Legacy Focus HDs

Doug,

Before buying the new Rotel I decided to give the 840C a try at home for a week. It was way too bright sounding for me. Elsewhere on Audiogon somesaid said it took a 300 hour burn-in to emliminate the brightness on the 840C. The only way to do that is buy the unit and hope for the best. You once told me if it doesn't sound good out of the box, it wont sound good after breaking it in. Did you find your unit to be bright?

Stephen, I think you made the right decision, as it is very unlikely that any break in effect would get the unit as "...way too bright," down to the level of warmth (lack of "brightness" you want).

"Bright sounding" is somewhat subjective, you know, and there is a continuum from tubby, "chocolate" sound to tight, technical sound. The Cambridge I found to be a pretty good compromise, with an emphasis on detail; yes slightly bright. A lot depends on the associated cabling and components going to the speakers. I am able to reduce what you'd call brightness quite a bit by placing two Digital cables in the system in place of interconnects. This will work in any rig. It's unorthodox, but it does a wonderful job of adding a rich, tube-like sound. The power cords are also very effective in moderating some detail/brightness.

I felt the unit was excellent as a transport and have used it with the Monarchy M24 tube DAC quite effectively. It increased the warmth dramatically, and with Digital cables was even more mellow sounding. I do like the detail that the 840C is capable of, and there are ways to make it less aggressive sounding. One DAC which has a very high degree of the tube sound is the Van Alstine UltraDac.

I still feel the Legacy 20/20's are the best speakers Legacy has ever made. Just my opinion. They dont image, and arent as revealing as some other brands, maybe thats why I loved them so much. These were speakers made for musicians. Blown away to this day. No desire to try to upgrade from these.

I am curious if anyone has compared these to the PSB Stratus Gold originals????