudioQuest and Kimber worked ne, and
so did some older model Straight Wire. I’d
go for longer interconnects and shorter
speaker cables with no trick impedances,
junction boxes, or capacitive loads.
The Wavelaunch processor beneted
from good interconnects but ordinary,
high-quality balanced cables work just ne.
I would recommend that Legacy include
higher-quality XLR connects as the ones
provided had poor lock-in features. You
may even need specialized XLR cables to
go from your preamp to the Wavelaunch.
You may also need to get a set of
adapter cables (available from Legacy)
that attenuate the signal coming from the
Wavelaunch to your amplier, a useful
device if the amplier has a high input
sensitivity. At rst I had some low-level
noise from the processor using my Pass
preamp, but zero noise with the adapter
cables—even with my ear near the drivers.
The digital headroom in the Wavelaunch
was outstanding, the software reasonably
intuitive in a form-follows-function
way. The controls were easy to operate
with both the Mac and PC after a little
experimentation, and the readouts were
clear. I would like to see an easier way to
make the cursor lock onto a given curve to
adjust it upwards, downwards, or in width,
but this seems a simple software x that
will probably be solved by the time you
read this.
I was not a fan of the speaker’s
appearance without the accessory grille
cloth, or of the AMT’s large gold logo.
I doubt many partners who are not total
audiophiles will go for the “techie” look
as well. Get the optional grille cloth. It is
magnetic and easy to remove.
Finally, Bill Dudleston tells me that
by the time you read this, there will be a
set-up CD that can be used with one of
the FFT/RTA applications for the iPad
and similar tablets to measure frequency
LEGACY AERIS LOUDSPEAKER
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response and perform other tests. I
would want to be able to make such
measurements and be able to do my own
setups. In fact, I can’t gure out why most
speaker manufacturers don’t provide such
set-up discs tailored to their speakers
and an easily affordable device like an
iPad. Not every speaker can come with a
Wavelaunch processor, but every speaker
benets from getting the bass response
right and the highs on the proper axis.
You’d still have to listen, but ignoring the
help measurements can give is as silly as
failing to listen.
Summing Up
The Legacy Aeris is a speaker that helps
redene the state of the art. Every
improvement in audio components
matters, but there are two that rethink
what an audio system should be. The
rst is integrating speaker design with
room compensation and the ability to
set up different frequency response
curves to compensate for the problems
in recordings. The second is the creation
of music servers like the Meridian Sooloos
that can store vast amounts of music in
ways that not only allow you to listen to
high-resolution digital audio but play back
the music with far more exibility, and
compare different performances, artists,
and composers with an ease that can
redene your listening experience. Great
as many stand-alone speakers are, the
Legacy Aeris is the avatar of what the next
generation of speakers should be.
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