Downsize, Upsize (Part III)
by Karl Nehring
Those who have been following this series will recall that at the end of Part II (which you can find here) I mentioned doing some careful research into speakers as well as consulting with some knowledgeable audio experts, to whom I had some access by virtue of my position at The $ensible Sound magazine. (It was also through the magazine that I first became acquainted with John Puccio, who was the Classical Music Editor.) Based partially on some conversations with the late Tom Nousaine, I finally decided upon a pair of speakers from a small company in Springfield, Illinois, by the name of Legacy Audio. Actually, I had reviewed a pair of speakers from this same company a few years previously when they were doing business under the name Reel-to-Real Designs. Those speakers showed promise, but the company had made significant progress since then and their new flagship speaker, the Focus (pictured right), was just what I was looking for. Not only did they feature the extended bass response I was seeking from their multiple woofers, but their cabinetry was simply gorgeous.
As mentioned above, the drivers in the Focus SE were of a newer vintage and design than those used in the Focus 20/20. For the treble frequencies, the 20/20 employed a 1.25” upper midrange dome and a ribbon tweeter. The SE replaced these two units with two new neo-ribbon drivers. The very top end of the sonic spectrum was handled by a 1” Kapton pleated ribbon with a custom-machined acoustic chamber, a shaped lens to control dispersion, and a neodymium motor structure. The 3” mid-ribbon featured a push-pull neodymium magnetic structure with an ultra-low-mass vapor-deposited Kapton diaphragm. This driver operated below 8kHz to provide a transition to the cone midrange drivers. The two 7” midrange drivers were the same size as those in the 20/20, but are quite different in construction. The two 7” Kevlar midrange units in the 20/20 were superseded in the SE by 7 “ drivers in which threads of silver are woven into a carbon fiber diaphragm to distribute bending modes across the spectrum, then backed with a layer of ultra-light Rohacell. The two 12” bass drivers on the front panel were also different from those used in the 20/20. The aluminum cone woofers in the SE employ the patented AURA motor technology, which features a totally enclosed magnetic structure to provide excellent electrical damping. Two vents are mounted in the rear of the cabinet, but according to Dudleston, the SE does not use a traditional vented bass alignment; instead, the ports are utilized to lower the tuning frequency of the enclosure before electrical transformation is employed on the bass drivers. Exterior dimensions and weight of the Focus SE were virtually identical to the previous version at 55”H X 15.5”W X 13” D and 195 lbs. Sensitivity was rated at 94.5 dB. Overall frequency response is specified as -2 dB at 30 kHz and 18 Hz. Impedance is specified at 4 Ohms.
Then, for whatever reason – although perhaps the realization that I had reached my seventies might have had something to do with it – I found myself thinking more and more seriously about the future. At some point, my thoughts went, my wife and I would no longer be able to go on living in rural isolation, meaning that we would most likely end up either moving in with or living nearby one of our children, or else moving into some kind of retirement facility. Hmm. In either event, we would be definitely be downsizing, meaning I would no longer have a room that could accommodate large speakers. I suddenly became consumed with the idea that I needed to prepare for this eventual downsizing of our living arrangements by downsizing my stereo system – which essentially meant getting rid of my big speakers and replacing them with small speakers. It was an idea that I just could not get out of my head no matter how hard I tried.
I have a son who lives an hour or so away from Springfield, so the next time Marilyn and I went to visit him, we arranged to visit Legacy and asked them to set up a good demo with the Focus and the Calibres. So this time the Calibres were a finished, tuned pair. Except for the deepest bass, they sounded virtually identical to the larger speakers. Marilyn liked them, so boom! My mind was made up. I was going to downsize! Not too long after I got back home, I ordered a pair of Calibres, plus I ordered a pair of SVS Micro 3000 subwoofers (on sale over a holiday weekend) to augment the bottom end. The Calibres were going to take a month or so to be delivered because of the production schedule at Legacy, which was fine, for I was in no huge hurry. This was going to work out great – even adding in the extra cost of the subwoofers, I was going to be ending up with some money left over. Marilyn was pleased by that idea…
Everything was falling into place regarding my grand downsizing project. For a time, I occupied my mind by thinking about where I was going to place the new speakers and subwoofers in the room, how I was going to match levels, what crossover frequency and slope I would wind up using, at what point I would possibly try to fine-tune things using the Dirac software in my NAD 658, etc. But as I thought more about such things, I began to realize that hey, I already had better bass response than I was probably going to end up with, I was not really going to be gaining any floor space, and that after enjoying and loving the big sound of Focus speakers for so long, it would break my heart to give them up – regardless of how excellent the Calibres might sound. Moreover, I realized it would be years before we would be leaving our home; truth be told, my downsizing idea had been an illusory obsession that had led me to make some less-than-optimal decisions. Now what?
