 
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
|
|
Audio Asylum Thread Printer Get a view of an entire thread on one page |
For Sale Ads |
Some is selling these in the newspaper for $1800 used today. Are they worth this?
Follow Ups:
I am with Sean. Legay is suck and too big company. Cuhillo
If they are for sale in a local newspaper, surely the seller would be able to give you an audition. That way, you could make up your own mind.Think about this scenerio. You are told that two sets of speakers are available for you to audition, only you will not be allowed to see them -- just hear them. You are blindfolded and led into a room. The host plays several pieces of music that you are familiar with and switches back and forth between the two sets of speakers. After some time, you choose one of the speaker systems as sounding the best of the two. Your blindfold is removed and you are handed spec sheets for each of the two sets of speakers.
The system you chose doesn't measure as well as the one you didn't choose.
Do you:
a) change your mind because specs are more important than what your own ears tell you
or
b) hand the spec sheets back to the host and reassert your opinion?
First of all, a poor speaker can be made to sound "better" than a good speaker in any given room or system. The use of non-linear / coloured support components, less than optimal speaker placement, very specific room acoustics, etc... can all come into play and lead one down the "wrong" path. That is, unless they approach the situation with some form of objectivity and know what they are dealing with.Having said that, most people don't know what to listen for or have the tools to perform "proper" testing, so they end up buying gear based on less than optimum auditioning conditions. That's why Agon, Audioshopper, Audioweb and Ebay are loaded with "old gear" that people are constantly "upgrading" from. They thought it was good when they first heard it, but later found out it didn't really measure up to their needs and / or expectations. Sean
>
The "accurate" speaker doesn't sound better because the other components aren't good enough.The "accurate" speaker doesn't sound better because they can't be positioned where they'll sound the best.
The "accurate" speaker doesn't sound better because the room is bad.
The "accurate" speaker doesn't sound better because the listener doesn't know what to listen for.
What speakers do you own?
Having said that, the system is only as good as the weakest link. Using one piece of gear to cover up / band-aid the deficiencies of another piece of gear only results in yet another colouration that needs to be "balanced out". One can keep doing this and adding new band-aids as they change gear or strive to buy gear that is as "transparent" as possible to start off with and cut down on how many band-aids are needed, if needed at all.As to what speakers i own, i own well over a dozen different sets and most all of them are either highly modified or not commercially available at all.
My main system consists of a line array of electrostatic tweeters, line array of electrostatic mids and multiple dipolar push-pull low Q sealed woofers per side. These are actively crossed over and driven by six mono-blocks totaling 2400 wpc rms.
My HT system consists of several large towers that have been heavily modified. These are used for the mains and surrounds, are sealed and of a low Q design. Each of them are four ways with 5 dynamic drivers per cabinet. The center is a custom built piece using drivers that match the mains and surrounds. I also have dual subs here. This is driven by 6400 watts RMS.
My home office speaker system uses a single omni-directional full range driver per cabinet and is fed by 800 wpc mono-blocks.
My bedroom system uses stand mounted time-aligned two way monitors with dual down firing subs. This system is actively crossed between the monitors and the subs. Both the monitors and the subs have their own 100 wpc amp driving them.
My basement system uses large heavily modified horns fed by a tube amp. These started off as very well known commercially available horns that i ended up redesigning / rebuilding. They bare little resemblance to the originals other than the fact that they have the same drivers in them.
Besides those, i have several other speakers that i'm not currently using. Some are very simple designs while others are so advanced that a well known EE that frequents these forums needed a couple of months to figure out how the crossover worked. He told me that it was the most advanced "series" crossover that he had ever seen. Others speakers that i have but aren't currently using operate in a manner that are quite unique and are covered by patents.
