Legacy Audio Whisper XDS User Manual
Owners Manual For The
Whisper XDS
Loudspeaker System
Table of Contents
Registration
Page
Owners Record 3
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment 4
Warranty 5
Setup
Speaker Placement 6
Hooking Up Cables 7-8
Amplification 9-11
Speaker Connections 12-13
Installer Calibration Instructions 14
Whisper Wave Launch Processor 15-23
Technology
Designer’s Notes 24-25
Continuing the Pursuit of Perfection 26-27
Specifications 28
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: Whisper XDS
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.
3
The Cabinetry / Our Commitment
Handcrafted
Beneath the surface of Whisper XDS’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. 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”.
4
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.
5
Speaker Placement
Positioning Whisper for good performance is quite a bit easier than for most speakers. Remember
that whisper is actually an acoustic gun with a highly controlled directivity pattern. Corner placements are actually quite workable though not necessarily optimal. Whisper will not become
“boomy” like a conventional system and it will not interact strongly with the sidewalls of your room.
Simple Guidelines:
1. You may position the Whisper speakers farther apart than most other speakers. This will help to
acoustically shadow the head properly and maintain better channel separation. Experiment with
what works best in your room. As a starting point you might also try the following:
Ideal Speaker spread = (0.8 to 1.2) X Distance from speaker plane to listener position
2. Toe the speakers in more than with other speakers. In most circumstances crossing speaker axes
just in front of the listener’s head works best. This will broaden your sweet spot horizontally. If dispersing into an L shaped seating arrangement you might find the best results by aiming the left
speaker at the right most seating position, and the right speaker at the left most seating position.
3. Hearing the most ambience in the recording and the least reflection from your room favors a listener position that is no farther from the plane of the speakers than two thirds the geometric width
of your room. More simply, if the room is 16 feet wide then the sitting no farther than 12 feet will
allow you to hear more of the recording and less of your room.
6
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.
7
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 one half 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.
8
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.
9
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%)
10
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