Legacy Signature SE Floorstanding Speaker Review

Legacy Audio is a small high-end audio company specializing in high-performance loudspeakers, subwoofers and system electronics. Founded in 1983 by engineer Bill Dudleston, Legacy began by producing passive full-range floorstanding speakers and has expanded its offerings over the years to include bookshelf speakers, powered subwoofers, center channel and surround theater speakers, fully-powered floorstanding speakers employing very sophisticated DSP frequency response shaping and room equalization, and separate pre-amp and power amp electronic components. The company previously sold its products on a direct-to-consumer basis, but has added a few select retail dealers and from time to time and does a traveling “road show” to demo its products to audiophiles in different parts of the country. Legacy also maintains a full demo showroom at its corporate headquarters in Springfield, Illinois.

Today we’re looking at the Signature SE, a relatively compact passive floorstanding model. Legacy’s lineup of “Stereo Left-Right/Mains” speakers is comprised of 11 models, the first six of which are passive. The Signature SE is the second most expensive passive speaker, exceeded only by the Focus SE which we reviewed back in 2013.

Basic Description of Signature SE

The Signature SE is what I would call a mid-sized floorstander. At 48 x 12 x 13 ¾” HWD and 106 lbs., it’s clearly larger than a typical entry-level 3-foot-tall 60 lb. floorstander, but it’s not some 5-foot 160-pound Room Dominator. My listening room is mid-sized at most (14 x 17 feet) and the signature SE’s look quite nice there, not too large at all. Expectation and pre-conceived notions play a big role with loudspeakers, and these are no exception. Given their modest size, one’s expectations about ultimate bass response and overall refinement of sound are somewhat tempered. But considering Legacy’s reputation and the near 5-figure price, it’s natural, on the other hand, to expect a lot, to be wowed on an absolute scale. There definitely aren’t any thoughts of, “These will be good considering the price or size” with these speakers. The Signature SE’s had better deliver.

Do they? We’ll find out.

Arrival and Packaging

The speakers arrived on a wooden pallet, via Fed Ex Freight. I was prepared to offer the driver a generous tip to help me get the speakers directly into the house, but he said he was prevented by legal statute to not “cross the threshold.” So they ended up in my garage, which is at basement level, one level down from our living/listening floor. Yikes. These are big speakers, especially in their shipping cartons. Clearly beyond the capabilities of my wife and I (we’re in our late ‘60’s) to get up the front walk and into the house. So I called my young strong friend Jason to help out.

Mission Impossible: Legacy Signatures in my Garage

Jason is in his mid 40’s and as strong as can be. He’s ex-Army and an MMA expert. This is someone you want on your side. But, even more importantly, Jason is an EE and was the head speaker engineer at Atlantic Technology when I was there from 2003-2013. (I had a dual role as Director of Marketing and Manager of Product Development/Engineering.) Jason did both finished system design as well as transducer design. He headed the design effort that produced Atlantic Technology’s excellent AT-1, which utilized their outstanding H-PAS bass loading technology. The AT-1 had an MSRP of $2500/pr. yet it was on Stereophile’s Recommended Components Loudspeakers Class B for three years running. Speakers in Class B include pricing up to $20,000/pr. Think about that. He also did the amazing Atlantic Technology IWTS-30 LCR in-wall speaker—the acoustics, the voicing and the transducer design—the first in-wall speaker to earn THX Ultra 2 certification for flat frequency response, low distortion and high SPL capability.  His body of work is impressive and his ear/musical knowledge is second to none.

So we got the speakers up from the garage and in the front door. These things were really packaged nicely. A heavy-duty outer carton with generous foam endcaps held things securely in place. Hard cardboard reinforcements at each corner ran the length from top to bottom. The speakers themselves are a good four inches in from the outer surface of the carton, so they’re well out of harm’s way. Each speaker was clothed in a full-length velvet bag, beautifully adorned with a silver Legacy logo. Most of Legacy’s speakers are very large, monstrously heavy affairs. The company obviously knows how to package its products for safe transport. They better know—the alternative is simply not tenable.

Signature SE inner packaging

The care and obvious engineering thought that went into the packaging was most impressive. They made it to my house from halfway across the country like they were going around the block. This was a great first impression.

Editorial Note: Humorous aside
I keep most of the cartons that my stuff comes in, downstairs in the basement. Not just high-end audio gear. I have various boxes for wet vacs, coffee makers, radios, wall clocks, you name it. My wife hates that I do this, although I suspect that it’s a trait shared by most audiophiles. We just have a certain respect and regard for equipment—of any kind—and we keep the boxes for that future day when safe transport becomes necessary.

