Speaker Asylum: REVIEW: Legacy Audio Focus Speakers by Chris Wynn General speaker questions for audio and home theater.

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It frustrates me when I read an audio review that merely makes a value judgment about a product without giving me any insight into a component’s unique "character." The fact that this is a common occurrence has inspired me to write reviews. In essence, I write the kind of reviews that I wish to read. Not everyone feels that consumer reviews are useful. I disagree. Objectivists argue that an audio component must be evaluated "blindly," in every possible system configuration, in every possible room, with every possible variable reproducible. I find this absurd. Reviewing is totally subjective (whatever might be said to the contrary). Reading a review is tantamount to hearing and seeing through the ears and eyes of the reviewer.

A passion for music has led me on a quest to find the most natural sounding speakers. This quest has occupied my time the past three years and led me through evaluations of hundreds of speakers. The process has led me to the conclusion that truly balanced sounding speaker designs are exceedingly rare. I define a balanced design as one lacking spurious resonances (like port noises or driver "ringing"), which displays an essentially "flat" (plus or minus 1dB) frequency response from 50 Hz to 10 kHz.

Speaker auditions can never hope to explore all the myriad room and system configurations that influence sound or to eliminate more than a handful of set-up variables. At best, an audition can provide a "snap-shot" of a speaker’s performance. No single "photograph" can ever capture every mood of the subject nor can any single "photo" capture the subject’s relationship to more than a single environment. Yet, I believe that a skilled listener can interpret said snap-shots to describe a speaker’s intrinsic "character," a character which more or less remains static regardless of room and/or system configurations.

All speakers have a set of sound characteristics which taken together are as identifying as a fingerprint. No speaker provides a completely "flat" frequency response. Thus a speaker, any speaker, can be identified and described by its intrinsic deviations from "flat."

Generally, a speaker with elevated output in the upper bass and lower midrange between 100 Hz and 500 Hz can be described as "warm." This coloration soothes the ears with euphony and "richness." Speakers with response peaks in the upper midrange (500 Hz – 1 kHz) are said to be analytical or "forward," because this coloration tends to push voices and instruments forward relative to other sounds, enhancing detail and intelligibility (but also magnifying any harshness). Furthermore, response peaks in the region of 1 kHz – 14 kHz, the lower treble, define a "bright" balance, a balance which enhances perception of high frequency instruments like cymbals (but also magnifies any high frequency harshness).

A speaker’s unique sound is also created by response dips and the resulting colorations are perceived differently by the listener depending on the frequency in which the dip occurs. Some of the most common areas for a "suckout" (a response dip caused by sound wave cancellation) occur in the lower midrange, resulting in a thin, diminished, or perhaps even "hard" overall sound, because the adjacent upper midrange is subjectively enhanced, and in the presence band i.e. the midrange/ treble transition (1 kHz – 6 kHz) resulting in a lack of continuity between midrange and treble, which can be perceived as nasal sounding or even unintelligible voices and/or dulled instruments. A presence band suckout results in the detachment of the treble from the midrange, which (to the listener) seems to enhance the brightness and clarity or the harshness of sounds occurring in the treble just above the sucked out band. Generally, a suckout results in the opposite subjective effect from a response peak. Sounds affected by the response dip recede, whereas sounds affected by response peaks are brought forward. Keep in mind that a single instrument (or voice) can encompass a range of frequencies that while including a suckout, might also extend beyond the response dip, resulting in a musical image than fades in and out i.e. now you hear the violin, now you don’t.

The room in which the speaker is used and to a lesser extent, the system in which the speaker is used, can influence the presence, location, and severity of response dips and peaks. Generally, the room has the greatest influence on a speaker’s bass response. The dimensions of the average room, it’s walls, floor, and ceiling and the material from which they are all constructed, interact primarily with long bass wavelengths in the physical phenomenon known as the "boundary effect." The laws of physics confine the boundary effect to lower frequencies, so this form of room coloration can be subtracted from the equation as frequency rises. What you are left with then is something closer to the speaker’s unique voice, the combination of response peaks and dips created solely by the physical design of the speaker.

You could subtract room effects even further by keeping speakers away from walls, as the short distances involved might produce "boundary effects" in the midrange or even the treble. Furthermore, keeping speakers away from walls will decrease the effect of reflections that might muddy sound and interfere with imaging. Once the room is taken out of the equation, the true "voice" of the speaker becomes clearer.

The sensitivity of the human ear and brain increases (coincidentally) with frequency to a theoretical limit of 20 kHz. Auditioning speakers over and over again, and listening to a lot of live music, has honed my natural ability to detect colorations and I have come to the conclusion that no speaker design is entirely "flat." The laws of physics always manage to interfere with this goal. Making a value judgment then, about a speaker’s unique combination of colorations, is thus entirely subjective. Describing those colorations however, is reproducible and therefore objective. This is the reviewer’s art, and when I describe a speaker, I am describing the "shape" of its voice. I could just as easily graph frequency response vs. time (the speaker review of the future – value judgment left to the reader). A particular "shape" can tell you whether or not the speaker in question sounds bright, analytical, rich, thin, or warm or any combination of the above, but this description of the shape of a speaker’s frequency response in time is not a value judgment. Pronouncing one set of colorations appealing or unappealing is, however, a subjective value judgment.

