Attention all Legacy Whisper owners ??


Hello there,
Have any of you took a real good look inside of the midsection of the speaker where the crossovers are? If not, I found something pretty interesting. The passive woofer is actually a complete woofer...magnet,binding posts,vented pole,and it is shielded.It also has a 20ohm resistor soldered between the +/- on the woofer itself. If anyone has noticed this has any one thought of powering this woofer. And using it as a LFE? or a transiton driver kind of like the flagship speaker Helix? After all it is in its own sealed structure. Both the tweeter and mid. are sealed backs and the four mid/woof's are sealed by PVC. I plan on doing some experimenting..I will see what happens, Matt.
ribd11
You might want to talk with Bill Dudleston at Legacy before you do that. You may want to ensure that what you do to it is reversible. I reviewed the Focus HD on Dagogo.com, and have not as much experience with the Whisper, but I can tell you two things, I believe, with certainty:

1. Bill D. thinks things through; it's unlikely that you've discovered a "weakness" or big potential payoff with the speaker that he was unaware of. It's much more likely you will screw up the speaker. (No offense to you)

2. Not having conducted tests on the cabinet in question, I have no way of knowing with certainty (Bill could verify), but it strikes me as a major mistake to think that the cabinet you see on the midsection of the Whisper is suitable for use as a "subwoofer". I have my doubts to whether its walls are dense/thick enough for that purpose. I believe the original purpose of this driver is a partial low frequ. wave cancellation device to ameliorate reflected waves off the headwall from the open baffle 15" foreward firing woofers. To turn it into a subwoofer would likely compound the issue that the driver is addressing!

It seems fairly obvious to me that with a depth of what, one foot or so, and an extremely limited volume to the cabinet, that the driver is not meant to be a subwoofer. When a speaker has four 15" drivers would it not suggest that one rear firing driver is not going to greatly contribute to the proper sonic presentation? In addition, if I recall this driver from memory, it is not as suitable for subwoofer use as you may think. The front firing drivers I believe have been designed to reach those frequencies stress-free, but I'm not sure this driver was intended for that use (I am thinking also of the cone material here, which may be far too flexible in that particular driver). I feel you would simply be adding distortion to the sound. So, make your changes reversible. :)

I think you might be very disappointed with the resultant sound if you simply try to crank on that driver with low frequencies. But, hey, it's your speaker! ;) Either way, it would be interesting to see what you do with it. It seems you are trying to get the performance of the $40k+ speaker from the $12k speaker. Not gonna happen for very good physical reasons.

I'll hand you this; it's the kind of thinking I would have if I were into DIY or modding. I'd be right there with you asking the same questions. But, I see realistic physical drawbacks. I think the result would be deleterious to the sound, as simply adding more "presence" to low end does not much to assure quality low end. You're likely to be quite taken by the extra emphasis in the lower region but in reality the sound would likely be more distorted in an absolute sense.

I'd second Douglas’s response. Why not contact Dudleston directly because I bet he's tried it already and he'd share his experience with you. It would save you time, money and potential damage. I've spoken with him before and he was very helpful, even with my lame-brained ideas.
I currently have a pair of Whispers and asked these same questions. Here is what I was told. The woofer has a resistor so it can better function as a rear absorber of rear unwanted bass energy outside of the speaker. The resistor puts a load on the woofer when it absorbs rear waves around the outside of the speaker, allowing it to dynamically "brake" better than if it was otherwise not connected to a resistor. (If you recall, one of the unique attributes of the Legacy Whisper is that it is much less sensitive to room boundary placement than most other speaker designs). As far as the shield on the woofer, this allows the woofer's magnetics to have less electrical interactivity with the inside of speaker's crossover guts (which are in close proximity to this particular woofer's rear side). IMHO these are all great design concepts that were well thought out. Way to go Bill D. !!