What to do, what to do? The first – and most daunting – task was to admit to Marilyn that I now felt as though I had made a mistake and that rather than get the Calibres, I wanted instead to see about purchasing a new pair of Focus SEs, assuming it would still be possible. She was not thrilled, given that this meant that rather than making a little money on the whole deal I would now be spending several thousand more dollars – just to end up with essentially the same speakers that I already owned. Brilliant idea, dear husband!
Not only that, I had downsized the space between my speakers by eight whole inches. After all. When it comes to downsizing successfully, it’s one step at a time, right? Hey, I’m on my way…
John J. Puccio, Founder and Contributor
Understand, I'm just an everyday guy reacting to something I love. And I've been doing it for a very long time, my appreciation for classical music starting with the musical excerpts on the Big Jon and Sparkie radio show in the early Fifties and the purchase of my first recording, The 101 Strings Play the Classics, around 1956. In the late Sixties I began teaching high school English and Film Studies as well as becoming interested in hi-fi, my audio ambitions graduating me from a pair of AR-3 speakers to the Fulton J's recommended by The Stereophile's J. Gordon Holt. In the early Seventies, I began writing for a number of audio magazines, including Audio Excellence, Audio Forum, The Boston Audio Society Speaker, The American Record Guide, and from 1976 until 2008, The $ensible Sound, for which I served as Classical Music Editor.
Today, I'm retired from teaching and use a pair of bi-amped VMPS RM40s loudspeakers for my listening. In addition to writing for the Classical Candor blog, I served as the Movie Review Editor for the Web site Movie Metropolis (formerly DVDTown) from 1997-2013. Music and movies. Life couldn't be better.
Karl Nehring, Editor and Contributor
For more than 20 years I was the editor of The $ensible Sound magazine and a regular contributor to both its equipment and recordings review pages. I would not presume to present myself as some sort of expert on music, but I have a deep love for and appreciation of many types of music, "classical" especially, and have listened to thousands of recordings over the years, many of which still line the walls of my listening room (and occasionally spill onto the furniture and floor, much to the chagrin of my long-suffering wife). I have always taken the approach as a reviewer that what I am trying to do is simply to point out to readers that I have come across a recording that I have found of interest, a recording that I think they might appreciate my having pointed out to them. I suppose that sounds a bit simple-minded, but I know I appreciate reading reviews by others that do the same for me — point out recordings that they think I might enjoy.
For readers who might be wondering about what kind of system I am using to do my listening, I should probably point out that I do a LOT of music listening and employ a variety of means to do so in a variety of environments, as I would imagine many music lovers also do. Starting at the more grandiose end of the scale, the system in which I do my most serious listening comprises Marantz CD 6007 and Onkyo CD 7030 CD players, NAD C 658 streaming preamp/DAC, Legacy Audio PowerBloc2 amplifier, and a pair of Legacy Audio Focus SE loudspeakers. I occasionally do some listening through pair of Sennheiser 560S headphones. I miss the excellent ELS Studio sound system in our 2016 Acura RDX (now my wife's daily driver) on which I had ripped more than a hundred favorite CDs to the hard drive, so now when driving my 2022 Accord EX-L Hybrid I stream music from my phone through its adequate but not outstanding factory system. For more casual listening at home when I am not in my listening room, I often stream music through the phone into a Vizio soundbar system that has tolerably nice sound for such a diminutive physical presence. And finally, at the least grandiose end of the scale, I have an Ultimate Ears Wonderboom II Bluetooth speaker for those occasions where I am somewhere by myself without a sound system but in desperate need of a musical fix. I just can’t imagine life without music and I am humbly grateful for the technology that enables us to enjoy it in so many wonderful ways.