I cannot deny that the system in which a speaker is used will definitely influence it’s sound, but in hundreds of speaker evaluations, I have found these effects quite subtle in comparison to boundary effects. No electronics (that did not include equalization) have ever "flattened" or altered any speaker’s unique set of peaks and troughs. I have trained myself to hear the "sound" of the electronics while evaluating speakers. Yet, this subtle influence does not show up in a graph of frequency response vs. time, nor does it change a speaker’s intrinsic "voicing." So, when evaluating a speaker, I generally listen past the sound of the electronics to focus on the voice of the speaker. After all, only the speaker can transform electrical information into acoustic information, the heavenly music that I adore. If the music sounds right and natural to my ear, then the speaker is doing its job well. Few do.

Of the many loudspeakers that I have auditioned, one or two models have impressed me with a nearly flat frequency response and the absence of spurious colorations. One of those speakers is the Legacy Focus. The Focus are colossal six-foot tall floorstanding loudspeakers that overawe with their size and the number and complexity of their drive units. Each speaker contains three twelve-inch woofers, two yellow kevlar midranges, two dome tweeters, and a ribbon tweeter. I expected an equally complex sound. I have long held the belief that simpler may be more effective when it comes to loudspeaker design, as it reduces the occurrence of multiple suckouts created by multiple crossovers.

I began my evaluation of the Focus loudspeakers using vocal pieces. Vocal images were placed within the deep and wide soundstage created by the speakers with an accuracy of plus or minus 1 degree, an unusual and highly desirable result. This excited me greatly. Vocal images gave the impression of singers positioned directly in front of me, as if on stage. Moreover, voices sounded wonderfully sweet and natural and lacked aberrant colorations. I noticed a truthful quality to the sound that made me believe that I was hearing real voices instead of an electronic reproduction. Voices lacked those transistor qualities that I have come to expect from hi-fi, and instead exhibited a tremendous sense of authenticity. The Locus Focus showed most other speakers the door in terms of natural reproduction of the human voice.

I listened for glare and shriek while listening to voices and stringed instruments (telltale signs of response peaks in the upper midrange and lower treble), but I could not detect the problem. The treble quality of the Focus loudspeakers sounded unusually sweet and clean, extended, with above average detail and resolution. The overall effect lacked harshness and sounded natural.

In addition to glare and shriek, I listened for dryness, but the speakers sounded as moist and present as any live performance. I listened for ringing or any evidence of driver break-up, but could not detect it. I listened for spurious port noises or cabinet resonances, but could not hear any. The speakers stumped me completely. Instead of colorations (they must be there but are evidently very small) I heard a totally natural sound and a really staggering sense of musical truth.

Bass rhythm (the behavior of bass frequencies in time i.e. speed and agility) sounded impeccable. The speakers possessed the bass extension (definitely to 20 Hz) to create tremendous wall buckling, furniture rattling, chest pounding slam and depth. Yet the bass sounded very tuneful, subtle, and natural. Bass notes were beautifully timed, stopping and starting on a dime, present only when needed, with no artificial bloom, boom, or overhang. I have never heard a bass quite so well controlled. The Focus bass capabilities were way, way beyond what I am used to.

Like most big speakers, the Focus are capable of moving a lot of air, which translated into powerful, life-scale dynamics. The Focus seemed to combine these unrestricted dynamics with the delicacy and precision to recreate really small sounds and keep them from being lost in the presence of much larger sounds.

The overall effect of the Focus natural tonal balance and strong imaging was to create an organic, astonishingly life-like sound that in some ways seemed just a tad better than real life. Musical images seemed bigger than they would be in real life. Yet these images retained their proper proportions, so that their authenticity was never in question. The Focus sounded far simpler than the sum of their many drive-units, as if the sound came from one giant drive unit, or perhaps from no drive unit at all, because singers and musicians were so corporeal and so detached from the speakers that they just seemed to inhabit the front part of the room. The Focus, time and time again, pulled an acoustic vanishing act by generating sonic holograms while completely disappearing themselves. Closing my eyes resulted in a very curious sensation. My mind quickly lost all sense of the speakers. Opening my eyes again came as a bit of a shock. My ears and eyes were in total disagreement about the presence of the two giant towers in the room. Acoustically, the Focus were totally invisible. Many single-driver speakers struggle to sound as coherent, believable, and lacking in coloration as the Focus. The crossover design that Legacy uses in these speakers seems capable of miracles, as I could detect no tonal aberrations or discontinuities to reveal the "joins" between the drive units. The sound was of one piece. With the exception of the image enlargement noted above, the Focus do nothing to impose their "character" on music. This is the goal of hi-fi, but it is only rarely achieved.

Of course the Focus are not perfect. In my time with them I could not detect a single significant coloration, but like most really big speakers, the Focus appreciate a little space around them. I suspect the bass drivers (if provoked) could overload some rooms, but the speaker’s bass sounded remarkably controlled and composed in the smallish listening studio in which I heard them, which measured 12 ft. by 8 ft.

Judging by the evidence of my own ears, the Legacy Focus sound spectacular! They go so far beyond the kind of neutrality and flat frequency response that I seek in speakers, that they really set a whole new standard by which to evaluate loudspeakers. The Focus sound remarkably natural and transparent, big, dynamic, subtle, and organic. I am not sure how useful these adjectives are, but I was deeply impressed with the sound of the speakers. I would characterize that sound as being bigger and better than real life.

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