Q: If a system is tested to reproduce all frequencies then all sounds will be reproduced correctly, no?

A: Not necessarily. Testing a sound reproduction system with just sine waves is a bit like testing a car on a straight track without ever using the wheel or the brakes. Most natural sounds and also music include lots of impulse shaped waveforms. They are not sinusoidal per se. To reproduce impulse shaped sound events correctly, all frequency channels must work in perfect sync with equal delays, in phase, and do so in all directions. They also need to originate all from the same spot or else the reflected sounds will still have their shapes changed. And also transient distortion needs to be absent for impulse shaped sounds to be reproduced undamaged. Sine wave tests do not test or measure any of these.

Q: It has been demonstrated that the ear is phase deaf. Why do you bother about phase-linearity?

A: These demonstrations used continuous (steady state) sounds. On steady state tones only one of three detection mechanisms in the ear is active, and indeed, that one, the frequency analysis,, does not detect phase. Two other detections are active on the onset of a sound. Phase errors are detected quite well then, when the ear is working in the time domain. This is because phase inaccuracies damage pulse shaped waveforms. The result of damaged onsets is lack of realism, a poor sound stage, a narrow sweet spot, sounds not staying sparate, and listening fatigue. Only timbre, volume and pitch are not influenced by phase erorrs. But that is not all there is in sound or music.

Q: Can you tell a bit more about these sound detection mechanisms in human hearing?

A: We have three sound detection mechanisms. When a new sound is perceived these work sequentially. The first detection is used for direction detection. Only time is measured and only the very first pressure change is considered. Strength or pitch are not considered yet. Time difference between the two ears provides information about where the sound is coming from. The second analysis measures the time between the beginning of the sound and the moment when the air pressure passes the zero point again. This also is a time measurement only. It provides information about the size of the object that produced the sound. When both these time measurements are completed, only then the evaluation of pitch, timbre and volume will start.

Q: Is this new? How come I never knew about this?

A: Altough the human ear did not change recently the knowledge about it did. But it also is not so very new as this knowledge is now about 30 years old, and the suspecion of the existence of such mechanisms is even older: We know for much longer that we can hear direction of sound precisely and with the pitch analysis mechanism only, this could not be explained. The legacy loudspeaker concept, however, does not take this 'new' knowledge into account and is therefore in fact obsolete. The basic principles of most of todays loudspeakers are those from 70 years ago. Tradition can be hard to beat and one could wonder why some consider a 70 year old loudspeaker concept to be still apropriate today, while the concepts of radios, TV's, telephones, and cars from that period are now charished for by collectors and museums.

Q: You have presented LEGENDS at High End audio shows. How do they compare to High End HiFi  systems in general?

A: It beats many of them. Quite some visitors tell us they experience it as a revelation to hear such a detailed, complete, smooth and realistic reproduction. Imagine a show where people are enjoying noting subtle differences and great qualities of B&W screens, in grey scale rendering, deep blacks and pure whites. And then there is this room with a full color TV .... and which also can do glasses free 3D .... The main difficulty at audio shows is that the experience is so different from listening to legacy speakers that your brain may at first be slightly offended about that fact, as it may expect to do a lot of compensation work, expecting to hear legacy speakers. It may take a few moments for the brain the realize it can relax and process sound the same way it does in dayly life. Once it gets this, you will get the full experience.

Q: I learned that sound reflections should be eliminated as much as possible. Why are your speakers radiating all around instead?

Q: What is ‘transient distortion’ and why is it so important to avoid it?

A: Transient distortion is distortion caused by uncontrolled break-up (flexing) and resonance in driver membranes, driver assemblies or cabinet. When a loudspeaker reproduces a sine wave, the mass of occilating moving parts is not a problem as they often oscillate like a string does, unisono with the reproduced wave. Now imagine you create a sudden change like pulling the signal plug suddenly. Often the oscillating membrane will not be able to stop immediately and will continue to produce some movement (and sound) for a short while before it comes to rest. This is caused by stored energy in self oscillating parts of drivers or the cabinet, much like energy is stored in a guitar string after you exited it, and then extinguishes with time. As a result, sound is produced by the speaker that was not present in the signal. In actual musical signals sudden changes happen very often. We call them transients. Traditional loudspeakers often produce significant amounts of this spurious sound, (resonances) masking real information and causing listening fatigue. This is then felt as ‘aggressive’. It damages pulse shaped waveform information, impairs realism and sound stage. It is a prominent problem in traditional loudspeakers, and the absence of it is already well known as a specific quality of electrostatic loudspeakers. Vynil disks by design contain less transients and therefore often are considered less agressive than digital. This aggressiveness, however, is not coming from the CD format itself but is rather due to the inability of the legacy loudspeaker to deal with the transient information present on the CD. Legend speakers can reproduce transient information faithfully and without distortion, allowing for both analog and digital sources to sound smooth, rich, detailed and without aggression.

