Legacy Classics and bottom end?

sean....I pluigged the ports with hard foam. I have not had the "sizzle" you had or the flying V effect. What I do and have is room/speaker placement .... sub effect increase. If you remember the old B&W 801's they suffered even more than my classics......and for total sound the classics "to me" fit my liking. My classics do have a bass switch. But not one I think is "enough" of a change. I love my speakers and I am only talking about a 5% "desire" to make them "right for me". Plus I have never been in a high end home or store. So I am limited. I do use Genelec near fields and adjustable sub in my home studio. I have also been to a high end studio. So I have some "idea" what I am after. I also think? sub sound 80 and below are a pain to fine tune.

Take a thick wool sock, ball it up and then completely wrap it up in cellophane wrap aka "saran wrap". Shove this into the port with the open side of the saran wrap firing out of the port. The thick foam that you are using will only change the port tuning, not seal it. The saran wrap will act as a more efficient air-tight seal and the sock will provide enough mass to keep the woofers from forcing the seal out of the port via internal pressures. If you don't get it wedged in there tight enough though, the pressures within the ports can launch the plastic wrapped sock out of the ports much like a cannon launches the load placed within it. Sean
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I have been using a Classics for about 6 months now. The bass in my situation seems tight and deep. They have been updated with the newest crossovers. I have never found the bass bloated. It is reasonably quick and tuneful. Cable is a biwire JPS superconductor and I am powering with Manley amps @ 60 watts in triode (KT 90 tubes). I have found solid state with these speakers less to my liking. By all means turn off the rear facing tweeter-I think it really degrades the soundstaging. It might be workable if it had a volume control like the Von Schweikert VR 3.

Placement & room acoustics I think is the real key. I have mine almost 6 feet from the back wall and 4 feet from side walls. I am fortunately able to do this in my listening area which is carpeted and fairly large (16' X 22'). This placement results in a deep soundstage with excellent imaging.

Is it possible the room is just to small for the speaker? Is the abundant bass overpowering room acoustics?

Entrope brings up a good point, but in kind of an indirect manner. That is, specific rooms can really compound specific loudspeaker non-linearities. That is, placing a speaker with large frequency response deviations in output inside of a room that happens to create peaks or dips at the same appr frequencies can really bring such problems to the forefront. Even if the room itself doesn't reinforce the speaker response deviations, certain speaker placements within the room itself can do so.

Not to harp on the subject, as i've already pointed this out amply in the past, but different Legacy models have been shown to demonstrate large bass peaks in different reviews as conducted by different magazines in different testing facilities. The fact that the peaks are almost identical in amplitude and center frequency tells me that this is part of their "house sound" rather than just some random coincidence.

The fact that all speaker designers know that a speaker of this type will be used in a room, and all rooms share some similarities in terms of bass reinforcement, tells me that the speaker is either purposely designed for this type of response or is a highly under-designed product. To top it off, Legacy also offers their Steradian processor, which is meant to deal with bass related problems, so they must at least be aware of the situation.

By blaming the room for what is basically a speaker design problem, they can get away with selling an expensive add-on accessory to those that crave a more linear output and make even more money at the same time. Obviously, this is just my point of view, so take it for what it is worth. Sean
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Entrope..... I am glad you like your classics. Sean has a good point. They may not be "user friendly"to some. But the fact remains that there are hundreds if not thousnads by now, people who love the products. I prefer the Legacy "sound" over the B&W. Or at least what I have heard. But that is taste an opinion.I am not qualified or have the "ear" to tell people what they will like. I am aware of the "room effect". Look at all the products for this. While some will blame the "speakers" the same goes for Amps, cables, players ect. The quest for finding "the sound" in ones "room" is what fills these pages of comments. I think..... building a home system to taste and liking is sometimes a case of ketchup on eggs. It's 2005 and I have yet to read a review where the "holy grail" of sound playback has been achieved. Plus, all this starts with a mic pointed towards a sound and then recorded and mixed and mastered. If one has not done any recording, then the choice of ALL that equipment is another topic. ( long too I might add.....LOL!) I am not going to "falt" any one product or brand.