Wisdom Audio LS3, LS4 User Manual
Owner’s Manual
Wisdom Series LS3 & LS4
Biamplied
Planar Magnetic
Loudspeaker
Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................4
About this manual ..................................................................................................4
Description .....................................................................................................5
Planar magnetic panels ..........................................................................................5
Free from compression....................................................................................5
More reliable ..................................................................................................5
Easy on ampliers ...........................................................................................6
Line source behavior .......................................................................................6
Designed for triamplication ..................................................................................7
SC-1 System Controller ....................................................................................7
Remote Setup via Modem ......................................................................................8
Un-crating & Installing the LS3/4 ....................................................................9
Room Acoustics & Placement ........................................................................12
Start With the Room ............................................................................................12
Rigid Walls ....................................................................................................12
Speaker Placement ...............................................................................................13
Left & Right Speakers ....................................................................................13
Center Channel .............................................................................................13
Surround Speakers ........................................................................................14
Subwoofer Placement ..........................................................................................14
Room Treatment ..................................................................................................15
Professional Acoustic Design ...............................................................................15
References ...........................................................................................................16
Optimizing the System .................................................................................. 17
Care & Maintenance .....................................................................................18
North American Warranty ............................................................................19
Standard Warranty ............................................................................................... 19
Obtaining Service .........................................................................................20
Specications ................................................................................................21
LS4 Dimensions .............................................................................................22
LS3 Dimensions .............................................................................................23
Notes .............................................................................................................24
Notes .............................................................................................................25
Introduction
Congratulations on purchasing your Wisdom Audio system. It incorporates many
design features designed to give you decades of pleasure and performance.
Many of these design choices are uncommon among loudspeaker manufacturers, and bear some explanation. See the following section entitled “Description”
for more information.
Our unique driver designs and our emphasis on achieving real-world performance account for the “system” approach taken. These are not speakers that
are simply connected to speaker wires and promptly forgotten. We recognize
that setting up a Wisdom Audio system is a bit more involved than connecting
a common set of loudspeakers, which is why we insist that our dealers perform
the installation and calibration of the systems. We know that the extra effort
(particularly as regards setting up the SC-1 System Controller) yields vastly improved results.
About this manual This manual focuses on the loudspeakers themselves. In order to fully under-
stand the system, we recommend you also review the manual for the SC-1
System Controller, without which these speakers will not perform correctly.
While we expect your local Wisdom Audio dealer to take care of the setup and
calibration of the system, we still recommend that you at least briey review this
and the other manuals (SC-1, STS subwoofers) to understand the system’s full
capabilities.
Your Wisdom Series LS4 loudspeakers are specically designed to avoid the
compromises inherent in conventional speaker designs. The active crossover
and room correction circuitry in the SC-1 is essential to the speakers’ proper operation. It is truly a “system” design, and not merely a collection of loudspeaker
drivers in a box.
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Description
Your Wisdom Series loudspeakers take
advantage of several critical technologies
to deliver a level of performance that has
never been available in a loudspeaker that
intruded so modestly on your living space.
In fact, this level of performance has rarely
been attained, regardless of the space and
budget at one’s disposal.
Since most of these technologies cannot
readily be found elsewhere, we will take
the time to describe them in more detail
than would be necessary for more conventional designs.
Planar magnetic panels Our planar magnetic drivers use an ad-
vanced, thin lm membrane to move the air. This lm can respond instantly to
the smallest detail in the signal. It has vastly less inertia than traditional “cone &
dome” drivers, so the signal is never blurred
in any way.
The motive force is provided by a “voice
coil” that is printed on the lm, which is
suspended in a strong magnetic eld pro-
vided by powerful magnets behind and in
front of the lm. The ratio of available force
to the moving mass is huge, which means that the diaphragm does exactly what
it is told; nothing more, nothing less.
Free from compression One of the most remarkable things about the sound of well-designed planar
magnetic speakers is their lack of thermal or dynamic compression. There are
several reasons for this:
• The lightweight diaphragm responds quickly to even the smallest
signals, yet is robust enough to handle enormous ones.
• The fact that heat does not build up in the voice coil (as it does
in conventional dynamic drivers) means that the load seen by the
amplier does not change at high power levels.
When you become accustomed to the sound of your new Wisdom Series LS4
speakers, conventional speakers sound a bit bland and lifeless.
