Built for the love of music...

[SCAudiophile]

I've been off the forums for quite a few days not because I had nothing to write but because I've been having so much fun listening while working and when not working and had a new set of speakers burning in 24 hours per day that have really been quite amazing and very musical from the first couple of hours.

I had to sell my wonderful TAD R1 MK2s and Jim from Atlanta picked up an amazing set of speakers that are the most perfect I've ever owned or heard. My loss his gain as they say and thanks to Jim for a great transaction! The reasons behind this were related to sale of a home and plan buy land, to build something north of here, etc....downsizing was needed and flexibility in setup, ideally a smaller speaker or something multi-module that could be used monitor only for up to 2 years if space was an issue, was needed.

I listened to a lot of speakers and researched many others in the months before and after the sale. In late summer I went to Atlanta where Bill Dudleston was showing off his SOTA Reference speaker ($80K) the "VALOR" which utilizes many unique and revolutionary design concepts and drivers that are all his proprietary designs together with Wavelet, which can be used as a DAC (Apodizing), Linestage Preamp and DSP-ed full roomEQ. Furthermore, VALOR makes use of Bill's new "stereo unfold" technology which you have to hear to believe what it does for soundstaging and imaging. This was Sunday afternoon meeting of the Atlanta Audio & Video Society which is a great group if you are ever able to attend one of their events.

Also in the room was the Legacy Caliber "XD" model. As an aside, the Caliber productions models come in 2 flavors;

- Caliber: passive speaker, required a full range stereo or monoblocks to drive it. Tweeter, midrange and small woofer,....specs are amazing and the speaker is incredibly well built, not your typical 20-30lb monitor speaker...

- Caliber XD: hybrid with a woofer, midrange and tweeter and Dudleston's own ICE amplifier design, can be run fully active where the speaker is driven by its own internal amp or hybrid where the bass and mid-bass are run active and an external amp drives the midrange and tweeter. This mode utilizes Wavelet for RoomEQ and other benefits...

A note on the room...old Marriott with possibly THE worst sounding and hard to contend with meeting rooms and ballrooms you have ever heard. Power was terrible as well.

The VALOR being what they are were outstanding and with Wavelet and Stereo Unfold conquered that terribly room and filled with great audiophile-grade sound, imaging and yet were very musical.

External amplification was a surprise....$1800 Legacy Powerbloc2, a new stereo amp from Dudleston with his standalone ICE amplifier designs running a full-range 2-channel output. The amp was so damned good it caused me to reevaluate briefly all $20K and above amp designs I had ever made. Being objective however, there is a practical limit with any digital amp design where things get a bit grainy when you push them to concert hall levels but it was a long time before any flaw in that great cost-effective amp showed.

The surprise for everyone in the room including me beyond the comments the 2-channel Powerbloc2 amps elicited was when Bill switched over to the CaliberXD run fully active, no external amp using a CD player and/or computer audio streamed into the Wavelet. Bear in mind the Caliber XDs and a Wavelet weigh in at under $10K...

The Caliber XDs I believe are about 62 lbs each; picking them up you found a very formidable speaker whose weight and density was a surprise. You could break a knuckle tapping these if you were not careful.

As an aside, Caliber XDs carry on the history of fatigue-free, very musical speakers that Bill at Legacy is known for designing...

Everyone in the room was amazed at how the CaliberXDs run with internal amplification only and mid-level cables and CD player positively filled the room with impressive sound, accurate imaging and musical playback. Engaging/Disengaging Wavelet's RoomEQ on the fly for both CaliberXD and VALOR made that device's amazing effects readily apparent as to how it battled and won over the room's problems. When all was said and done, more than half of the 50+ people in attendance were making comments as to how they were astounded at what this stand-mounted speaker and Wavelet could do at a price that few other high-end vendors would ever offer.

Anyone needing a cost-effective speaker that while not inexpensive does not break the bank that is capable and delivers MUCH more than you would think should not buy anything before they hear or try the CaliberXD with Wavelet.