Q: Phase linear, pulse correct, transient distortion free, omnidirectional, virtual point source, full frequency range, high power and dynamics, build-in phase linear subwoofer,…. It all has been done before. What is so special about your system?

A: The real special thing is to have these all together at the same time under a single 'roof'. This is needed because our human hearing system is very good at detecting any error in sound reproduction and easily classifies sound as ‘not real’ if anything is missing or wrong. For the magic to happen, ALL these features must be present simultaneously in the same device and at the same time. What use is a speedy car if the breaks are no good? But a car with good breaks and a lousy engine isn’t much fun either. It needs to work all together at the same time for it to be really good. We are not aware of other products that achieve such a total, complete, holistic approach. Legends perform exceptionally well in all these fields, and also, each performance is true for the entire frequence range, not just for part of it.

Q: What has been done technically to achieve this?

A: The LEGENDs have many extraordinary technical features, but the principal change is that they are build to a different specification: A new definition of how a loudspeaker should behave, based on modern knowledge on human hearing, leaving the 70 year old legacy concept behind. As such, Legends are not presenting just enhancements in relation to traditional systems, it is an entirely new concept. As such they present a host of actual changes. These include new mechanical, new acoustical, and new electronic solutions, and often a solution is a combination of these. It's quite a list, which can not fit here completely. But here are a few points:
 - A new, proprietary electronic primary crossover circuit, made to form the exact complement to the
 - Secondary, acoustical crossover: Frequency channel outputs are mixed together again acoustically, inside the cabinet, before exit. This combination of paired primary and secondary crossover achieves the performance of a single driver system, combined with the power and dynamics of a multi channel system.
 - Proprietary wave guide and sound mirror to obtain a phase coherent 360 deg omnidirectional radiation as if from a single and small virtual point.
 - Drivers with high power motors using intense rare earth magnets and large coils, providing up to 10 times better membrane control than legacy drivers
 - The use of a bending wave driver with a large resistive supple membrane avoiding stored energy
 - Specific power amplifiers, one per driver type, and close coupled: no components between the output power devices and the driver voice coil, providing again for better membrane control.
 - Low resonance enclosure, with separate sealed enclosures for each frequency channel.

A: The LEGEND Precision Sound Reproducers not only reproduce tones and notes precisely, they also precisely reproduce sound events and noises, also known as aperiodic sounds. As a result, percussion sounds real and detailed and so do the onsets of notes, in particaular those of pianos and guitars. This is unusual to most listeners. The second main feature is that you wll be able to elimenate the listening room at will (or listen to it). This may sound unbevlievable but it is a feature your brain already has on natural sounds. Traditional speakers challenge this neural system, but Legends are build to allow it to do its job normally, also on reproduced sound from a (this) loudspeaker. This is also quite unusual.

There are also a number of other listening advantages not common to loudspeakers in general: * The listening experience is closer to the concert experience, sounds are more ‘real’. * Transparency and minimal footprint - You do not hear the loudspeakers, you just hear the music.  * The sound floats in the room instead of sticking to the speakers. * More information from the recording (from the musicians) is conveyed to you as a listener. * Sonic space may be reproduced: You not only hear the music, you can also perceive the room the music was recorded in. * A rich, precise and detailed soundstage image. * Your natural selection filter will allow you to highlight musicians among others in a sound stage image, at your choice. * Due to this you can choose to have a different listening experience while listening to the same recording. * A wide sweet spot: more listeners can enjoy the sound stage simultaneously, more freedom of movement. * A high ‘Spouse Acceptance Factor’ (SAF) as the units are of reasonable size and shape and placement is less critical and no need to 'toe-in'. * Generally no acoustic room treatments are needed. * Excellent sound in all areas of the room. * Reduced listning fatigue - you can comfortably listen for many hours.

Q: What does it sound like? Can you try to compare it to anything I might already know?

A: The most unusual aspect is that it sounds much more like how real sounds sound. It does not sound like 'sound coming from a loudspeaker'. This is quite unusual so you may be surprised and you may need a short while to get used to that, after which you can enjoy music as if you were at the concert hall, or like if you were in a Jazz club.  Closing your eyes makes the illusion more complete as the brain privileges visual information. Some have compared the clarity of the sound to that of electrostatic or panel loudspeakers (as these can also reproduce pulses and phase) but then without the usual drawbacks of size, limited power or dynamics, critical placement, narrow sweetspot or problems with bass. Legends do not present any of these drawbacks that panel speakers often have. The reproduction of sonic space is unique however, as this requires both the ability to reproduce pulse shapes and phase as well as the omnidirectional point source. We are not aware of any other loudspeaker concept capable of combining all these features. The gain in realism is not sublte. It can be noted immediately, often within the first seconds.

Q: Will this work with the music collection I own? Or does it require special recordings?

