Legacy Classics and bottom end?

Take a thick wool sock, ball it up and then completely wrap it up in cellophane wrap aka "saran wrap". Shove this into the port with the open side of the saran wrap firing out of the port. The thick foam that you are using will only change the port tuning, not seal it. The saran wrap will act as a more efficient air-tight seal and the sock will provide enough mass to keep the woofers from forcing the seal out of the port via internal pressures. If you don't get it wedged in there tight enough though, the pressures within the ports can launch the plastic wrapped sock out of the ports much like a cannon launches the load placed within it. Sean
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Some of your problem may be system related ( sonic combo of electronics ), but your speakers have very definite problems internally. Changing cabling and electronics may help to reduce how obvious this is, but short of re-designing or getting rid of the speakers, you're always going to have to deal with this type of situation to one extent or another. Been there, done that and you can read my comments about it in the archives.

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to seal the ports as best possible and fill the cabinet up internally with either polyester fiberfil, acousta-stuf, acoustic foam or fiberglass. Changing the quantity and density will vary the bass transient response and extension to your liking.

It may initially sound like the speakers have "no bass" to you after doing this, but that's because you are used to hearing a massive amount of bloated ringing. Careful listening should instantly tell you that bass definition is improved and that bass notes actually do have "pitch". After a while, the drivers will start to produce more bass as they break-in further.

I know that others will say that this is "impossible" if the speakers already have many hours on them, but guess again. Due to the vented alignment, the woofers never really moved much. As such, their suspension was never pushed very hard. Sealing the cabinet causes greater excursion of the driver, which will alter the suspension as compared to what it was prior to sealing and stuffing the cabinet. Once this takes place, and you get acclimated to what more accurate bass actually sounds like, i think that you'll be pretty happy with the results.

The reason why sealing this cabinet works better is that most of the bass extension that the ported Legacy speakers enjoy comes from producing a huge peak in the upper bass region. By the time the output has fallen to the -3 dB point coming off of that huge peak, the measured frequency is quite low. While this looks good on paper in terms of printed measurements, it sounds like hell.

The main problem is that the huge peak is based on a complete lack of control, no damping and the sound reflects that. That is, it is very slow, indistinct and rings uncontrollably. There is a GREAT quantity, but the quality is phenomenally low. As i've said in the past, sealed vs ports is a matter of quality vs quantity.

By flattening the peak via killing the ports, and sealing and stuffing the cabinet, which makes the box appear physically larger and restores internal damping characteristics to the drivers, not only is sound improved, but so is extension. That's because vents fall off at a much sharper rate below resonance than sealed cabinets do.

If you have questions on this, feel free to either drop me a line or post your questions here. I would prefer to do things publicly if at all possible though, as others can share & learn at the same time. Sean
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By "sonic combo", i meant a combination of gear that adds up to a specific sonic presentation. In your case, it could be possible that your gear adds to the heavy bass that you're hearing.

As far as driver size goes, a smaller driver is NOT necessarily "faster" than a larger driver. This is a very common yet completely inappropriate belief. The "speed" of a driver is determined by driver mass to motor structure ratio, several different electrical characteristics of the driver itself and the bass alignment ( cabinet tuning ) used. While a smaller driver will typically have less cone mass, that's not always the case. Factor in that some smaller drivers have very small motor structures and they could still be "slower" than a bigger cone with a much stronger motor structure.

As a side note, some of the Morel and Dynaudio drivers use HUGE motor structures for their drivers with very lightweight cones. My Brother is using Morel's for his mids and woofers for this reason. His 9" woofers have 3" voice coils, which is as big or bigger than some 12's, 15's and 18's. To top it off, the cone mass on these 9's is about 1/4 that of the typical 10" - 12" woofer. If that's not impressive, the 5" mids that he's using share the same 3" voice coils. This is equivalent to shoving a built 454 into a Vega chassis i.e. massive power to weight ratio. While this makes for potentially excellent transient response, you can't get the extension that you want out of a woofer without mass. As such, he's using subs to fill in the bottom end that these otherwise excellent drivers can't provide. Sean
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The original Legacy 1's had a switch that controlled the upper bass region. This came into play at about 180 Hz if i remember, which was too high to do any good. Most of the larger Legacy's have a big peak centered at appr 100 - 110 Hz, save the Whisper. It is this huge peak centered quite high in frequency that makes them sound bloated. Then again, without that big peak, the speakers would not have anywhere near the extension ( -3 dB point ) that they claim.

Out of curiosity, what did you use to plug the ports?

As to the treble response, it isn't all that great either. Most of them have a large peak ranging from somewhere around 8 KHz to 12 KHz or so. The thing is, without this peak, the speakers wouldn't sound balanced due to the tremendous bottom end bloat. In effect, Legacy has built in somewhat of a "flying V" type equalization i.e. boosted bass and treble without having to use tone controls or equalization devices. This keeps the "audiophiles" happy because they aren't using "tone controls", yet they get all the boom and sizzle that they desire without having to resort to Cerwin-Vega's. If you doubt this, look at the Stereophile review of the Focus 20/20's and you'll see both the bass and treble peaks that i speak of. The Classic's, Legacy 1's and Signature's also share a similar bass peak with the Classic's and Legacy 1's sharing a similar treble peak. The Signature's are noticeably softer on top.

Some of the "sizzle" comes from their choice of drivers, oher parts come from how the drivers are mounted on the baffle. What i could never figure out is why Legacy would countersink ( "flush-mount" ) the woofers and lower mids but not the upper mids and tweeters, where it really counts. As such, one can typically help reduce the "shouty" treble response of these speakers by covering the upper baffle area with felt and double sided "hem" tape. Both the felt and hem tape, which can be found at any local fabric store. Simply cut the felt to shape around the drivers and tape it in place on the baffle. The improvements in treble clarity, imaging and focus should be instantly noticeable. Sean
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Entrope brings up a good point, but in kind of an indirect manner. That is, specific rooms can really compound specific loudspeaker non-linearities. That is, placing a speaker with large frequency response deviations in output inside of a room that happens to create peaks or dips at the same appr frequencies can really bring such problems to the forefront. Even if the room itself doesn't reinforce the speaker response deviations, certain speaker placements within the room itself can do so.

Not to harp on the subject, as i've already pointed this out amply in the past, but different Legacy models have been shown to demonstrate large bass peaks in different reviews as conducted by different magazines in different testing facilities. The fact that the peaks are almost identical in amplitude and center frequency tells me that this is part of their "house sound" rather than just some random coincidence.

The fact that all speaker designers know that a speaker of this type will be used in a room, and all rooms share some similarities in terms of bass reinforcement, tells me that the speaker is either purposely designed for this type of response or is a highly under-designed product. To top it off, Legacy also offers their Steradian processor, which is meant to deal with bass related problems, so they must at least be aware of the situation.

By blaming the room for what is basically a speaker design problem, they can get away with selling an expensive add-on accessory to those that crave a more linear output and make even more money at the same time. Obviously, this is just my point of view, so take it for what it is worth. Sean
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Entrope: While i'm glad that my comments led you to better sound and greater enjoyment of your speakers via the "felt trick", most everything that i post here is not of my origin. That is, i'm simply passing on insights and tidbits of knowledge that others have shared with me, either in person, over the internet or phone or in some form of printed magazine or book. As i said in another thread, i only know what i know because i've made a lot of mistakes in the past and have tried to learn from them when i could. If what i've learned can help others avoid specific and similar pitfalls, i'm glad to help. Just don't think that i have all the answers, as i only have about 10% of them. On the other 90%, i'm a bloomin' idiot. Just ask my girlfriend : ) Sean
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