More reliable The “voice coil” in the planar magnetic driver is spread out over a large, at area
that is exposed to the open air. As such, when a huge transient comes along,
any heat that is generated is immediately dissipated. This compares quite favorably to other designs in which the voice coil is buried inside a massive piece of
metal, where the heat has effectively no place to go.
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The excellent heat dissipation of these drivers makes them remarkably reliable.
Planar magnetic speakers can handle a great deal of power without undue stress
or audible strain. In fact, for a given size, they can handle many times the power
of a traditional dynamic driver.
Easy on ampliers Because the conductor is essentially a long, thin wire, it presents a purely resis-
tive load to the amplier. This is comparable to the simple test loads that amplier companies use when measuring their ampliers to show how terric they
are. As such, you can be assured that your ampliers will sound and work their
best.
Line source behavior Almost all loudspeakers radiate sound into the room as imperfect “point
sources.” This means that most of the energy they put into the room expands as
an ever-enlarging sphere, as though emerging from a single point in space. This
results in a multitude of reections from the ceiling and oor that can degrade
sound quality.
By contrast, the Wisdom Series LS4 speakers radiate sound as a “line source.”
The sound moves into the room as an expanding cylinder, rather than as an expanding sphere — as though from a vertical line suspended in space.
Line source speakers provide two signicant advantages:
• ceiling and oor reections are minimized, resulting in greatly re-
duced interference, letting you hear more of the speaker and less
of the room;
• the sound pressure level (SPL) throughout the room is much
more evenly distributed, making it much easier to set the “right”
volume, no matter where the audience is seated.
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To achieve this highly desirable line source behavior, it is essential to have a tall
and slim driver. (Simply stacking multiple “cone & dome” high frequency drivers
does not create a proper line source. Instead, it creates a series of point sources
which end up interfering with each other.) With Wisdom Audio’s planar magnetic technology, it becomes possible to have drivers that are extremely tall and
slim. In the LS4, for example, the active area of the tweeter section of the lm is
driver is approximately 3⁄4“ (19mm) wide by 80” (203cm) tall.
Because of this shape, the sound (even at high frequencies) is distributed uniformly across the width of the room from a driver that “looks” only less than an
inch wide acoustically. However, the sound is launched in a much more direc-
tional way vertically. By minimizing early reections from the ceiling and the
oor, the clarity of the system is greatly enhanced. This is heard in both tremen-
dous musical detail and in much-improved dialog intelligibility.
For more detailed information on the loudspeaker drivers in general, and planar
magnetic drivers in particular, please refer to the Planar Magnetic Technology
white paper that can be found on the Wisdom Audio web site, at
www.wisdomaudio.com.
Designed for triamplication People who have wanted to extract the highest performance from their systems
have known for a long time that driving each section of the speaker directly and
separately yields the nest results. Of course, this requires having a dedicated,
active crossover to divide the frequency range appropriately before the power
ampliers, so that they can then drive the speakers directly. It also requires two
sets of speaker wires for each loudspeaker.
Biamplication makes use of two channels of amplication to drive different
portions of the audio spectrum. The most common instance of “bi-amping”
today is in home theater applications, wherein a dedicated subwoofer handles
the deepest bass, while the remaining audible range is handled by the various
front and surround speakers. But you can also biamplify other loudspeakers,
driving the low frequency sections separately from the sections that handle the
higher frequencies. Your Wisdom Series LS4 is such a speaker, designed to use
separate ampliers for the lower and the higher planar magnetic sections of
each loudspeaker.
Since each channel of the amplier is delivering current into its load only over
a limited range of frequencies, several forms of distortion are reduced as compared to each channel handling the full range of musical information. Moreover,
since each amplier is “direct-connected” to the driver for which it is responsible, there are no passive component losses and the amplier can control the
motion of its assigned transducer with far greater nesse and precision.
In addition, the deepest bass is handled by dedicated subwoofers (usually the
STS). They also have their own ampliers, making the complete system triamplied. By being separate from the main LS4 loudspeakers, the subwoofers can
also be located where they will perform best vis-a-vis the standing waves of the
room. In this way, you can optimize placement for both the best imaging and
the best bass performance – something not possible with all-in-one designs.
SC-1 System Controller In order to realize these benets, an active crossover must accurately divide the
signal into the low and high ranges. The Wisdom SC-1 System Controller serves
that purpose, while also providing both system-specic parametric equalization
and sophisticated room correction to minimize distortions introduced by the
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room itself. The goal is simple: to achieve consistently excellent results in the
real world of the owner’s home.
After all, that’s all that really matters.
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