As you can see, i have "flat" speakers, large dynamic boxes, full range omni's, time-aligned monitors, horns, etc... along with several other misc designs. All of them can be made to work well. That is, if one takes the time to design them properly and impliment that design with reasonable care. Even with all of that, none of them do everything "perfect" nor could they in every type of installation. That is why i have several different systems. Each is tailored to the specific type of listening that i do in that specific area with the acoustics of that listening environment taken into account. After all, someone that doesn't take the listening environment into account when buying or designing speakers is in for a lot of headaches. Sean
>
Basement = Klipsch Heresey's
HT = Acoustic research AR-9's and AR-90's
Office = Ohm F's
The Ohm's and the AR's are correct. As mentioned, these are all modified with the AR's being far from stock. The Ohm's are closer to stock but have had several modifications that have altered the performance of these speakers quite noticeably. For the record, I have two sets of F's and i love them dearly.As far as the basement system goes, I do have a set of Heresy's, but i'm not currently using them. The horns in current use started life as La Scala's but bare little resemblance to the original product. Sean
>
My Father has owned multiple Legacy speakers for many years. As such, he's been a devoted fan of Bill Dudleston's work and has always been proud to own speakers that Bill himself designed and built by hand. My Father and i have argued ad-infinitum about these speakers many, many, many times. That's because i have always thought that they were junk. The bass on the majority of these speakers and most of their larger products is horribly bloated, out of control and lacks any type of pitch or definition. On top of this, the treble response is quite bright and even piercing. My Dad's response to all of my chiding was always to hand me any one of several reviews that just raved full-tilt about Legacy's. My response to him was that reviewers are obviously either deaf and / or bought & paid for.Having said that, Legacy finally submitted a product to a review publication that actually measures products and publishes the results. For the record, i'm speaking of Stereophile and the review of the Focus 20/20 that they recently published. According to the frequency response charts that they published ( and Legacy made no effort to refute ), these speakers have a huge 3 octave bass plateau that starts at 300 Hz and levels out at 40 Hz with a +7 dB peak centered at 100 Hz. Combine this with a +4 dB peak at 6 KHz, a -3 dB dip at 9 KHz and another big +8 dB peak at appr 12 KHz. Factor in horrible transient response and you've got a good idea as to what Legacy thinks is "state of the art" performance at the $5000+ mark. Needless to say, Stereophile basically verified, using calibrated test equipment, the "boom" and "tizz" that my "educated ears" had been complaining about for years.
As you might have guessed, my Father had read the text of the review and was laughing at me. Paul Bolin raved about these speakers, much like those at Sensible Sound and several other mags before him had done. My Dad had a helluva grin on his face. That was until we went over the actual measured performance of the speakers and he saw how poorly they actually performed.
After all of these arguments and the proof for my side of the argument finally coming home to roost, my Brother and i decided to pull my Dad's mains apart and go to town on them. Bare in mind that my Father was not aware that we were going to do this or he would have had a fit. After all, how could his two "numb-skull" sons know more than a professional loudspeaker manufacturer that has garnered tons of rave reviews? As such, we literally "snuck in" and did MAJOR surgery on his Legacy mains while he wasn't home.
All i will say is that these speakers were built and designed by someone that was basically clueless. This is not to mention the massive inconsistencies from speaker to speaker that we encountered while inspecting the pair. I could go into details here, but that would take quite a while. As i mentioned previously, Bill Dudleston himself had hand assembled and tuned these specific speakers. As such, my Brother and i didn't know whether to laugh or cry at what we found.
After hearing the difference in performance, my Father was overwhelmed to say the least. He could not believe how much better the speakers sounded in every single aspect of performance. Needless to say, he wanted to know what we did to improve the performance so drastically. After explaining what we did and showing him before / after pictures, he couldn't understand why they weren't built like this to begin with. The funny part is that, given that we were stuck with the specific constraints of having to work with the existing cabinets and drivers supplied, i know for certain that we could have done much better on our own if we were starting from scratch.