William (Bill) Heck, Webmaster and Contributor
Among my early childhood memories are those of listening to my mother playing records (some even 78 rpm ones!) of both classical music and jazz tunes. I suppose that her love of music was transmitted genetically, and my interest was sustained by years of playing in rock bands – until I realized that this was no way to make a living. The interest in classical music was rekindled in grad school when the university FM station serving as background music for studying happened to play the Brahms First Symphony. As the work came to an end, it struck me forcibly that this was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and from that point on, I never looked back. This revelation was to the detriment of my studies, as I subsequently spent way too much time simply listening, but music has remained a significant part of my life. These days, although I still can tell a trumpet from a bassoon and a quarter note from a treble clef, I have to admit that I remain a nonexpert. But I do love music in general and classical music in particular, and I enjoy sharing both information and opinions about it.
The audiophile bug bit about the same time that I returned to classical music. I’ve gone through plenty of equipment, brands from Audio Research to Yamaha, and the best of it has opened new audio insights. Along the way, I reviewed components, and occasionally recordings, for The $ensible Sound magazine. Most recently I’ve moved to my “ultimate system” consisting of a BlueSound Node streamer, an ancient Toshiba multi-format disk player serving as a CD transport, Legacy Wavelet II DAC/preamp/crossover, dual Legacy PowerBloc2 amps, and Legacy Signature SE speakers (biamped), all connected with decently made, no-frills cables. With the arrival of CD and higher resolution streaming, that is now the source for most of my listening.
Ryan Ross, Contributor
I started listening to and studying classical music in earnest nearly three decades ago. This interest grew naturally out of my training as a pianist. I am now a musicologist by profession, specializing in British and other symphonic music of the 19th and 20th centuries. My scholarly work has been published in major music journals, as well as in other outlets. Current research focuses include twentieth-century symphonic historiography, and the music of Jean Sibelius, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and Malcolm Arnold.
I am honored to contribute writings to Classical Candor. In an age where the classical recording industry is being subjected to such profound pressures and changes, it is more important than ever for those of us steeped in this cultural tradition to continue to foster its love and exposure. I hope that my readers can find value, no matter how modest, in what I offer here.
Bryan Geyer, Technical Analyst
I initially embraced classical music in 1954 when I mistuned my car radio and heard the Heifetz recording of Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto. That inspired me to board the new "hi-fi" DIY bandwagon. In 1957 I joined one of the pioneer semiconductor makers and spent the next 32 years marketing transistors and microcircuits to military contractors. Home audio DIY projects remained a personal passion until 1989 when we created our own new photography equipment company. I later (2012) revived my interest in two channel audio when we "downsized" our life and determined that mini-monitors + paired subwoofers were a great way to mate fine music with the space constraints of condo living.
Visitors that view my technical papers on this site may wonder why they appear here, rather than on a site that features audio equipment reviews. My reason is that I tried the latter, and prefer to publish for people who actually want to listen to music; not to equipment. My focus is in describing what's technically beneficial to assure that the sound of the system will accurately replicate the source input signal (i. e. exhibit high accuracy) without inordinate cost and complexity. Conversely, most of the audiophiles of today strive to achieve sound that's euphonic, i.e. be personally satisfying. In essence, audiophiles seek sound that's consistent with their desire; the music is simply a test signal.
Mission Statement
It is the goal of Classical Candor to promote the enjoyment of classical music. Other forms of music come and go--minuets, waltzes, ragtime, blues, jazz, bebop, country-western, rock-'n'-roll, heavy metal, rap, and the rest--but classical music has been around for hundreds of years and will continue to be around for hundreds more. It's no accident that every major city in the world has one or more symphony orchestras.
When I was young, I heard it said that only intellectuals could appreciate classical music, that it required dedicated concentration to appreciate. Nonsense. I'm no intellectual, and I've always loved classical music. Anyone who's ever seen and enjoyed Disney's Fantasia or a Looney Tunes cartoon playing Rossini's William Tell Overture or Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 can attest to the power and joy of classical music, and that's just about everybody.
So, if Classical Candor can expand one's awareness of classical music and bring more joy to one's life, more power to it. It's done its job. --John J. Puccio
Contact Information
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