Long-story short, after this experience in Atlanta, I traveled to Legacy twice to hear the VALOR, a custom version of Whisper XDS which I initially favored and planned to order and the Caliber XD. Over a period of 4 solid days (2 trips) I put all these through their paces after trip #1, was excited that Whisper XDS with Wavelet and some custom mods would be my next speaker.

Trip#2 changed that as I thought about the size/stature of Whisper XDS the needs for dual large subs if I wanted full range back (I did) and how they did not fit into my original plans.

For 2-3 weeks, I communicated back and forth with Bill and posed a question as to how we could utilize Caliber XD, extend it and couple it with subs to make a modular full-range separated-cabinet speaker that would allow for monitor-only, monitor-plus-bass/sub cabinets and ability to also add a 3rd decoupled cabinet just for mid-bass and midrange specialization in the future.

His answer was 'Caliber XD Custom' for me which adds the following to Caliber XD;

- an extra woofer so 2 in place of the default 1, 1 each side-firing left and 1 right
- a large passive radiator on top
- DUAL 750w ICE amps internally
- DUAL XLR inputs
- a redesigned back plate with dual speaker binding posts to the tweeter section only
- a pair of Legacy FOUNDATION subs (to my hearing these rival REL G25 MK2s and JL Audio 212 and Gotham); 1000W of ICE amplification in each FOUNDATION
- new Wavelet algorithm sets to allow Wavelet to drive every driver set individually and treat the woofers in the Calibers as woofers or mid-woofers depending upon whether the Caliber XD "Custom" was utilized by itself or in unison with the FOUNDATIONs
- all 8 outputs on the Wavelet live to accomplish this, only one external amp needed to drive the tweeter section
- new Wavelet algorithms for 'steering' taken from Bill's wealth of experience in the pro-audio world together with Wavelet's Time and Frequency RoomEQ algorithms...
- ability to add Stereo Unfold algos to this setup based upon lessons learned from VALOR design, to be added in the future...
- the customized Calibers weigh in at about 80lbs each...
- result: 96db efficient speaker setup, 16Hz-30kHz FLAT in-room with bass on pipe organ and synth popping out well below that; I HAVE to get our REW and measure...
- Using thick sorbothane pucks for now to perch and isolate the Calibers on top of the foundations and an Adona shelf under each FOUNDATION to couple this stack to the floor and yet allow the massive passive radiator on bottom of each bass cabinet the room to do its job and breath freely...

*This was one huge experiment and there were many refinements on the overall design, driver complement, algorithms, etc...but in the end the last week has been nothing short of eye-opening. I believe that I have much more 'speaker' here than even I thought I would have at the beginning. I've been off the boards as this is one of the most fun and musical speaker setups that I've ever had, bar none and I keep finding myself getting off the computer and back in front of an around the speakers!

They have about 240 hours on them as of now; imaging, soundstaging, musical playback and realism are all up there with the best I've heard. Friends have already stopped by including one well-known power cable, interconnect and speaker cable designer who lives about an hour from here; all have been amazed at the overall result of this chance taken that resulted in one hell of a unique set of speakers.

More later and pictures below..when you consider that price of the setup retail even with the custom adds to the Caliber XDs, the Wavelet extra work and 16-layer black pearl piano-grade finish all-in is only $24K for the entire setup, it's even more amazing.

 

[Jack]

Congrats Mark the set-up with the Calibre's and the subs look great.

 

[SCAudiophile]

Congrats Mark the set-up with the Calibre's and the subs look great.

Thank you Jack..have a great Sunday!

 

[Oly]

Nice setup. It looks beautiful in your room. Since your stated goal was to downsize, how much space did you actually save compared to the TAD’s?

 

[SCAudiophile]

Nice setup. It looks beautiful in your room. Since your stated goal was to downsize, how much space did you actually save compared to the TAD’s?

Thanks....rough estimations, multiple scenarios;

- cost and space savings of not having to add subs to the TADs, whatever the time and cost and size of a large pair of subs that go deep enough to justify their price (16Hz or lower), think REL G25 MKII, JL Audio Gotham, Legacy GOLIATH or FOUNDATION, hard to estimate as it's conditional however the overall setup would be much bigger

- room treatments no longer needed in future with introduction of Wavelet, saves whatever wall and floor space plus time, money and complexity would be required. Also moving to new
room in my past experience often either causes and addition of more/different treatments and strategy and sometimes invalidates prior purchases

- raw floor space of new complete setup with bass cabinets over TAD speaker footprint, 25-30% going from the 2 year footprint of TADs still in my carpet for quite some time...

