Owners Manual For The Signature SE Loudspeaker System
Table of Contents Registration Owners Record The Cabinetry / Our Commitment Warranty Page 3 4 5 Setup Unpacking Your Speakers Speaker Installation Hooking Up Cables Amplification Foot Installation Speaker Connections Fine Tuning 6 7 8-9 10-12 13-16 17-21 22 Technology Designer’s Notes Continuing the Pursuit of Perfection Specifications 23 24-25 26 2
Owners Record 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: Signature SE Serial No: _________________________ Date of purchase: ___________________ Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System. These handcrafted instruments will provide you with many years of listening enjoyment.
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment Handcrafted Beneath the surface of Signature SE’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.
Warranty Legacy Audio supports its customers and products with pride. We cheerfully warrant our loudspeaker 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.
Unpacking Your Speakers Your new speaker system has been very carefully packaged to insure that it travels to you safely. Each speaker is protected by a doublewall 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.
Speaker Placement To allow more flexibility in seating arrangements, your Legacy loudspeaker is designed for broad lateral coverage. Optimal listener position is actually about 5 to 15 degrees off the axis normal to the loudspeaker baffle. Assuming a listener distance of about ten feet, begin by placing the speakers approximately 7 feet apart and about 1 – 3 feet from the wall behind them. In most rooms this will afford a speaker position at least 2 feet or more from the side walls.
Hooking Up Cables The ideal conductor would have negligible resistance, inductance and capacitance. The table below shows how a few actual speaker cables measure up. Cable 12 ga. 14 ga. 16 ga. 18 ga. Ωs/ft 0.0033 0.0048 0.0079 0.0128 pF/ft 24 17 16 28 µH/ft 0.21 0.13 0.18 0.21 Capacitance is considered insignificant in each cable because its effect is well out of the audio bandwidth; inductance can be decreased (at the expense of increased capacitance) by keeping the conductor pair closely spaced.
Hooking Up Cables 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.
Amplification Ideally the loudspeaker would be among the first components selected when assembling a playback 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.
Amplification 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.
Amplification 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.
Foot Installation Step 1Carefully place your speakers on their sides Step 2 Locate the cone feet set. It will be inside the foam pieces that held the speaker in the box.
Foot Installation Step 3Place the insert adapter into the rubber cone. Step 4 Thread the cone insert into the cabinet.
Foot Installation Step 5Tighten the cone insert. If you do not want the spikes, you may stop here. Step 6 Place the leveling washer onto the cone.
Foot Installation Step 7Install the washer and cone onto the speaker. Adjust the cone until your speaker is level.
Speaker Connections The Terminal Plate At the rear of each of your loudspeakers you will find a terminal plate housing two rows of jumpered binding posts. The upper row is the input to the "satellite" portion of the speaker. The lower row is the input to the "subwoofer" portion of the speaker. When left in place, the factory installed jumper bars allow the speaker to be driven with a single channel of amplification. (If biamping, or biwiring, be sure to remove the jumper bars.
Speaker Connections Biwiring Biwiring allows one to minimize the cable losses between the amplifier and the loudspeaker. This is accomplished with a single stereo amplifier by running separate sets of cables to the satellite section and the subwoofer section from the same channel of amplification. When biwiring, we recommend the use of gold spade lugs or dual banana plugs. This can make the task much easier and safer than bare wire connections.
Speaker Connections 1. Vertical Biamping Vertical biamplification requires the dedication of a single stereo amplifier for the left speaker, and another stereo amplifier for the right speaker. This configuration improves channel separation and can improve imaging slightly. If your preamp does not have two sets of left/right outputs, you will need a pair of Y-adapters or a signal splitter, such as a dual amp balancer, which will also allow adjustment of subwoofer/ satellite input levels. 2.
Speaker Connections either the subwoofer or satellite binding posts. NOTE: This only applies to loudspeak- ers that incorporate the subwoofer and satellite section in a single enclosure. It does not apply towards the separate powered subwoofer/satellite configuration. You must always observe the polarity when connecting the speaker wire to a powered subwoofer. Active Biamping This option requires the utilization of an electronic (powered) external crossover.
Speaker Connections Also helpful is bass equalization and subsonic filtering. When cascading active filters with the existing passive filters within the speaker system, be sure to allow for adequate frequency overlap. For instance, if the passive crossover is set at 500 Hz, select a low pass corner frequency of 600 Hz and a high pass corner frequency of 450 Hz to prevent a suck out in the response at 500 Hz.
Fine Tuning To facilitate proper set-up of your speakers in a variety of room situations, we have included several heavy duty toggle switches on the terminal plate, located on the back of the loudspeaker. All switches in the “up” position represent the “anechoic flat” position.
Designer’s Notes (From Bill Dudleston) My goal with the Signature SE design was to provide a high level of musical accuracy while providing solid dynamics and extended frequency range - all in a footprint of one square foot or less. The 10” woofers were paired to reduce distortion while the sealed alignment couples to the floor boundary to further enhance extension. The 7” midrange driver is mounted in a separate enclosure and filled with polyester fiber to reduce and dampen internal reflection.
Continuing the Pursuit of Perfection (Legacy Air Motion Ribbons) LEGACY Audio has been benefiting from low mass ribbon and leaf drivers since 1984. I have a collection of ribbon tweeters from the world over and always loved the way good ribbons reproduced the swishing sound of brushes on a snare- and the simple honesty in the reproduction of strings without imparting an edgy ringing effect found in most tweeters. There’s just something right about the sound – like a C12 mic capsule.
Continuing the Pursuit of Perfection (Legacy Air Motion Ribbons) The recent Aeris loudspeaker development gave me the opportunity to tool a new AMT folded ribbon tweeter to integrate with the smoothest high efficiency 8” midrange built to date. I have yet to find a driver to challenge it. This silky 8” mid has a range of 7 octaves with nary a wrinkle in the response, yet a sensitivity of 98 dB.
Specifications System Type: 5 drivers, 4 way Tweeter: 1” AMT neo ribbon, folded Kapton diaphram Midrange: 4" AMT neo ribbon, folded Kapton diaphram Midwoofer: 7” Rohacell reinforced Silver Graphite, cast frame Woofer: 2 x 10" spun aluminum diaphragm, rubber surround, long throw suspension with cast frame Low Frequency Alignment: Sealed, Adjustable Damping Frequency Response: 22Hz – 30 kHz Impedance: 4 Ohms Sensitivity: 92.
WEEE Compliance CE Declaration of Conformity Product Disposal— Certain international, national and/or local laws and/or regulations may apply regarding the disposal of this product. For further detailed information, please contact the retailer where you purchased this product or the Legacy Audio Distributor in your country. A listing of Legacy Audio Distributors can be found on the Legacy Audio website www.legacyaudio.com or by contacting Legacy Audio at: 3023 E. Sangamon Ave.
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