My wife hates this. In all honesty, my wife and I get along great and are perfectly compatible, patient and accepting of each other in virtually every way. She’s simply a fabulous person—smart, funny, compassionate, a 5-star chef, etc.— and I appreciate my good fortune in being married to her beyond what I can put into words. But she gets annoyed that I save boxes, drives her nuts. Well, she’ll be happy to know that I’m not saving these Legacy boxes. They’re just too big. I’ll keep the velvet bags, but I’m never moving these speakers. They’ll either stay in the house forever or I’ll give them to Jason if/when I lose my hearing due to old age.

Drivers and Bass Configuration

The Signature SE is a 5-driver 4-way sealed system. It is not a classic “acoustic suspension” system like the old 1970’s AR-Advent-KLH speakers with their ultra high-compliance, low-resonance/low Q woofers. 

(See my article: Sealed is not Acoustic Suspension )

I had a very informative exchange with Bill Dudleston, Legacy’s founder and head engineer. I asked him a series of very detailed questions regarding the Signature SE’s design and he answered me in great detail. Here is that exchange:

First, my questions to Legacy:

Dear Mr. Dudleston,

My name is Steve Feinstein. I have spent many decades in the U.S. high-fidelity speaker market in product development, marketing and engineering with companies such as Bose, Boston Acoustics and Atlantic Technology. Many of the products my teams worked on went on to become best-selling models, with many highly reviewed “Editor’s Choice, “Product of the Year,” etc. awards and recognition over the years. You’d know a lot of them, I’m sure. I was fortunate to work alongside many talented and innovative people.

Working for a company that has specific marketing/sales goals and choosing equipment for your own personal listening can often be two different things. It doesn’t mean that you’re disingenuous or insincere—you always try to produce the very best products you possibly can within the sales and marketing environment that you’re operating in. It’s just that when it comes to your own personal listening, those constraints aren’t necessarily there any longer.

I have always favored the full-range floor-standing speaker. To my ear, nothing can match the coherency and power of a full-range speaker powered by appropriate amplification. I am also a subscriber to the maxim that there’s “no substitute for cone area.”

It might surprise you, but I regularly listen to a set of fully-restored, mint-condition AR9’s. With their dual sealed 12-inch acoustic suspension woofers and their 4-way design with an 8-inch lower mid operating from 200-1200Hz and dome upper-mid and dome tweeter, they exhibit an effortless, widely-dispersed response that is a delight to hear, even to this day. Their factory-spec’d -3dB LF point is 28Hz. Julian Hirsch measured their real-life in-room FR at ± 3 dB from 30-19kHz. They still sound quite good.

But….there is a time for everything, no? I think the time for me is now. Your Signature SE certainly has caught my eye. But I do have some questions that I hope you can answer.

The Signature SE is listed as a “sealed” speaker, but is it a true acoustic suspension speaker with low-Q woofers that have a low FAR (20 Hz or so)? Or is it merely “sealed,” but using higher-Q (.45 Qts or higher) drivers? There’s a difference between “acoustic suspension” and merely “sealed.” [See my article “Sealed in not acoustic suspension”] Either way can be made to work nicely; I’m just curious as to your actual design approach on the Signature SE.

Also, you list the Signature SE as having “adjustable damping.” Could you expound on this? Exactly how do you mean? Is the damping adjustable by the end-user?

Then, Bill Dudleston’s response to me [and full credit to Legacy for a very prompt and in-depth answer]:

The goal with the Signature SE was to build a floor standing speaker with seamless response, wide dynamic range and full bandwidth.  Having a big brother in the Focus SE boasting dual 12” subwoofers in the Focus SE already, I opted for a slimmer design that can be placed close to boundaries.

I opted for low mass diaphragms woofers with excellent lower midrange qualities that could reinforce the 7” midrange over a couple octaves with a soft slope low-pass filter. The Signature SE uses a pair of 10” woofers with QTS of 0.46 and linear Xmax of 7mm, each with a sensitivity of 88 dB.  These two drivers naturally benefit from mutual coupling to raise the sensitivity further.  The low bass employs a 2nd order high pass filter to prevent over-excursion below 30 Hz.  This filter trades off impedance for a boost at 35 Hz.  The Q of the filter is set to provide 2.5 dB boost before rejecting the very lowest frequencies.

This is additive to the response of a close-mic response of the woofer. Mutual coupling of the drivers and room boundaries (in a sealed system, room gain typically adds 9 to 12dB of lift at 20Hz tapering to 1dB at 110 Hz.) can be to useful at lower frequencies to increase radiation impedance which can reduce distortion, but if the user doesn’t employ active room correction, it’s very nice to have a room damping contour in the problematic 60-85Hz range when the system is placed close to boundaries.

So in summary:  Within the woofer’s passive crossover s a high-pass filter, a trap filter which is employable to shave output in the 60-85Hz range by about 2 dB to avoid boominess and then the shallow HP crossover underpinning the lower midrange.

While the box is sealed it is not an infinite baffle or acoustic suspension design. It is instead a synthesized alignment combining the acoustic and electrical filters we might otherwise employ with DSP in our more sophisticated models.

