Hybrid Audio Technologies Legatia L4SE Stage VI Carbon, Specifications Library & Car Audio Reference Manual

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Legatia SE Carbon User’s Manual ©Hybrid Audio Technologies Page 24 of 30
Advanced System Installation
Hybrid Audio Technologies has prepared a more advanced topical discussion of Legatia SE Carbon
installation techniques, concepts, and principals, where a little bit of additional installation work can
net immense gains in overall sound quality.
There are certainly many things you can do to improve your mobile audio system, such as addition of
amplification, a dedicated subwoofer system, higher-gauge speaker wire, and higher-end passive
crossovers, and active crossovers. All of these things require an additional amount of monetary
investment into your audio system, and may not net the immediate gains that other, more elementary
installation items can net. The following discussion is pertinent to easy and cost-effective
enhancements you can do for your audio system, particularly as it relates to the installation of Legatia
SE Carbon component speakers.
In any mobile audio system, the weakest link will always be the speaker systems, followed closely by
installation techniques (sometimes its vice-versa). Since the Legatia SE Carbon component system
you have purchased has solved the first issue, the second issue, that being installation techniques,
can see a significant improvement as well by understanding and incorporating some or all of the
techniques in the following sections.
Lessons Learned
We like to call this our “Lessons Learned” section, where we expose some critical lessons that we
have learned through thousands upon thousands of hours of trial and error:
Lesson One: Off-Axis Response
When a speaker system like the Legatia SE Carbon is placed in an automotive environment, we hear
the direct (shortest path) and reflected (longer path) sounds, such as resonances and reverberations.
The two sounds are processed by the brain as one sound, and this influences our perception of
height, width, and depth of soundstage, as well as rearward ambience. For this reason, the off-axis
radiation pattern of any speaker in a vehicular environment has a significant influence on how natural
the music sounds.
The lesson to learn here is that most mobile audio sound systems benefit greatly from having the
front stage speakers at least partially “off-axis.” Off-axis means that the speakers are not pointing at
you, but rather at some angle less than 90 degrees away from you.
Lesson Two: Equalization of Pathlength Differences
Quite possibly the most important functional consideration that a do-it-yourself enthusiast or
professional installer should give to the Legatia SE Carbon speaker placement is to optimize, as best
as possible, pathlength differences (PLD’s) in the vehicle. PLD’s are defined mathematically as
follows (this example assumes a right-hand drive vehicle---PLD’s are always a positive number):
X – Y = Z