- cubic volume estimate including height difference factor and overall huge presence/form factor of TAD R1s (they are bigger in person than they look in pictures (20% conservative, probably more)

- floor space savings if running monitors only on stands some day if needed (bass cabinets in storage), 60% including monitors, stands-only and cable savings/space/complexity

- ability to fit any permutation into a smaller room of unknown dimension while leasing/renting for up to 2 years, not knowing room at all, knowing room, whatever it would be would not be ideal and ensuring I will still be having great music due to impact of time, frequency and steering RoomEQ from Wavelet,.....PRICELESS, 100% savings over 0% not having this flexibility

 

[Yamaki]

The upgraded system looks awesome, Mark.

I know why you sold the TAD units...you just didn't want to move them again... :lol:

So will you adopt Roon one day?

Looking forward to our next chat!

 

[SCAudiophile]

The upgraded system looks awesome, Mark.

I know why you sold the TAD units...you just didn't want to move them again... :lol:

So will you adopt Roon one day?

Looking forward to our next chat!

Thank you! If I ever go the full server/streaming route instead of physical media I will look again at Roon but in the mean
time Audirvana Plus for MacOSX and reading Apple Lossless rips done via iTunes gives me great sound quality when streamed
into Wavelet or into the Esoteric D-02 from laptop using Esoteric's 24/192 async USB driver.

The TAD's were an AMAZING speaker in many ways; the reasons I sold them were from outside influences and events in the family....

Where I landed, I am extremely happy with!

Best compliment/statement about what I'm hearing after 350 hours of break-in and is thanks to these speakers and a cumulative system build with
the immense talents of Bill Dudleston at Legacy, David Elrod of Elrod Power systems, Caelin Gabriel at Shunyata, Kenji Hasegawa at Cybershaft
and of course the guys at Esoteric is this;

...Imagine the best headphone listening setup you could ever have, enveloping, great stereo and ambient/surround aspects perfectly portrayed as you hear every imaging nuance on each recording portrayed like the finest surround system there is...

...Imagine now that that same headphone listening experience is rock solid flat down to 16Hz and goes beyond and you feel every bass or sub-bass note as they were meant to be...

First time I've ever written this for any speaker or my system in general; that my friends is what I'm hearing.

 

[Alpinist]

Congratulations Mark on the new speaker system. They look most impressive. I bet they sound phenomenal! I always admire your attention to detail with the setting up of your system, running of cables, etc.

Best,
Ken

 

[SCAudiophile]

Congratulations Mark on the new speaker system. They look most impressive. I bet they sound phenomenal! I always admire your attention to detail with the setting up of your system, running of cables, etc.

Best,
Ken

Thank you very much Ken,...appreciate the comments very much!

 

[Alpinist]

Thank you very much Ken,...appreciate the comments very much!

Mark,

You’ve inspired me to get back behind my rack and do battle with the octopus of wires that reside there. I just purchased an AudioQuest Niagara 7000 but I’m still awaiting the arrival of my Hurricane 20 Amp Power Cord. When I take delivery I’ll give it another shot. Enjoy those wonderful speakers!

Ken

 

[Jack]

Mark

You might want to take a look at these footers as an alternative to the pucks you are using now for isolation between the subs and the Calibre's as you will have less chance of staining.

https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/av-roomservice-evps/

 

[SCAudiophile]

Mark,

You’ve inspired me to get back behind my rack and do battle with the octopus of wires that reside there. I just purchased an AudioQuest Niagara 7000 but I’m still awaiting the arrival of my Hurricane 20 Amp Power Cord. When I take delivery I’ll give it another shot. Enjoy those wonderful speakers!

Ken

Thank you Ken,...best of luck with that!!!