Maturing as a loudspeaker designer I have learned to treat the real world situations we encounter in application.  I have been very fortunate and by bringing questions to Don Keele, David L. Clark, Earl Geddes, Tom Danley, Ken Kantor, Roy Allison, Arnie Nudell and Ed Villchur over the years, I have gained insights from their dedicated lifetimes.   For this I am extremely grateful.

Thanks for your interest.  My best,

Bill D.

Nonetheless, sealed is sealed. The bass on the Signature SE emanates from one point only—the direct radiation from the woofer cones. As such, there is not any time delay, phase inconsistency or other anomaly that can be attributed to a vented system, where the woofers “hand off” their low-frequency responsibilities below a certain tuning frequency to the vent/port, often located several inches away from the woofers. Die-hard sealed aficionados will swear until the cows come home that bass from a sealed system is unsurpassed, embodying those elusive, indefinable, unmeasurable qualities of “fast, tight” bass. There is no intent here to pull this review off course and turn it into some wild “sealed vs. ported” argument. That’s not necessary. Properly designed systems of any kind can produce terrific bass, within well-known tradeoffs. Let’s agree on that.

This speaker uses dual 10-inch aluminum-cone woofers with 2-inch voice coils and bullet-shaped aluminum phase plugs. These are beefy drivers—cast baskets and substantial magnets. The highly-scientific, extremely-precise “fingernail-flick-against-the-cone” test—a test that only the most modern and up-to-date loudspeaker testing labs is capable of executing properly—reveals that the Signature SE’s woofers are tuned quite low and the test quite accurately predicts that the system is capable of effortless, prodigious low-frequency output in a medium-sized space.

Legacy Signature SE 10” woofer with cast basket

Crossing over at a very low 180Hz, the woofers make way for a 7-inch “midwoofer” with a silver graphite cone in a cast frame, also with a bullet-shaped aluminum phase plug. (When Legacy says, “silver graphite,” it’s not clear if they’re referring simply to the color of the cone or if the cone’s material composition contains some actual silver.) This driver handles the range from 180Hz to 2800Hz and is responsible for virtually the entire midrange. It is commendable that Dudleston has designed the system so that only one driver handles five straight midrange octaves, uninterrupted by any crossover circuitry or nearby overlapping driver interference. This midwoofer is quite an authoritative, capable driver, clearly responsible for the natural-sounding midrange and it’s a major contributor to the overall effortless quality of the system.

The aluminum phase plug on the woofers and midrange serve to increase the power handling, since it forms a direct heat exchange path from the driver’s pole piece to the outside air in the room. In the case of the 7-inch midrange, the bullet shape of the phase plug can also tailor the dispersion characteristics at the higher-end of the driver’s range. There is no dispersion effect for the woofers (they operate below 180Hz and are effectively omni-directional anyway) and having their phase plugs be the same shape at the 7-inch driver is simply a welcome cosmetic consideration.

Legacy Signature SE 7” midwoofer with cast basket

From there, the system crosses over to a dual AMT upper midrange/tweeter element mounted on a common faceplate. The 4-inch upper midrange AMT handles the range up to 8kHz and the 1-inch tweeter AMT takes over above 8k. Mounting the two units very close together (within an inch and three-eighths) on a common faceplate presumably enables them to act as a virtual acoustic “point source,” since the two radiators are less than a wavelength apart (.81 of a wavelength, actually) at their 8kHz crossover frequency. Such an arrangement yields the “coherent point source” acoustic benefits of something like the KEF Uni-Q driver, but totally avoids the dispersion-restricting/diffraction-producing “tweeter in a cave” problems inherent in that design. The Legacy shows a very insightful, intelligent design.

Legacy Signature SE dual AMT upper-mid and tweeter on common mounting plate

Editorial Note: Historical Aside
The AR9LS of 1982 used what AR called a “dual dome” upper-midrange/tweeter arrangement. The
1 ½-inch upper midrange dome and ¾-inch dome tweeter were mounted on a common faceplate and driven off a single large magnet structure. Their crossover frequency was similar to the Signature SE’s—7kHz. Since the two domes were within a wavelength at crossover, they operated acoustically as a virtual point source.

