Legacy VALOR Owner's Manual
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Owners Manual For The
VALOR
Loudspeaker System
Valor is a full range loudspeaker system utilizing the present state of
the art in driver, crossover, amplifier and acoustic radiation control
technologies.
The system is designed, assembled and tested in Springfield, Illinois
by a dedicated group of engineers, craftsmen and music lovers.
Please take a few moments to learn more about the features and
controls of these instruments to assure full enjoyment.
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THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING
LEGACY AUDIO
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Table of Contents
Registration
Page
Owners Record 4
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment 5
6
Warranty
Setup
Placement 7
Hooking up Cables 8-9
Amplification 10-12
Speaker Connections 13-14
Technology
Behind the Design 15-16
Stereo Unfold Methodology 17
Specifications 18
Wavelet 19-25
Wavelet Setup 26-43
Imaging & Room Correction 44-47
Register your product at www.legacyaudio.com/register
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Owners Record
Thank you for selecting a Legacy Loudspeaker System. These handcrafted
instruments will provide you with many years of listening enjoyment.
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: VALOR
Serial No: _________________________
Date of purchase: ___________________
Share your Legacy speakers with the Legacy community. Post your Legacy
experience and system photos at facebook.com/LegacyAudio Like the page to
continue receiving the latest Legacy announcements.
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The Cabinetry / Our Commitment
Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of VALOR’s elegant exterior lies rigid MDF construction. Interlocking
joinery maximizes the strength of the cabinet parts.
Each cabinet is impeccably finished on all exposed surfaces with select veneers. The
exquisite finish is hand-rubbed several times to assure a patina at home with the most
elegant decor.
Our Commitment
A great deal of forethought, love and satisfaction is instilled in each piece of Legacy
workmanship. We take pride in getting to know many of our customers on a first name
basis.
Your purchase of this product is backed by the renowned “Legacy Satisfaction Guarantee”.
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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.
• The warranty applies to the original owner and is not transferable.
• The warranty applies to products purchased from an “Authorized Legacy Dealer”.
• The warranty on active components such as digital processors or internal amplifiers is limited to three
(3) years of coverage.
• The warranty on dealer stock will extend for a maximum of two years from invoice.
The warranty does not cover transportation costs of product to or from the customer, distributor or
dealer, or related shipping damage.
Exclusions from Warranty
The following situations or conditions are not covered by the Legacy Audio warranty:
• Accidental damage, electrical abuse or associated equipment failure.
• Use inconsistent with recommended operating instructions and specifications
• Damage caused by modification or unauthorized service
• Costs associated with the removal and reinstallation of defective products. Consequential damage to
other products.
• Normal wear such as fading of finishes due to sunlight.
The Legacy VALOR system is designed to afford maximum flexibility in seating
arrangements and yield a large listening sweet spot by preserving directional cues and
eliminating unwanted room sound. The Legacy Wavelet, included with VALOR, allows the
speakers to operate in a variety of different positions and room setups. Assuming a
listening distance of about 10-12 feet, begin by placing the speakers about 10 feet or more
apart and 1-3 feet from the wall behind them. A slight toe-in is recommended. Because of
the unique room correction abilities of the VALOR system, adhering to the exact
recommended placement guidelines is not as critical as it is with conventional speaker
systems. Your dealer and Legacy Audio will be able to look at your room setup and
recommend the best positioning for your VALOR system.
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Speaker Placement
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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 Ωs/ft pF/ft µH/ft
12 ga. 0.0033 24 0.21
14 ga. 0.0048 17 0.13
16 ga. 0.0079 16 0.18
18 ga. 0.0128 28 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.
How long would a cable have to be before inductance effects would
impinge on the audio spectrum? Approximately 300 feet of 12 gauge
would be required to establish a corner frequency of 20 kHz with an
8 Ohm loudspeaker. As you see, inductance is not a problem for
most of us.