 

[SCAudiophile]

Mark

You might want to take a look at these footers as an alternative to the pucks you are using now for isolation between the subs and the Calibre's as you will have less chance of staining.

https://positive-feedback.com/reviews/hardware-reviews/av-roomservice-evps/

Thank you Jack...the Sorbethane pucks are a stop-gap. I will receive tomorrow 8 large Eden Sound TerraCone Large Cylinders [FONT=&quot]EAR Isodamp elastomer thin pads on both sides.

[/FONT]Should be much better....have a great holiday season!

 

[SCAudiophile]

[FONT=&quot]Using EdenSound TerraCone custom footers between the Legacy Calibre XD and Foundation cabinets. These provide a very noticeable improvement in overall system articulation, image size and location of each instrument and voice. The extra one inch or more of vertical spacing introducing is clearly also adding to the mix in term of soundstage overall size....very happy with these upgrades.

[/FONT]

 

[joeinid]

Bump for an update.

A friend is interested in these Legacy speakers.

 

[SCAudiophile]

Bump for an update.

A friend is interested in these Legacy speakers.

The top-line of the update is that I love this speaker setup and it is delivering such great sound, amazing imaging and sound staging that I sometimes
have a hard time lining up the setup's overall price (including Wavelet for use as pre-amp and room correction) with its performance given I've heard
many setups including my prior one with TAD R1 MK2 speakers not perform at this level. For a while I thought it was the initial dose of buyer happiness
after making a change where your emotions mislead you but months in I'm here to tell you that this is the most fun I've had listening to music that has
only been paralleled when I (ironically enough) had the Legacy AERIS with Wavelet in the system some years ago. Lesson learned, at least for me is
that if you love music, you don't have to have to chase after big name, big price 'brand names' to get a stellar listening experience. The thing I like
even more with this current setup than with the TADs and before them with the AERIS and Wavelet is the absolute "pits of hell" sub-bass and bass
performance yet without the pain of 'integrated after the fact' sub-woofers. This package was designed and algorithms programmed to work out of
the box as a single speaker (per channel) and it is impossible for me to tell where the Foundations stop and the Caliber XDs with extra drivers and
amp (2 per side) start....

Happy to talk with your friend or anyone else live on the phone; have them drop me a Inmail on this forum and share a phone# (or I'll share mine)
in response and will spend whatever time they need to answer questions and talk about the pure musical fun I'm having.

As an aside, I've tried to be an 'audiophile' at times over the past 30 years to the point of being super-critical of everything, nothing's ever good enough,
'if I only had that next great thing', etc... losing the focus that hearing the music in the most real and convincing sense as possible is the most important thing.
This setup and those over the last few years have brought me back to why I started with this insane hobby in the first place, that being the pursuit if the
most real-sounding and enjoyable all around music listening experience that I could manage...as of the past few months, Legacy speakers, in particular
this setup and Wavelet (and frankly if I could also add (literally) the Whisper XDs or Valor some day) is a BIG part of that...

 

[Spock]

Great, great, great ! :congrats:


I´m envious of you (*) but i see your happiness and I think i´ll always was right when i said to my audiophile friends: i never listened the holy grail of sound but i know it exists and it´s waiting for me. (**)


Enjoy with good health


(*) because i´m still in the state of "nothing's ever good enough"
(**) you know there are a lot of audiophiles that are desbelivers and always pulling down everyone else who tries to jump the wall.

 

[joeinid]

Awesome! I’m so happy for you.

I’m always chasing gear that doesn’t cost an arm and leg (and some that does) but still sounds great.

I remember ogling the Legacy catalogues years ago and trying to pick out what I wanted. I love the form factor of your new setup and I’m sure it sounds wonderful.

I had TAD CR-1 and wanted to love them. I just couldn’t and had to move on.

Thank you for your awesome update.

I’ll see if my friend wants to reach out. Thank you for the offer.

 

[SCAudiophile]

Awesome! I’m so happy for you.

I’m always chasing gear that doesn’t cost an arm and leg (and some that does) but still sounds great.

I remember ogling the Legacy catalogues years ago and trying to pick out what I wanted. I love the form factor of your new setup and I’m sure it sounds wonderful.

I had TAD CR-1 and wanted to love them. I just couldn’t and had to move on.

Thank you for your awesome update.