AR9LS with “Dual Dome” from 1982

As a matter of fact the AR9/90/9LS/9LSi series was somewhat similar in overall design to the Legacy Signature SE. The ARs were sealed systems, with dual 12-inch woofers (9), dual 10-inch woofers (90), and a 12 + 10-inch woofer arrangement (9LS and LSi). They were 4-ways with 8-inch midwoofers and the two dome upper-range drivers (the LS/LSi having the aforementioned coincident “dual dome” array). Their crossovers were 200, 1200 and 7kHz—fairly similar in concept. The Signature SE’s have a great advantage in avoiding that 1200Hz heart-of-the-midrange crossover, but it could be considered to be a modern version of that basic AR design approach, using the very latest materials, manufacturing methodologies, driver designs, cabinet bracing conventions and far higher-quality crossover componentry and internal wiring. Dudleston is on record as saying that he respected the AR9’s design, so it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that some of that respect—perhaps totally subconsciously—manifests itself in the execution of the Signature SE. In any event, being a veteran audiophile with a very long memory into past products gives me an unusually-long half-century vantage point from which to make observations and posit “what ifs.” Interesting to think about, that’s all. I’d venture a guess and say I’m one of only a bare handful of Signature SE owners in the universe who has detailed, first-hand knowledge of both those old AR speakers and these new Signatures. My Signature SE’s replace a set of meticulously restored mint-condition AR9’s in my main system, so the comparison is direct and fascinating.

Signature SE Enclosure

The cabinet is made from 1 1/8-inch thick MDF with very substantial internal bracing.  The slight extra panel thickness leaves a substantial amount of “meat” for driver mounting, even after the routing for the drivers’ frames.  There are four internal braces for the cabinet, quite a lot considering it’s only 48-inches tall.

The cabinet tapers front-to-back from 12 inches wide across the front to 9 ½ inches wide across the back. The top panel tapers down from 48 inches high in the front to 46.5 inches high in the rear. This means, of course, that the cabinet’s walls are not parallel, which greatly reduces the incidence of audibly detrimental standing waves within the enclosure. The top panel’s side edges are chamfered down and the top half of the cabinet’s tall front edges are cut back in a sculpted shape that reduces the boxiness of the cabinet’s appearance. It looks flat-out great. The quality of the Brown Sapele Pommele wood veneer is simply outstanding, and the total look garners that all-elusive WAF—the first speaker in my experience to do so. As can be seen in the picture, this is a very heavily-braced cabinet and the informal “knuckle-rap” text confirms it.

Legacy Signature SE cabinet under construction, showing thick internal bracing

Legacy Signature SE crossover in two sections, with high-quality parts.

On the back panel are two sets of nice beefy binding posts, to facilitate passive bi-wiring or bi-amping if either of those snake-oil approaches appeals to you.

There are also two switches to the right of the binding posts that provide a subtle degree of tonal modification/room equalization. One is a high-frequency switch that simply shelves the response above 10kHz down by 2dB to tame any harshness in too-lively rooms. The other is a low-frequency switch that reduces the speaker’s output between 60-85Hz by about 2dB, to remove any mid-bass “bloat” caused by placement or room-dimensional problems. In my room—which has very cooperative dimensions for bass reproduction and is treated acoustically for a near-perfect balance of damping vs. reverberation, I didn’t need either of these controls, but I did verify that they worked as intended. Legacy describes the Signature SE as having “adjustable damping,” but never expounds on that in any detail, either on their website or in the owner’s manual. Presumably, the 60-85Hz control is what they mean by adjustable damping.

The speaker came with rubber feet already installed (thank you, even though the electronic PDF manual said the rubber feet needed to be attached by the owner). In one of the two cartons, there is a small white cardboard box containing adjustable-height carpet spikes that screw into the bottom of the rubber feet. I have never used carpet spikes on any speaker I’ve ever had. I suspect that the inclusion of these spikes is more to satisfy some unrealistically-critical reviewers who will then say, “Ahh, spikes. Good.” than it is to meet a real-world demand. I don’t know anyone who wants to poke holes in their expensive Karastan. I certainly never would. I remember writing the “Carpet spike installation and warning” slip-in sheet for an expensive Boston Acoustics tower back in the early ‘90’s and I showed the preliminary instructions to an audiophile lawyer friend of mine. He said to me, “You must be crazy. I’d never do this.”

Box containing carpet spikes

I do like the brass straps that connect the bi-amp terminals for conventional single-wire use. They’re insulated and have a nice printed ‘Legacy’ logo. If a stray wire strand somehow makes its was over from the + side over to the – side and touches a strap, no worries. Obviously that’s highly unlikely, but the logo’s insulation is a classy touch.

Rear panel terminals and contour switches

The grille frame appears to be MDF painted a smooth satin black. The frame itself is fairly thick—about ¾-inch—and the edges of the cutouts are not angled away from the drivers. Instead, they present a nice, flat, diffraction-inducing surface to the drivers, which, when combined with the fairly heavy grille cloth, may explain why I preferred to do all my listening sans grilles. The fact that the Signature SE’s driver array looks so cool with its dual AMT faceplate and black aluminum bullet-shaped phase plugs on the woofers and midbass cone drivers I’m sure had nothing to do with it. I’m a speaker professional, after all, with decades of experience. I’m above being influenced by a cool-looking driver array. Right?