My Father just called me today to say "THANK YOU" once again for modifying his multiple thousand dollar Legacy speakers. He's spent more time listening to his system in the last two days than he has for quite some time. Not only was this an ear opening revelation to him, i'm sure that it was a real eye opener in terms of how poorly stock Legacy products really perform. This is true regardless of what the reviewers tell you now and had told him before.
With the above in mind, i would avoid Legacy speakers. That is, unless you can get them dirt cheap and don't mind doing a lot of modifications to them yourself or paying someone else to do so. In stock form, most of them are over-priced & under-designed pieces of junk. Personally, i find them comparable to older Cerwin Vega models. Sean
>
It's always a pleasure to read what you have to say.
I'd sure love to get a visual on the surgery you performed on these monsters! :)
The only pics that i took were of the crossover network. NOBODY would believe the differences in how things were done before & after unless they saw it for themselves. In my Father's own words, it looks as if there was a parts count reduction of appr 60%. The original looked like a clustered jumble ( it was ) that covered the entire board ( it did ) and the new version looks sparse with tons of wide open space. Having said that, we didn't change the circuit one iota, only optimized what was already there. Attention to detail allowed us to go from 61 connections on each crossover board down to 23!!! To be fair though, i have seen newer versions of these crossovers and they are much better than what they used to be.If there is enough interest here, i'll try to list the problems that we found and how we went about correcting them. I'm not much of a puter geek and don't really know how to upload pics from my digital camera to the net, but i'll see what i can do. It may take a bit though as i've got some other projects that need attention pronto.
As a side note, my thoughts are that Bill Dudleston was trying to emulate the designs and performance of Audio Research towers that were produced in the very late 1970's and early / mid 1980's, but with "more efficient" vented designs. In terms of frequency response linearity, tonal colouration and forethought of design, he failed miserably. Sean
>
Not pro or con Legacy designs (not having heard any to date), but it is quite interesting to here the physical details.
I heard the Legacy Whispers at a dealer's, driven by Conrad Johnson electronics, and they sounded to me just as you described, especially that "bloated" sound. This was after .Tony Cordesman's rave review. I had assumed it was a poor dealer setup. Live and learn.
This specific model sounds the least like a "Legacy" in terms of bass output & definition. While it is quite possible that it could have been the speaker / equipment combo creating the "thud", my guess is that it also had a lot to do with poor placement. As far as i know, C-J does not make any "high current" amps and this type of design is NOT optional with multiple large woofers. As far as the "sizzle" goes, many Legacy models share the same high frequency components. Given that the same people are designing them, i would assume that their crossovers and frequency responses share similiar attributes. Sean
>
I remember reading Cordesman's review of these behemoths in TAS. He said that they would benefit from a subwoofer. If I'm buying a pair of speakers with eight 15" woofers, I hope to God I don't feel the need to add a sub!
If you are talking about the Whispers, IIRC they have 4 free-air 15" woofers for a dipole effect.Because of that loading, they lack serious punch under 100hz.
You'd think for over $13k, and a speaker that big they could make great bass.
Buuut NOOOO.
IMO, they Do need a sub or two.
Dipolar or omni-directional bass can be phenomenally good. The biggest problem with obtaining optimum bottom end performance boils down to speaker placement and room dimensions, even more-so than with any other types or designs. This is due to the increased amount of cancellation taking place. If you've got a big enough room and / or are willing to work with the constraints of the room and speaker placement, this type of design is hard to beat in terms of sheer "musicality" and "natural presentation". That is, if the design and product used are up to snuff to begin with. Poorly implimented designs using low grade products can't be made up for in any situation, no matter how hard you try. Sean
>
FWIW, the speakers were being driven by CJ's most powerful SS amp.
