legasy Silhouette User manual

Owners Manual For The
Loudspeaker System
Silhouette

2
Table of Contents
Page
Registration
Owners Record 3
The Cabinetry Our Commitment 4
Warranty 5
Setup
Speaker Installation 6
Hooking Up Cables 10-11
Amplification 12-14
Silhouette On Wall Installation 7
Silhouette Pro On Wall Installation 8
Silhouette Pro In Wall Installation 9
Speaker Connections 15
Technology
Developing a Reference Class On-Wall 16-19
Specifications 20

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Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System. These hand-
crafted instruments will provide you with many years of listening en-
joyment.
Owners Record
Model: Silhouette
Serial No: _________________________
Date of purchase: ___________________
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.
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 Silhouette’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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5
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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Speaker Installation
There are several ways to install Silhouette, depending on which version you are using.
Select the wall locations for the Silhouette system. Try to create a 60 degree angle
horizontally between the speaker pair, relative to the listening position. This
usually results in a 10 foot horizontal spread between the speakers, center to center.
Recommended mounting height for the loudspeaker puts the wall bracket screw holes
at 61.5" off the floor. This may be adjusted slightly to acommodate the sight lines of the
monitor."
If you have any doubts about your ability to properly install in/on-wall loudspeakers,
you should consider the services of a custom installer. If you plan to install them
yourself, always use high quality tools to save time and make the installation go more
smoothly. Determine the final location of both left and right speakers before drilling or
cutting any holes since changes to one speaker may affect the other either
aesthetically or acoustically. Look for pipes, wiring or any other conflicting material
that might be damaged before beginning the installation.
Silhouette On Wall Installation: Page 7
Silhouette Pro On Wall Installation: Page 8
Silhouette Pro In Wall Installation: Page 9
Precautions

Silhouette On Wall Installation
7

Silhouette Pro On Wall Installation
Silhouette Pro Rear
When mounting Silhouette Pro flat on the wall, use the included pair of Z- Clips as shown with the longer bar clip
anchored to wall studs.
8

Silhouette Pro In Wall Installation
After positioning the speakers, use a
drywall saw to cut an opening slightly
larger than the 12.15" x 35.5" cabinet
body.
The outer baffle is 37" long and 17.5"
wide. Six mounting screws are to be
installed through the center of the
grille cups into the wall framing.
Care should be taken to avoid
electrical or plumbing before cutting
into wall or installing screws into
studs. 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 Up Cables
10

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 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 Up Cables
11

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.
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 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 advan-
tage 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 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
13

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.
Amplification
14
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 Terminal Plate
peaker Connections
15
At the rear of each of your Silhouette loudspeakers you will find a terminal plate housing one pair of binding posts.
Hook the high level speaker inputs from the main amplifier to the pair of binding post. Be sure that you observe polarity
when making the connections. The positive (+) terminal of the amplifier should be connected to the positive terminal of the
loudspeaker. The negative (-) terminal of the amplifier should be connected to the negative terminal of the loudspeaker.

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Developing a Reference Class On-Wall
The key to this three-way is the crossover frequency
between the 10” and 7” is established precisely where
the wall dip occurs when a woofer is boundary plane
mounted. The dip is the result of an out of phase
relationship at that frequency between driver and
boundary. Attached is a simple illustration of the adverse
effects of a single near boundary.
As professional studios became more compact with modern digital workstations, we
began getting requests for reference grade monitors that could be placed flat against
walls. They needed to be as dynamic as premium floor monitors, low in and profile, and
fire above the workstation desktop height.
Wall speakers are typically utilitarian. Limited by their placement, physical size and build
quality,the sonic results of wall speakers usually qualify them as restricted range surround
channels or background music.
The development of the Silhouette speaker required a new 10” bass driver with a powerful
motor design, yet only 3.5 inches of total depth. A rugged new 10” passive radiator with
compliance optimized to extend response in the compact enclosure. The 4”AMT ribbon and
the 7” silver/graphite midrange/midbass is the same used in several of our towers such as
Focus SE and the Signature SE.
The key to this three-way is the crossover frequency between the 10” and 7” is established
precisely where the wall dip occurs when a woofer is boundary plane mounted. The dip is the
result of an out of phase relationship at that frequency between driver and boundary. The
next page shows a simple illustration of the adverse effects of a single near boundary.

Developing a Reference Class On-Wall
In summary, the natural dip in frequency response that wall mounted speakers suffer is the
result of phase difference between the direct radiation and the boundary reflection at the
listener. Legacy employs the additional filter poles created by this acoustic phenomenon
within the crossover strategy to advantage, thereby greatly reducing the dip while reducing
the electrical losses of conventional filter poles.
As we always pair match when tuning and verify all product performance when it leaves the
factory. See frequency response attached. Please note how consistent the Silhouettes are
with each other.
However, since we know the user is attaching them to a boundary, we then can factor the
natural woofer phase accumulation in this problematic region as an integral part of the low
pass filter of the 10” and high pass filter of the 7”. Customarily a second-order high pass and
low pass filter electrical filter (crossover) are 180 degrees out of phase at the center
frequency.
As a result, manufactures usually just flip the polarity on the high pass side to smooth the
summation (often neglecting polar tilt and the time domain). In our wall mounted case,
however, the wall dip is introducing additional poles to each side of the center frequency.
The side benefit is the 7” driver polarity no longer needs to be flipped. The acoustic
summation now has an in-phase characteristic similar to an even-order Linkwitz-Riley
network.
17

In summary, the natural dip in frequency response that wall mounted speakers suffer is the
Developing a Reference Class On-Wall
18
result of phase difference between the direct radiation and the boundary reflection at the
listener. Legacy employs the additional filter poles created by this acoustic phenomenon
within the crossover strategy to advantage, thereby greatly reducing the dip while reducing
the electrical losses of conventional filter poles.
As always, we pair match when tuning and verify all product performance when it leaves
the factory.
See the frequency response attached on the next page.
Please note how consistent the Silhouettes are with each other.

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Developing a Reference Class On-Wall
On a personal level I have been curiously surprised by the depth of image and precision the
Silhouette provides. I honestly did not realize that an on-wall could be this convincing
spatially. Hmmm. Learn something new every day.
-Bill Dudleston
President, Chief Engineer

Frequency Response:
pecifications
ensitivity (Room [email protected]): 92 dB
Crossover Frequency: 250, 2.5k
Inputs:1 pair binding posts, recessed cup
Low frequency alignment:10" passive radiator
42Hz – 28kHz
ystem Type: Three way, passive radiator
Mounting: Wall mount with bracket
System Directivity:60 degrees horizontally, 45 degrees
vertically
Tweeter: 4” AMT
Midwoofer: 7" Silver/Graphite
Bass: 10" long throw low-profile motor
Dimensions (H x W x D): 36.5” X 16.5” X 5.125”
Weight: 54 lbs
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