 Non-beveled ¾”-thick grille frame

Legacy Signature SE Set-Up & Listening

I set up and listened to the Signature SE’s in a 2-channel music system. The room was a small-to-medium sized 17 x 14 x 8 ft. These are very good-sounding dimensions, since the length (17) is a prime number, and the height (8 ft) is not a whole number multiple of either the length or width. Therefore, these dimensions do not lend themselves to troublesome, additive bass/room resonances. The room has six 2 x 3 ft acoustic wall treatments staggered around the four walls (one centered on the front wall, two each at different heights on the side walls, and one centered on the rear wall between the two windows). There is a large sectional couch for seating and the floor is carpeted. Overall, the room is just slightly on the dead side of neutral, and it sounds excellent: solid, uniform bass, good imaging and detail, very little “ringing,” but live enough to let the speakers blossom out and fill the space with organic sound. Excellent recordings, especially of small-scale ensembles like jazz trio or solo piano, can sound almost live in this room. I have tremendous confidence that this room allows equipment to sound as good, or bad, as it can.

The Signature SEs were set up about 1-1 ½ feet from the wall behind them and about 1 ½-2 feet from the sidewalls. I experimented with placement by moving them closer to the wall behind them, and I’d say there was very little change until the speakers were virtually right up against the wall. No doubt, part of that placement flexibility is because there is no rear-mounted port that is being “squeezed” up against the wall. Legacy claims the Signature SE is very tolerant of different room placements and I’d agree with that assessment.

The speakers have good horizontal dispersion and toe-in was modest—perhaps 5–10º or so. Set up this way, the speakers threw a very solid, well-defined image with a good phantom center. They sounded similar, but not identical, when seated vs. standing. The upper mid-range AMT is 1 x 4”, so its dispersion will be somewhat wider in the horizontal plane than vertically. The math indicates that a 1” radiating dimension will not be noticeably directional until 13,560Hz. (13560 is the speed of sound at sea level in inches per second. If you divide that by the radiating dimension of the diaphragm, you’ll get the CDF or Critical Dimensional Frequency, the point at which that driver becomes directional and starts to ‘beam’ its output like a flashlight.) But the 4” vertical dimension of the upper mid-range AMT indicates that it will be totally non-dimensional only below 3390Hz (13560 ÷ 4 = 3390), above which it will start to beam. The UMR AMT crosses over to the tweeter at 8kHz. So the UMR AMT restricts the vertical dispersion to a modest degree, and it’s somewhat noticeable when standing vs. sitting. It was not an issue at all when listening in the normal seated position. In this room, I am only about 10 feet from the speakers, so I am sitting in the Critical Field—neither totally far-field/reverberant nor totally near-field/direct. I have no doubt that in a larger room at a greater listening distance, this would be a total non-issue. To be clear here, this is merely an observation, not a criticism. I do all my critical listening while seated.

Associated Equipment

The rest of the system is simple but straightforward, and very high quality. The pre-amplifier/power amp combo was Parasound’s New Classic 2100 pre-amp and 2250 power amp, conservatively rated at 200/385 watts per channel 20-20k at 0.05% THD into 8/4 Ω loads, respectively. Legacy rates the Signature SE as a 4Ω speaker with a sensitivity of 92dB 1W/1M on axis. Needless to say, there was plenty of power on tap.

The CD player was the NAD 545 with Burr-Brown DACs. Considering the modest size of the listening room, this is more than enough clean, distortion-free power to ensure that the electronics never intruded upon the listening sessions in a negative way. Speaker wire was simple 14 ga. twisted-end, formed into a “J” and wrapped around the posts of the terminals. Basic Monster interconnects between the pre/power and the CD/pre. Nothing lunatic-fringe about the connectors and speaker wire, and more importantly, nothing that could even remotely be considered a defining or distracting influence on the sound.

Listening Impressions

Before I get to the individual discs, I’d like to speak about my general impressions of the Signature SE’s sound. I’ve been at this speaker game for a long time. I’ve owned many different speakers, from bookshelf to tower to 3-piece subwoofer/satellite. I’ve worked in the U.S. loudspeaker industry for several decades. Between the excellent speakers we made at the companies I worked at, the competitive models we brought in for evaluation and seeing/hearing virtually everything of interest at the various trade shows and on field dealer visits, I’ve heard ‘em all. “Decades” is a long time. Not very much surprises me anymore and I rarely do a double-take and go “Wha…..” when I’m listening to something.

