"This is what I think. Legacy buys stereo modules. They use them in all the amps. So, an i-v8 would have 4 stereo modules (8 channels). The regular i-v4 has two stereo modules (4 channels). The I-v4 ultra has 4 stereo modules (8 possible channels) but they use just one channel of each module so they are basically mono amps. This gives more power for each channel and zero cross talk. Each channel is already bridged, so you cannot bridge an already bridged amp. So, no the i-v4 ultra cannot be bridged in any way. It already has 1200 watts into 4 ohms on each of its 4 channels. How much power do you need? I believe the i-v2 dual mono stereo amp has 2 stereo amps and then just uses one channel of each amp to make it mono."
To @ricevs great post....that is what I understood last year when I spoke with Dudleston at Legacy before deciding to buy the i.V4 Ultra.... |
To @ricevs I am a long-time Legacy customer of many of their speakers and also happen to be an owner of the i.V4 Ultra amp since May of 2020 (very happily and very impressed I might ad).
The "ULTRA" build is using 4 stereo 1200AS2 boards with each single board as I understand it being dedicated and applied to power 1 channel.
What I can tell you for sure is that I have been extremely happy and impressed with this 4-channel amp (and have a friend with an i.V3 Ultra and another with an i.V2 that are equally impressed). I, like the 2 guys that I know, have been in this hobby for about 3 decades each and were early on firm tube amp lovers followed by "big expensive solid state lovers and bigots" for Class A and/or AB designs costing 10s of thousands of dollars and weighing 100-200 and more pounds. Note I still love great tube, Class A and AB solid state for the record and appreciate the merits of any reference-level amplifier.
I will not throw out manufacturer names for things I've owned and even more that I've heard but I will say there are some big names on the list that I've owned and more that I've heard deeply that I remember and respect very much that today would have a hard time competing with what I'm hearing out of this Legacy i.V4 Ultra so I am inclined to agree with everything qualitative that is said in the review based upon my direct listening experiences only owning this amp.
I don't however want to get into a '&*^%^#$' contest with anyone who takes umbrage at the claims in the review.
It's a fantastic, musical, dynamic, detailed, powerful amplifier design that weighs a fraction of what I'm used to dragging up and down stairs, etc. and costs what I think is an incredibly reasonable price. I'd suggest to anyone that it is well worth a listen to a well broken-in demo on a good system and do some careful listening; you might be very surprised and pleased at what you hear!
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Yes they are indeed very good, actually excellent in sound quality and much more than simply purchased modules installed in a box based upon my opening the cover and speaking based upon what I see first-hand. |
While this is certainly true, it has nothing to do with a properly functioning amplifier. Usually it has more to do with making sure that the speakers used with the amp are such that when the dynamic range of the music is expressed, you hear everything without distortion, even if its at lifelike levels.
As an example, in 1959 RCA released the Soria series recordings. Dorle Soria came from Angel to work with RCA and produced upscale recordings and packaging. One such recording is the Verdi Requiem, which is recorded without any compression. The second cut on side one has dynamic range that can bring many systems to their respective knees. But if you have enough power and you have easy to drive speakers its no problem!
Great example on the Soria series,....absolutely spot-on. As to the rest of the reply, you cannot have one without the other, i.e. a speaker that will do it when the amp cannot accomplish the same goal and vice versa leaves you with the system not being able to do it so with all respect, it does have to do with the amplifier’s capabilities. |
If the amplifier is unable to follow the waveform presented to it (which is the source of all dynamic contrast) then it will distort.
Perhaps a bit counterintuitively, if a particular amp is **more** dynamic than most others (for example SETs) its also because of distortion. In the case of SETs up to about 20% of full power their distortion is pretty benign. But above that point, the higher ordered harmonics become more pronounced. Since the ear uses the higher ordered harmonics to sense sound pressure and because transients is where most of the power is, when the higher orders show up on the transients, the ear interprets that as 'louder on the leading edges' IOW more 'dynamic'.
Its a simple fact that when audiophiles talk about dynamics, about 90% of the time they are really talking about distortion, and you can safely replaced the word 'dynamics' in that conversation with 'distortion' without changing the meaning of the conversation.
Put another way, amps that sound more 'dynamic' are very likely to do so out of distortion and nothing else. The dynamic character of the music should come from the source, not the amp, that is if the amp is accurately reproducing the signal! All so true....great post! I would only add that great amps that sound more dynamic can also do it due to extremely low distortion and better execution of instantaneous power delivery. |
From the detail of your posts I’m sure your modified ICedge boards and designs are of great quality in how the service you offer modifies the stock offering and how they sound. I’d like to hear them some day and that would be a great compare as well to do with what’s in front of me in this particular variation.
I’m a customer of Legacy as previously noted, have nothing to gain from these posts to be clear. I don’t make or sell products and have nothing on offer to others in this hobby. When I had the top off of my amp, I compared the boards against the stock boards available to anyone to buy and they are clearly (to me) not exactly the stock boards or what is pictured on other amp manufacturers' sites (Rogue and several others) for their amps based on the AS1 and AS2 boards from what I can see directly in front of me. They seem to be Legacy-specific and the whole amp assembled by Legacy (on the Ultra version at least I can speak of) with attention to mating of the boards and the chassis to ensure continuous ground connections removing anodized finish where board and chassis mating must occur to ensure continuity with the chassis and also have additional grounding attention paid in the form of a 6 pound copper bar that is not visible in the photo.
This from someone who actually has seen, held, inspected and lived with this amp since May 2020. |
"Regarding class D i would like to see manufactures building their own class D modules. We need more effort, these modules IceEdge ect. no matter what amp they are inserted in all have a familiar signature even though they are much better today that signature goes back a decade. Different name on the faceplate but same internals same sound, good but not great.
Several manufactures have designed their own class D modules and what i have heard AGD they are a major leap in SQ."
Great post @rh67 I've heard AGD-based amps in 2019 in Munich (only 1 manufacturer) and thought they were damned impressive. |
Oh gosh, I thought we were done with this.....again, here are 3 pictures of the insides of the i-v4 ultra......and what I see are 4 stock IceEdge modules. Does yours look different than these?
Said in good fun.... Must be a trick question :-) as that's my system so of course the insides of the amp and the boards top to bottom, look as they do in person to me as the pictures you highlighted since I took those pictures in the first place. Doug was saying he has more technical details and I've been told by Legacy this is not stock modules in a box so since I'm just a customer I'm bowing out and letting all you industry vendors, service providers and reviewers talk through this. I'd be interested in the conclusion but frankly I'm damned happy with my amp and was passing on what I see and what I've been told when asking questions. |
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