Legacy Xtreme HD User manual

Owners Manual For The
Xtreme HD
Subwoofer System

2
Registration
Owners Record 3
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment 4
arranty 5
Setup
Unpacking Your Speakers 6
Speaker Placement 7-8
Hooking Up Cables 9-10
Speaker Connections 11-14
Fine Tuning 15-17
Technology
Designer’s Notes 18
Specifications 19
Table of Contents
Page

3
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: Xtreme HD
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 en-
joyment.
Owners Record

4
Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of Xtreme HD’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. e 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”.
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment

5
Legacy Audio supports its customers and products with pride. e 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

6
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. 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.
Un acking Your S eakers

7
Since the human ear is rather poor at localizing radiation frequencies
below 125 Hz, good results may be obtained in a variety of room
placements. Careful adjustment of the convenient front panel controls will
lead to seamless transition.
Low frequency reinforcement occurs whenever woofers are placed near
room boundaries. The distance from the walls, floor and ceiling
correspond to the wavelengths of the frequencies, which will reflect in
phase and thus reinforce bass output. Therefore, the actual dimensions of
your listening room play a definite role in what ultimately arrives at your
ear. In fact, rooms tend to have their own set of favored frequencies.
e can calculate what the most strongly reinforced frequencies in a room
will be by the formula shown below:
Resonant Frequency = (1130 ft/sec) / (ft. between boundaries x 2)
For example, a room with an 8 ft. ceiling height has a strong resonance at:
(1130 ft/sec.) / (8 ft. x 2) = 71 Hz.
S eaker Placement

8
Now, while such reinforcement might actually be beneficial at very low
frequencies, excessive excitation can cause “overhang” or a droning effect
at mid-bass frequencies. A way to minimize excitation of these
resonances is to place your subwoofer asymmetrically relative to room
boundaries. For instance, if the subwoofer is 2 ft from one corner wall,
then place it 1.5 ft to 3 ft from the other.
Placing the subwoofer in a corner will reduce the radiation angle and thus
increase efficiency. It will also excite the maximum number of room modes
and decrease distortion.
A best case scenario is to actually use two subwoofers, one to each side
of the listener. The subs should be placed 90° out of phase with each
other. This improves spaciousness and bass uniformity, with a reduction in
room level peaks.
S eaker Placement

9
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

10
hat 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.
hat 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 one half 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