The first weekend I had them, I listened to the Signatures for several hours, first to "audiophile" recordings just to really push them to see how good they are, then moving on to music I just like (but not necessarily great recordings). One such album I love is the Dave Brubeck album Music from West Side Story. This was a long time favorite album of my Dad's and mine. It was recorded in 1959 and my dad probably bought the LP in, say, the mid-60's. So I've been listening to the album for 55 years and it's always been a huge favorite. Let's say I've listened to it twice a month on average during that time, 24 times a year. That's 1320 times. You'd think I know the album pretty well by now, right? I've heard it at home on a series of really excellent speakers, including AR Connoisseur 50t's, AR9's, Boston Acoustics VR-M90 floorstanders and VR-M50 monitors with their PV-1000 subwoofer. Great speakers all, many regarded as top-category speakers in their day. But yesterday I "heard things I've never heard before," as that old cliché goes. There is some subtle ghosting of brushes on cymbals by drummer Joe Morello behind Paul Desmond's alto sax that was never apparent before. It just jumps out at you—you notice something very subtle and quiet, but it's unmistakable. There it is, for the first time ever. After 55 years of listening to this album (a simple Columbia recording of a piano/bass/drums/alto sax quartet), something brand new hits me over the head. Same room, same power amp, same pre-amp, same CD player, same CD, same listening position. One change: From AR9 to Legacy Signature SE.

Aaron Copeland - Fanfare for the Common Man

Telarc recordings had a depth of bass and an uncolored midrange character about them that made them fabulous recordings, and they still are, even to this day. But the Signatures did something on the opening strains of Fanfare that has never happened in my listening room before. As that gong is struck, followed by the double 8^th-note bass drum hits, the Signatures just shook the room. Totally and authoritatively, with nary the slightest trace of distortion or labored exertion. Now you have to admit, the sound of a 5-foot-diameter gong being struck at lifelike SPL levels, followed immediately by two nether-region deep bass drum impacts is not exactly a sound that is heard frequently around the house. My wife bolts into my listening room from the kitchen, the double French doors flying open.

“What was that? What is happening? Is everything ok?”

“Everything is fine. It’s just Aaron Copeland,” I said, laughing. In the future, I will be sure to warn any other occupants in the house of what sounds may be emanating from my listening room, or better yet, I’ll do my listening evals when no one else is home.

For the rest of my listening tests, I used a mixture of my own tried-and-true CDs and some new ones that James Larson has used in his tests. I’ve generally used the same CDs when I evaluate new speakers, since familiar discs are a known quantity to me and they serve as a reliable test tool, one less uncontrolled random variable to throw the results and conclusions off.

But many excellent reviewers—like James, who is one of the very best—don’t subscribe to that theory. They reason, quite plausibly, that they are experienced listeners and they can make worthwhile judgments on speakers using different material each time. Besides, if there’s a great new source, why deprive yourself of listening to it on the new speakers? Therefore, this list contains some items I’ve used in past reviews, some brand-new pieces and some discs I already had but hadn’t used in any review before.

Melody Gardot - My One and Only Thrill

Gardot is a relatively new female jazz vocalist with a breathy, sensual voice and a commanding musical presence. Her albums tend to be meticulously-produced affairs, with well-recorded, natural instrumental backing. My One and Only Thrill is a 2 CD album, one disc recorded in the studio, the other a segment of a live concert in Paris. It’s a 2009 recording.

The last cut on the studio disc is “Over the Rainbow.” Yes, that Over the Rainbow. Wow, what a great rendition and great recording. Taken at mid-tempo with a modern 8^th-note semi-funky/Latin-esque feel, it starts with a percussion vamp and then follows with a deep and powerful bass line, before Gardot’s vocals enter the scene. She is recorded very close-up, but there isn’t a trace of harshness or edge. The Signatures convey the power and depth of the bass with emotion and absolute effortlessness, while the vocals soar unaffected, suspended over the instrumental backing.

Kandace Springs - The Women Who Raised Me

‘The Women Who Raised Me” is a 2020 vocal jazz album by newcomer Candace Springs, recorded in 96kHz/24bits resolution. The title refers to the female singers who’ve influenced Springs the most, including Norah Jones, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and Ella Fitzgerald and others.  Most of the album has Springs on vocal and piano, with acoustic bass and drums, and a few tracks adding trumpet and saxophone.

It’s a particularly airy and natural-sounding recording, with Springs’ voice being a bit more forward and the instrumentation more in the background. In other words, you cannot raise the volume of the instruments to a lifelike SPL without her vocals becoming way too loud. Nonetheless, this is a great recording and Springs’ voice is captivating and sultry, never edgy or grating despite the closeness. The articulation of the standup acoustic bass throughout the album is especially noteworthy. My favorite cut is the Michel Legrand classic What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life.

Roberto Fonseca - Yesun

Roberto Fonseca is a Cuban jazz pianist who uses styles and sounds from many different kinds of music but is most strongly evidenced in his Afro-Cuban approach. This album is a nice mixture of Latin vocal and percussion, with a very strong rhythmic/melodic foundation. The music is captivating and alluring.

Sonically, this is a particularly interesting album, but not for the reasons you may think. It’s a warmly-recorded album with a prominent bass end, but not subterranean deep.  The percussion and the vocals provide the articulation demo and test you’d expect from percussion-oriented music, but it’s the bass end that really puts it to the speakers.