I’ll see if my friend wants to reach out. Thank you for the offer.

You are welcome...have a great weekend! Legacy has come a long way in the last 2-3 years in particular with more advancements for the Wavelet (now usable with
some other speakers out there as well from what I'm told) and some cutting edge designs happening in their smallest to largest (VALOR) offerings for the home audiophile
not to mention their ground-breaking professional offerings and arrays. More to come I'm sure as Bill never rests....

 

[SCAudiophile]

Updated list with recent modifications involving LPSU and DC Umbilical for Wavelet and the exit of the Esoteric C-02 and A-02.

Simply enjoying a lot of great music listening with this system. Very excited to be headed to MUNICH HIGH-END 2019 next week...

Updated system list;

Legacy Audio CaliberXD custom
Legacy Foundation Subwoofer & Bass Cabinets
Legacy Wavelet DAC/Preamp/Room Correction Processor with Boehmer circuitry/algorithms
HDPLEX 200-Watt dual-rail LPSU
Revelation Audio Labs Passage Reference Cryo-silver DC Umbilical 3-meter
Esoteric Audio P-02 Dual-Mono Transport
Esoteric Audio D-02 Dual-Mono DAC
Cybershaft UPOCXO-01-OP21 Custom Premium Limited OP21 OCXO 10 mHz Master Clock
SHUNYATA TRITON v3
SHUNYATA TYPHON QR
Avatar Acoustics Afterburner8 Duplex Outlets (5)
Cutler-Hammer, GE MLC and EP 20amp Dedicated Circuit (10gauge)
Environmental Potentials EP-2050 Wave-Form Correct & Surge Suppression
Environmental Potentials EP-2750 Ground Filters
Whole-House Ground CADWELD Kit & Dual Ground Rods
Adona Corporation AV45CS4 and AV45CS1 (multiple)
Composite Audio CF-2010 Platforms (multiple)
Harmonic Resolution Systems DPX Large Damping Plates Silver (5)
Harmonic Resolution Systems DPS Large Damping Plates Black (3)
Harmonic Resolution Systems DPX Medium Damping Plates Black (2)
Stillpoints Ultra SS with Ultra Bases (4) under Cybershaft UPOCXO-01-OP21
Elrod Systems Statement Gold Speaker Cables 9-foot (1 pair)
Elrod Systems MASTERS SERIES STATEMENT GOLD Speaker Jumpers (2 pair)
Elrod Systems Statement Gold XLR 6-foot (1 pair), Bocchino XLRs
Elrod Systems Statement Gold XLR 4-meter (1 pair), Bocchino XLRs
Shunyata SIGMA XLR 1.5-meter (multiple pairs)
Shunyata Anaconda ZTron XLR 6-meter
Elrod Systems DIAMOND XLR 1.8meter with Ground Plane Enhanced Design and Bocchino XLRs) on loan
Shunyata Research SIGMA AES/EBU XLR 110-ohm 2-meter (2)
Shunyata Research SIGMA CLOCK-50 50-ohm BNC:BNC 2-meter (3)
Elrod Systems MASTER SERIES Statement Gold PC, 10-foot, 15-Amp (Furutech FI-50 NCF)
Elrod Systems MASTER SERIES Statement Gold PC, 9-foot, 15-Amp (Furutech FI-50 NCF)
Elrod Systems MASTER SERIES Statement Gold PC, 10-foot, 20-Amp (Furutech FI-50 NCF)
Elrod Systems MASTER SERIES Statement Gold PC, 10-foot, 20-Amp (Furutech FI-50 NCF)
Elrod Systems Statement Gold 15-amp 10-foot PC (Oyaide M1F1)
Elrod Systems Statement Gold 15-amp 6-foot PC (Oyaide M1F1)
plus 2 more to power FOUNDATION bass cabinets...
Elrod Systems Statement Silver PC 10-foot 15-amp (Furutech FI-48)
B.M.C. PureUSB1 5-meter

Computer Audio/Rip Playback: Apple MacBook Pro 15” 2019, 6-core i9, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD (Music Library, Playback S/W & O/S here), Audirvana+ v3, iTunes, etc….