Has anyone listened to Legacy speakers?

I own a pair of Legacy Whispers and have discovered many good and bad things about all of Legacy's speaker offerings and their design guidlines.

The good news:
Legacy's speakers seem to offer more bang for the buck in terms of thier quality of drivers, than anyone else out there. Additionaly, when you buy Legacys used, you really seem to be getting the most bang for the buck. I know of no other speaker manufacturer that offers more air moving bass
ability for the money.

The bad news:
Legacy has really blown it on a couple of design errors, which drastically effect the overall performance of their speakers. Most of their speakers are wired with horrible sounding green wiring, that looks like the original monster cable wire from 1981! (except in a green semi transparent jacket). I personally purchaced some of this wire from Legacy, to determine how it may be limiting my own personal speakers. To say that it was worse sounding than I ever imagined, is an understatement. With this in mind, you can tell that Legacy does not do their homework to refine their speaker designs.Additionaly, they are also a bit behind on understanding High end digital. Many of their shows, and even at their factory they demo their speakers with an extremely meager sounding Pioneer CD player, that has all of the typical difital problems (grainy highs, limited sound stage depth and mechanical sounding bass). They also use that horrible Green wire, hooked up to their speakers.

The above aformentioned oversights leads me to believe that Legacy is not truley aware of high end sound capabilites, and the various sonic refinements associated with carefull component and wire selection .

As a tweaker though, you can really "go to town" (as stated in another post) with a Legacy designed speaker. I think of it as a unfinished "platform", which with the design oversights fixed, cannot be touched at the price which they cost. (Remember, the drivers and the cabinets are first rate, so you have alot of "good" to work with).

This is my opinion and experience with Legacy. Think of them as good guys that just could produce killer products,
if they just were a little more informed.

Thanks for the honest "review". Given the fact that you are an owner of their top of the line model, i would consider your point of view to be worth more than someone who does not own any of their products ( me, for example ). The "funny" thing is that both of our thoughts and findings run parallel to each other almost to a "T".

Something else that i forgot to mention is that the models that i have worked on / looked at had the mids and woofers "flush mounted" but the tweeters and supertweeters weren't. I found this VERY strange and believe that correcting this could REALLY smooth out the upper mids and treble. This may be what is causing some of the "peakiness" or "glare" that some people complain about with this product line.

Out of curiousity, have you rewired the speakers internally and if so, what did you use ??? Sean
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Ehider,
Just wondering, what type of wire did you change to in your speaker? If you did change wire, what sonic changes did you notice. I own a pair of their Focus and was thinking of upgrading the internal wire myself.

I live in Chicago and went down to Springfield and visited the factory before my purchase. I own the Legacy Whispers. I have owned the Talon Audio Khorus, (Highly Moded) Infinity RS1b's, Speaker Art Clefs, Rush Sound Monument II's and various others at one point or another. I have also had the latest Avant Garde Duos (Horns) in my home for an Audition as well as listening to he Avalon Eidelons. I have also listened to the Martin Logan Statements(I think the 1st version of that speaker), Wilson Watt Puppies (5.1), Willson Baby Slamms (the one that costs $38,000.00).

Ok, all that to say that no other speaker I have ever come across can communicate the event like the Whispers. It is absolutely the finest speaker I have ever heard, and by a HUGE MARGIN. A buddy of mine had the $70,000 Wilsons delivered to his home for a live in demo, and then the Whispers. The Wilsons went back to the dealer and he now owns the Whispers, this is in fact where I first heard them. They are dynamic like no speaker I have heard before. Now having said all that, I will add that I also purchased 2 of the Legacy LFXtreme subs for very low end bass reinforcement. The Whispers go down to 22HZ, but without the subs, they wont kick you in the chest. The system sound so much like live music now it is downright puzzling. The guy I have mentioned is very wealthy and will jump on a plane in a minute to audition a sound system (around the world if need be, and has done so many times), he has listened to about 75 so far with everything from JM Labs Grand Utopias to probably anything else you can name. his statement was that nothing he has come accross can touch the Whisper. Check Legacy out, they are for real, they just don't advertise in Stereophile or pay off reviewers like some of the unamed bigger monikers out there.

Best regards,

Mike

I have a five-speaker system with two Signature IIIs (front), two Mists (rear), one Silver Screen (center) and one Point One (sub), all powered by a B&K AVR507 Series 2 receiver. It required almost two years of listening to find the speakers I wanted and really liked. I burned a CD with various classical music tracks...movements of symphonies and string quartets as well as classical organ music...to use in listening to different kinds of speakers. The string quartets provided the most useful music to use in auditioning speaker systems because with only four instruments it was fairly "easy" to tell if the speakers sounded like the real thing. The overall system sound is absolutely awesome. Although I am a classical music buff, the most dramatic recording for demonstrating my system to friends is a surround sound DVD-Audio album from the Eagles called "Hell Freezes Over." The system also sounds terrific with surround sound for movies. One of the first movies I listened to was one of the later Terminator movies. The movie begins with a picture of the earth from space and a narrator talking about how machines took over the earth. I had the volume too low to hear the narrator well so I turned it up. About this time a rocket streaked toward the earth and exploded! The subwoofer had so much power that my wife, who was in another room, thought we had just had a earthquake. So, while the system is very musical it also can play pop music and sound tracks exceedingly well. I just wish I had space to use two more Sig III for my rear channels.