A speaker with even the slightest low-end exaggeration and mid-bass ‘bloat’ will turn this music into a low-fi mush fiesta. Here, the Signature SE’s show that true musical accuracy is as much about what a speaker does not do as what it does. On the Legacy's, Yesun is always clean, clear and completely enjoyable.

Steely Dan - Everything Must Go

Steely Dan certainly needs no introduction. Their music is a common meeting ground for seemingly everyone: hard-core rockers, hip jazzers, country crooners and middle-of-the-road popsters. Everyone likes Steely Dan and why not? Their music is great and their recordings are superb. They took about 20 years off between the 1980 album Gaucho and their 2000 studio comeback album “Two Against Nature.” They followed up TAN with the 2003 studio album “Everything Must Go.” Despite the unquestioned musical excellence of these last two albums, Steely Dan’s live concerts are comprised almost exclusively of tunes from their first seven studio albums, not from these last two. That’s a shame. There is some absolute gold here.

The title track on Everything Must Go is a gem. A pithy, sardonic tale about a business that has to fold up in spite if its best efforts, this cut is characterized by a noteworthy naturalness in the midrange (vocals and instruments both) and amazing bass drum impact from drummer Keith Carlock’s kit. Played at healthy SPL, Carlock’s bass drum absolutely punches you in the gut. Actually, my previous speakers (AR9s with dual sealed 12’s in each cabinet) would literally rattle the window frames if the SPL was really cranked. So will the Signatures, but with a slightly “sharper” bass character than I remember from the 9’s. With full recognition that a person’s acoustic memory is notoriously inaccurate without an instantaneous A-B, the AR9 and Signature SE seem about equal in bass depth and power, but the 9 seemed to round things off a bit. In any event, no other speakers that I’ve tested for Audioholics or had in my home as personal speakers has matched the Signatures on this track.

Ariel Ramirez/José Carreras - Misa Criolla

This is a simply wonderful Phillips recording of classical/vocal music. The first two cuts really test a speaker’s ability to resolve low-level detail and present a three-dimensional sonic landscape. Carreras’ voice is pure and delicate, and is accompanied by very subtle tympani strokes in the background. Properly reproduced, these strokes convey a sense of the mallet striking the drumhead and the resonant tail from the strike carries on long and quietly fades off behind the vocal. The Signature SE’s proved more than up to the task of speaking quietly, but with precision and authority. Lesser speakers smear these details together; the Legacy's kept things clearly delineated and precisely focused, without any artificial hype or an exaggerated top end. This is a tough test disc, highly recommended.

One More Thing

I need to add one more thing that has made itself known after living with these speakers now for over two months of daily listening. Yeah, sure, they are impressive in all the “usual” ways: they go deep, they play loud, midrange and treble details seem to emerge that you never noticed before, etc., etc. All that kind of thing.

But a lot of my favorite music is ‘60’s-‘70’s jazz, Miles Davis/Wayne Shorter/Chick Corea/Joe Henderson/McCoy Tyner and the like, residing on singularly undistinguished recordings on Blue Note, Columbia, Milestone and so on. The Signature SEs have an amazing ability to bring life and transparency—especially in the utter clarity and delineation of stand-up acoustic bass—to these old albums that is nothing short of extraordinary. This kind of quality only becomes apparent after months of listening, long after you’ve stopped trying to impress yourself with “audiophile” recordings.

Conclusion

The Signature SE is a quintessential example of a properly designed system and it produces terrific bass.  Remember, this is a stereo pair with dual heavy-duty 10-inch woofers and since bass is pretty much pure mono, it’s like having a single subwoofer with four beefy 10-inch woofers, augmenting a pair of super-quality 7-inch 3-ways with dual AMTs.  Four 10’s have about the same cone area as three 12’s. That’s an awful lot of bass/air moving capability. But to my ear, it’s much better than a separate sub, because it’s all integrated into a coherent full-range tower speaker. It’s hard to imagine a passive system having much better bass than this: supremely clean and as powerful and deep on music—even artificial electronic music—as one could want.

Getting new speakers is a big deal. It’s a major acquisition, a milestone for any audiophile. I’m fairly confident that these will be my last “important, big” new speakers.

Having said that and with a bit more than a half-century of critical speaker listening and evaluation under my belt (much of that time in the professional high-fidelity speaker universe), I can say without any hesitation that these speakers are something special.

There is a unique satisfaction and respect for the company (and its designers) that occurs when a speaker hits it on all counts. The Signature SE is a total success, in my view.

• It has an effortless, confidence-inspiring low end. Yes, I realize it’s only “good,” so to speak, into the low-mid 20Hz region and there are bigger speakers and separate subs that will go lower and play louder. But in the ‘old days’ of my teens and my Dad’s hobbyist era, the benchmark for great bass was the opening low C 32Hz organ pedal tone from Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra (the “2001” theme). If a speaker could do that, it was really something. In the 1960’s, that meant the AR-3/3a and maybe the KLH 5 and 12. Not very much else. For the Signature SE, 32Hz is child’s play.