A: The system will work with any recording. Given the precision of the LEGEND Sound Reproducers you may be able to better differentiate between recording qualities then before. You will be able to note when recordings contain reduced or damaged transient information. To enjoy the best performance of the system, recordings that were less manipulated or less 'tweaked', seem to work best, as these often have better preserved information in the time domain. This includes both recent as well as older recordings and there are huge quantities of them round. We have collected quite some and we are happy to demonstrate them to you and to share our lists of titles with you. But any recording will sound well or better on a LEGEND system, as LEGENDs simply reproduce the input signal very accurately. But when a recording contains less significant transient information, then the difference with 'normal' speakers may be less obvious, a bit like when you play a B/W movie on a color TV, the color feature will not show, the the movie will still play necely in B/W. Luckily, however, many existing recordings contain lots of (possibly previously hidden) transient information.

Q: Will it work with my existing player / amp / room?

A: Yes. Most HiFi players and electronics we have tested performed quite well, also for phase and impulse. Power amplification is included so you will not have to worry about that and connect the LEGEND's to the output of a pre-amp or to the pre-outs of your integrated amp. Your HiFi specialist shop can advice you on how to best connect them. Concerning the room: We recommend to keep one meter of free space around the units if, for maximum enjoyment. If room acoustics are good enough to have a relaxed conversation, than it will probably be good enough to listen to LEGENDs as well. Special acoustic room treatment is generally not needed.

Q: I own a top class DAC. Will it's performance be annihilated by your system digitising the signal again? And also: does it work with vinyl discs?

A: You will be able to enjoy the full performance of your DAC. Our system is entirely analogue and does not digitise the signal in any way. LEGENDs also work very well with vinyl discs - you can enjoy an entirely analogue signal path without digitasion or chopping anywhere in the chain. The units do not generate any carrier or switching frequencies whatsoever.

Q: Why do you use neodymium magnets?

A: Neodymium magnets have stronger fields, empowering the driver motors to better control, higher efficiency and lower transient distortion. Furthermore, ferrite magnets have other drawbacks for precise sound reproduction: ferrite is an electrical insulator which is not optimal for damping and lastly, ferrite allows the magnetic field to move more easily inside the magnet, providing for a less sturdy base for the motor to push and pull from.

Q: Your speakers produce powerfull and deep bass in relation to their size. How is this possible?

A: For bass reproduction we use air compression in a sealed enclosure, complemented by proprietary equalization. You may have noticed some bookshelf sized active speakers on the market today, which also produce more bass than expected from their size. Here, a similar method is applied, but now in a medium sized floorstanding system. It results in bass performance comparable to systems 4 to 8 times the size. It makes the LEGENDs bass sound huge, while the units are reasonably sized. Using a steel enclosure further reduces physical size. And then the fast transient response and absence of lag or resonance convays more information to the listener, which can also be perceived as 'more bass'. Last but not least LEGEND speakers are among the very few capable of addressing the size estimation detection in our ears with recorded content. As this allows to reproduce sounds 'bigger' than the size of the units, it can also be interpreted by listeners as 'incredible' or 'super powered' bass.

Q: Why do you make an active system? Is there anything wrong with a good external amplifier and passive cross-over filters?

A: The proprietary processing we do to pair the electronic separation crossover with the secondary acoustic re-assembly crossover, to obtain the equivalent performance of a single driver system, can not be done with only passive components. Neither can the method of bass reproduction described above be realized that way. So we do not actually have the choice. Furthermore, we do feel that passive cross-over filters do indeed present challenges to precise sound reproduction:
- Passive crossover filters often cause frequency dependent delay (even a few less perfect active filters do so as well). This causes pulse shapes to be reproduced incorrectly. It can also cause subtle phase information to become damaged or lost.
- Passive crossover filters introduce resistive elements in the final loop between the power amplifier and the driver voice coil. This damages the control (damping) capacity of the amplifier significantly, and compromises membrane control and transient reproduction.
- Resistive components in the final loop also cause important losses in power. The 300W amplification in a LEGEND produces more dynamics than the equivalent of 600W or even 1200W in some traditional systems because it is close coupled: there are no losses in filters or cables. And because the amplifiers can achieve the required SPL with much less electrical power, distortion is lower too.
- With passive crossover filters, the voice coil itself becomes an actual component in the filter circuit. This causes the filter charateristics to change with the temperature of the voice coil. As voice coil temparature changes can be quick and important during operation, this can cause unwanted dynamic changes in the characteristics of the filters.
- Passive cross-over filters may allow reactive feedback current from one channel to flow into an adjacent channel. With separate amplifiers, this risk is completely elimenated.
- A separate amplifier for each frequency channel allows to optimize each power amplifier for the transducer it is driving and for the frequency range at hand. The needs for amplifying HF (high speed) an LF (high power) are different and performing both at the same time is a particular challenge: When high currents are flowing due to a powerfull bass wave, keeping fast and precise treble information on top of that, undistorted, can be hard to achieve. In a properly conceived active system however, these difficulties are avoided alltogether and compromises uncalled for, as force and speed are now handled each by separate circuits, excluding the risks of interference.