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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. Resistance is the controlling factor of the amplifier/loudspeaker interface. Excessive resistance can cause major shifts of speaker crossover frequencies. The lower the impedance of the loudspeaker, the greater the effects of series resistance. A 20 foot run of 18 gauge cable
can cause up to 10% deviations of crossover center frequencies. That same 20 feet
can un-damp your damping factor and reduce your systems’ output by onehalf decibel.
In summary, there are no perfect cables. The best way to approximate the ideal
would be to keep loudspeaker leads as short as is practical.
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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. For this reason, extensive measures have been taken to ensure that
each Legacy speaker system represents a smooth, non-reactive load to virtually any amplifier.
Often there is much confusion regarding amplification and loudness levels. It should be understood that the role of the amplifier goes beyond that of driving loudspeakers to a given sound
pressure level. The amplifier should be able to CONTROL the loudspeakers across the entire music spectrum. This means that parameters such as damping factor (values greater than 60 are
acceptable) and dynamic headroom should not be overlooked when comparing amplifiers.
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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. Some audiophiles feel that 200 watts per channel is the
bare minimum to avoid audible clipping distortion when reproducing music
at “live” playback levels. Your Legacy speakers are designed to take advantage of “high-powered” amplifiers, so don’t be afraid to put them through
their paces.
How much is too much power? Rarely is a drive unit damaged by large
doses of music power. More often than not the villain is amplifier clipping
distortion. Even through decades of refinement, loudspeakers are still notoriously inefficient transducers, requiring huge amounts of power to recreate
the impact of the live performance. Typically less that 1% of electrical
power is converted into acoustic output. (For example, an omnidirectional
transducer with an anechoic sensitivity of 90 dB @ 1w/1m has a full space
efficiency of only 0.63%)
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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.
The average acoustical power developed by a person speaking in a
conversational tone corresponds to a mere 0.00001 Watts. The power that
would be developed by the entire population of the city of New York
speaking at once would barely illuminate a single 100 Watt light bulb.
The standard VALOR system provides four channels of amplification internally for the
subwoofers, bass drivers, midwoofer and ambient array. You will need to supply one
channel of amplification of 60 watts or greater, for the midrange and tweeter section of
each speaker. VALOR can be built with internal amplification for the entire speaker, or with
fewer internal amplifiers - should the listener prefer to use external amps. Three
professional grade 15 foot balanced XLR cables are provided for each speaker.
1 Left speaker subwoofer amplifier (internal 1000 watts)
2 Left speaker bass (internal 750 watts)
3 Left speaker midwoofer (internal 500 watts)
4 Left midrange/tweeters amplifier (user provided)
5 Right speaker subwoofer amplifier (internal 1000 watts)
6 Right speaker bass (internal 750 watts)
7 Right speaker midwoofer (internal 500 watts0
8 Right speaker midrange/tweeters amplifier (user provided)
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Speaker Connections
Wavelet processor output connections:
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Speaker Connections
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Behind
with Chief Designer,
Much like a directional microphone the VALOR's output is carefully shaped
into a cardioid pattern to reduce early reflections to side and rear. This
sculpting occurs as two of the 14" dipolar 'open air' drivers acoustically
combine with a third closed back driver. The central 14" is a coaxial from
Italy where a 2" polyester/titanium HF driver sets in a precision machined
aluminum throat that aligns output within the 3.5" voice coil of the woofer.
Placement is dead center of the triple 14" driver array where a horizontal
bridge with a central lens splays a pair of 4" AMT super tweeters. The
drivers' output angles trade off intensity to maintain uniform output with
varying listener positions.
The two 12" subs, front and bottom loaded are hefty dual voice-coil units
with aluminum cones and 30 lb. motor structures. The two 12" passives
are on the rear of the cabinets and utilize a patented dual symmetric
suspension and a damped diaphragm with 4" peak to peak travel.
the Design
Bill Dudleston
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