• I am more sensitive to and demanding of a speaker having minimal midrange coloration than any other single loudspeaker trait. There’s been a long succession of speakers I’ve owned and tested that have passed through my listening room and I have no tolerance for harshness, glare, murkiness, woodiness, nasality or anything of the sort. I’ll gladly give up 10-20 Hz in the bass to get rid of a honking, bleaty, splatty midrange. The thing I admired most about my previous speakers—AR9’s—wasn’t the impressive bass (although with dual 12-inch woofers in a large sealed enclosure, their bass was indeed impressive, right down to -3dB at 28Hz, bonafide), it was their refreshing lack of objectionable midrange coloration and harshness. The Signatures easily match that standard, and with a bit more relaxed detail and clarity.

• Workmanship and appearance—Let’s face it: To a speaker aficionado, the looks are important. We have the amusingly self-deceptive notion that a really nice speaker cabinet is somehow akin to fine furniture. To our spouse, a speaker is a speaker, an intruder that ruins the décor. No matter the quality of the finish, some four-foot tall alien box is not a net plus to the room’s appearance. It is an unequivocal minus. However, Legacy is renowned in the speaker business for producing cabinets of unusually exquisite elegance and looks. My wife thought the Signatures were beautiful and even said she wouldn’t object if someday they made it into our large family room, should we ever re-do my listening room into a first-floor master bedroom so we don’t have to deal with the stairs anymore, 10-15 years down the road. She actually ok’d the family room—where the “public” would really see them! Praise doesn’t come any higher than that.

• Value—How can one possibly say that a speaker that approaches five figures in cost is a value? Speakers of this price are so far beyond what 99% of the public would ever buy that the idea of a $10,000 “value” is risible on its face. But I submit that value should only be considered on a relative basis, not an absolute. You compare a Mercedes to a BMW or a Lexus, you don’t compare it to a Honda Civic. So how does this $10,000 speaker compare to other $10,000 speakers?

Legacy Signature SE (no grille left pic) ; (grille right pic)

Well, for starters, I haven’t done a comprehensive analysis of every single last $10k speaker out there. But one thing is certain right off the bat: Bass usually = dollars and there are an awful lot of speakers in this $7-10k price range that have what I call “40 Hz” bass. Good, solid bass, maybe even “2001”-level bass, but not shake-you-up bass. There are lots of Aerials, Focals, Viennas, Revels, etc. that can’t come close to matching the mid-20’s Hz bass of the Legacy Signature SE. All those others are nice speakers—good looking, nice uncolored mids, yada, yada, yada. But I put forth that these Legacy's do not take a back seat to anything near their price in any area, and will you just listen to that bass! It exceeds virtually all of them. I had contemplated getting Aerial 7T’s—$9,800 MSRP and by all accounts, a really great-sounding speaker. But it has two 7-inch woofers and by Michael Kelley’s (Aerial’s founder/chief designer) own admission to me they reach only to the mid-30’s at best. And two 7-inch woofers have less than half the cone area of dual 10’s. You’d need a sub. What? 10 grand and I still need a sub? No thanks.

One last thought: There is something about the coherence and unity of the sound of a truly full-range tower speaker that no combination of smaller speaker and subwoofer can match, at least not to my ear. You can recite the numbers to me all day long and talk about putting the sub physically near the L + R so there are no phase and timing issues, etc. It still doesn’t sound the same. It may sound very, very good (I have Boston Acoustics VR-M50 monitors and the Boston PV-1000 subwoofer in another system, and yes, it is excellent) but it doesn’t sound as good as a full-range tower.

Like I said earlier—I’ve been at this for over 50 years. I’ve heard them all. I know what good sound is. The speakers I was directly responsible for in concept, design and final voicing at Boston Acoustics, Bose and Atlantic Technology have sold in the millions. Multiple millions. But with that said, the Legacy Audio Signature SE is, by a wide and clearly audible margin, the best speaker that has ever graced my personal listening space.

The Score Card

The scoring below is based on each piece of equipment doing the duty it is designed for. The numbers are weighed heavily with respect to the individual cost of each unit, thus giving a rating roughly equal to:

Performance × Price Factor/Value = Rating

Audioholics.com note: The ratings indicated below are based on subjective listening and objective testing of the product in question. The rating scale is based on performance/value ratio. If you notice better performing products in future reviews that have lower numbers in certain areas, be aware that the value factor is most likely the culprit. Other Audioholics reviewers may rate products solely based on performance, and each reviewer has his/her own system for ratings.

Audioholics Rating Scale

• — Excellent
• — Very Good
• — Good
• — Fair
• — Poor

Metric	Rating
Build Quality
Appearance
Treble Extension
Treble Smoothness
Midrange Accuracy
Bass Extension
Bass Accuracy
Dynamic Range
Performance
Value