Legacy Classics and bottom end?

The original Legacy 1's had a switch that controlled the upper bass region. This came into play at about 180 Hz if i remember, which was too high to do any good. Most of the larger Legacy's have a big peak centered at appr 100 - 110 Hz, save the Whisper. It is this huge peak centered quite high in frequency that makes them sound bloated. Then again, without that big peak, the speakers would not have anywhere near the extension ( -3 dB point ) that they claim.

Out of curiosity, what did you use to plug the ports?

As to the treble response, it isn't all that great either. Most of them have a large peak ranging from somewhere around 8 KHz to 12 KHz or so. The thing is, without this peak, the speakers wouldn't sound balanced due to the tremendous bottom end bloat. In effect, Legacy has built in somewhat of a "flying V" type equalization i.e. boosted bass and treble without having to use tone controls or equalization devices. This keeps the "audiophiles" happy because they aren't using "tone controls", yet they get all the boom and sizzle that they desire without having to resort to Cerwin-Vega's. If you doubt this, look at the Stereophile review of the Focus 20/20's and you'll see both the bass and treble peaks that i speak of. The Classic's, Legacy 1's and Signature's also share a similar bass peak with the Classic's and Legacy 1's sharing a similar treble peak. The Signature's are noticeably softer on top.

Some of the "sizzle" comes from their choice of drivers, oher parts come from how the drivers are mounted on the baffle. What i could never figure out is why Legacy would countersink ( "flush-mount" ) the woofers and lower mids but not the upper mids and tweeters, where it really counts. As such, one can typically help reduce the "shouty" treble response of these speakers by covering the upper baffle area with felt and double sided "hem" tape. Both the felt and hem tape, which can be found at any local fabric store. Simply cut the felt to shape around the drivers and tape it in place on the baffle. The improvements in treble clarity, imaging and focus should be instantly noticeable. Sean
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sean....I pluigged the ports with hard foam. I have not had the "sizzle" you had or the flying V effect. What I do and have is room/speaker placement .... sub effect increase. If you remember the old B&W 801's they suffered even more than my classics......and for total sound the classics "to me" fit my liking. My classics do have a bass switch. But not one I think is "enough" of a change. I love my speakers and I am only talking about a 5% "desire" to make them "right for me". Plus I have never been in a high end home or store. So I am limited. I do use Genelec near fields and adjustable sub in my home studio. I have also been to a high end studio. So I have some "idea" what I am after. I also think? sub sound 80 and below are a pain to fine tune.

Take a thick wool sock, ball it up and then completely wrap it up in cellophane wrap aka "saran wrap". Shove this into the port with the open side of the saran wrap firing out of the port. The thick foam that you are using will only change the port tuning, not seal it. The saran wrap will act as a more efficient air-tight seal and the sock will provide enough mass to keep the woofers from forcing the seal out of the port via internal pressures. If you don't get it wedged in there tight enough though, the pressures within the ports can launch the plastic wrapped sock out of the ports much like a cannon launches the load placed within it. Sean
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I have been using a Classics for about 6 months now. The bass in my situation seems tight and deep. They have been updated with the newest crossovers. I have never found the bass bloated. It is reasonably quick and tuneful. Cable is a biwire JPS superconductor and I am powering with Manley amps @ 60 watts in triode (KT 90 tubes). I have found solid state with these speakers less to my liking. By all means turn off the rear facing tweeter-I think it really degrades the soundstaging. It might be workable if it had a volume control like the Von Schweikert VR 3.

Placement & room acoustics I think is the real key. I have mine almost 6 feet from the back wall and 4 feet from side walls. I am fortunately able to do this in my listening area which is carpeted and fairly large (16' X 22'). This placement results in a deep soundstage with excellent imaging.

Is it possible the room is just to small for the speaker? Is the abundant bass overpowering room acoustics?

Entrope brings up a good point, but in kind of an indirect manner. That is, specific rooms can really compound specific loudspeaker non-linearities. That is, placing a speaker with large frequency response deviations in output inside of a room that happens to create peaks or dips at the same appr frequencies can really bring such problems to the forefront. Even if the room itself doesn't reinforce the speaker response deviations, certain speaker placements within the room itself can do so.

Not to harp on the subject, as i've already pointed this out amply in the past, but different Legacy models have been shown to demonstrate large bass peaks in different reviews as conducted by different magazines in different testing facilities. The fact that the peaks are almost identical in amplitude and center frequency tells me that this is part of their "house sound" rather than just some random coincidence.

The fact that all speaker designers know that a speaker of this type will be used in a room, and all rooms share some similarities in terms of bass reinforcement, tells me that the speaker is either purposely designed for this type of response or is a highly under-designed product. To top it off, Legacy also offers their Steradian processor, which is meant to deal with bass related problems, so they must at least be aware of the situation.

By blaming the room for what is basically a speaker design problem, they can get away with selling an expensive add-on accessory to those that crave a more linear output and make even more money at the same time. Obviously, this is just my point of view, so take it for what it is worth. Sean
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