Thanks for the clarification. With that in mind, high power doesn't equate to high current or fast response times. With speakers like this, both are required. That is, if you want good sound.Having said that, don't be fooled by brand names, advertising or reviews. Some products are infinitely better than others. This is true even though they don't have the reputation or price tag. Sean
>
"Legacy finally submitted a product to a review publication that actually measures products and publishes the results. For the record, i'm speaking of Stereophile and the review of the Focus 20/20 that they recently published. According to the frequency response charts that they published ( and Legacy made no effort to refute ), these speakers have a huge 3 octave bass plateau that starts at 300 Hz and levels out at 40 Hz with a +7 dB peak centered at 100 Hz. Combine this with a +4 dB peak at 6 KHz, a -3 dB dip at 9 KHz and another big +8 dB peak at appr 12 KHz. Factor in horrible transient response and you've got a good idea as to what Legacy thinks is "state of the art" performance at the $5000+ mark. "Isn't this definative proof that the press lies? They didn't exactly damn the 20/20 like they should have. This pile of obvious flaws is unacceptable in a speaker over $2k let alone $5k. How on earth can anyone defend stereophile after this? It is proof that legacy simply makes designs, not well engineered, accurate and musical products. This is once again, proof that magazines will not call a spade a spade.
It also underscores the power of the primacy of print. This review isn't totally worthless, it did point out how poorly designed the 20/20 are in terms of high fidelity. But the word picture did not say the same thing.Bottom line: the 20/20 are expensive thump and sizzle.
"Isn't this definative proof that the press lies? They didn't exactly damn the 20/20 like they should have."They didn't exactly "damn" the speakers??? HELL NO!!! They said that they were "the finest value that i have ever encountered in high end audio"!!! On top of that Paul Bolin went on to use these speakers as a reference when reviewing other products. I don't know about you, but at least J-10 picked gear that was at least well designed to drool over. Sean
>
Now does your dad respect your opinion? Also did he ever go listen to your system?
Given the circumstances, I would have to imagine that he has a lot more respect for what i tell him about audio now. After all, he's finally heard the proof for himself of what i've been telling him for years now. As mentioned though, he just didn't want to believe that "the master" that had gotten so much good press could have built and sold him something that was less than optimum. That is why we had to resort to the "stealth" method of modifications that we did. Once it was done though, the results have spoken for themselves.Now that we are on the same page with his speakers, i'm sure that he'll expect us to "fix" his center and surround speakers, which are also Legacy models. While these are much smaller and simpler, they still share some of the same design deficiencies that the larger mains displayed prior to modification. The scary thing is that the center and surrounds were purchased several years after the mains were, so they hadn't learned much about how to design & build speakers in the process. Needless to say, we will take care of this, but it won't be right away. I've got a million other projects that i've fallen behind on, so i've got to get some of them caught up before attempting anything else.
As far as him listening to any of the several systems that i have in my house, no, he's never done that. For that matter, he's never heard my Brother's system either, which is an actively crossed quad-amped system of our design. For some reason, we always end up over at his house rather than the other way around. My guess is that he would have been more apt to let us modify / replace his speakers if he had listened to either of our systems. Having said that, this is probably a perfect example of the students surpassing the mentor. I think that the idea of something like that happening may have been what kept him from giving in to us earlier : ) Sean
>
Thanks Sean. I was ready to tell a buddy to look at these. May have saved a friendship!
Your friend may have ended up loving them. Not everybody craves accuracy and linear frequency response. As evidenced by Legacy's growth and the reviews that they've received over the years, many people are obviously partial to the specific sonic colourations that they exhibit. Like my Father though, many of these people can hear the difference and learn to appreciate "good sound" when they are finally exposed to it. Sean
>
For some reason, Legacy speakers seem to provoke negative comments from a few people .... but by and large, they're well-regarded (see link below). If you've heard them, and like them, then $1800 is a good price for a pair in excellent condition if they're less than five or six years old.Bear in mind that the Sig III's are fairly brawny speakers that perform best in a large room with lots of power. So they're not for everyone.
You can do a LOT better for the 1800 dollar asking price.
There are many fine, well engineered speakers out there that are a much better value.
Sorry
?
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2025, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
