Hybrid Audio Legatia L631-3

A trio of pairs of component loudspeakers normally sold to be used actively, although these are being run with passive crossovers made by the UK operation and enclosed within specially designed cabinets. Intended to replicate the semi infinite-baffle level of acoustic support that speaker drivers in car doors actually ‘see’.
HAT is a high end supplier, originated as a spin off from a legendarily successful sound off career by Scott Buwalda of the USA. The UK distribution operation could easily have the adjective ‘Disciple’ applied to it as the whole ethos of the company is to provide a bespoke service to each of their customers and this has been properly replicated over here. Not mass market but meant entirely for use by serious sound quality car audio competitors and enthusiasts. This brand has won quite incredible success in the competition lanes. This selection of product is from the middle range, their entry level is called Clarus, (due for release in March 08) their super-high end is called SEBRA and anticipated for launch early 2009. This Legatia line is the one that has won all the sound offs, though.
The midbass and mid-high drivers feature cast chassis and flat chromed back plates to their magnets. They both feature inverted-roll top surrounds and untreated black pressed paper cones. The three inch driver has gold plated asymmetrical tag lugs and the six inch has 3mm diameter-holed Gold plated squeeze posts to affix speaker wires to. The six also features a massive solid phase plug in the centre of the cone whereas the three has a conventional dust dome. Both sizes have the brand and model number marked on their back plate. They also have impedance and power handling marked as ‘Znom’ & Pmax’ both of which are as you find the terms written in a list of parameters rather than a spec sheet of a normal consumer product’s manual an indicator of their high end approach perhaps. There are gaskets provided but no manuals (although a manual is available for download on the link website) you are expected to have some expertise and to be hand-in-hand with the supplier.
The tweeters are low profile and have polarity marked small solder tags and look small enough to be used as coaxial drivers above regular speakers. Each three inch driver is carefully packed with plastic spacer lugs in the mounting holes to prevent damage in transit. The sixes have bags, foam and a clear cap-spacer to protect them.
L1 Tweeter
– Impregnated 20mm silk soft dome
– Overall diameter: 52mm (2.1-inch)
– Mounting depth: 11mm
– Bolt Circle Diameter: 43mm
– Mounting hole: 35mm
– Pnom (without crossover) 7W (AES Standard)
– Pmax (without crossover): 15W
– Pmax (with recommended crossover): 100W
– Frequency Range: 3,000 20,000 Hz
– Sensitivity: 89dB (2.83V/1m)
– Voice coil diameter: 20mm (0.75 inch)
– Impedance: 8 Ohm
– DC Resistance: 6.8 Ohm
– Fs: 2,500 Hz (free air)
 
L3 Wide Bandwidth mid (>six octaves)
– Overall diameter: 93mm (3.7 inch)
– Mounting depth: 46mm
– Bolt Circle Diameter: 85mm
– Mounting hole: 74mm
– Pnom (without crossover) 25W (AES Standard)
– Pmax (without crossover): 50W
– Pmax (with recommended crossover): 150W
– Frequency range: 129Hz – 10,000 Hz
– Sensitivity: 85dB (2.83V/1m)
– Mms: 2.274g
– Cms: 640 um/N
– BL: 2.961 T*m
– Voice coil diameter: 25.5mm (1 inch)
– Impedance: 4 Ohm
– DC Resistance: 3.4 Ohm
– Fs: 129Hz (free air)
– Qms: 3.468
– Qes: 0.717
– Qts: 0.594
– Xmax: 2.6mm (one way)
– Vas: 0.63L
– Sd: 2733mm sq
 
L6 Wide Bandwidth midrange/midbass (>Six octaves)
– Overall diameter: 181mm (7.1 inch)
– Mounting depth: 77mm
– Bolt Circle Diameter: 167.5mm
– Mounting hole: 146mm
– Pnom (without crossover) 60W (AES Standard)
– Pmax (without crossover): 120W
– Pmax (with recommended crossover): 250W
– Frequency range: 54Hz 5,000 Hz
– Sensitivity: 87dB (2.83V/1m)
– Mms: 18.22g
– Cms: 454 um/N
– BL: 5.97 T*m
– Voice coil diameter: 35.55mm (1.4 inch)
– Impedance: 4 Ohm
– DC Resistance: 3.4 Ohm
– Fs: 54Hz (free air)
– Qms: 4.18
– Qes: 0.62
– Qts: 0.54
– Xmax: 6mm (one way)
– Vas: 13.08L
– Sd: 13273mm sq
Review by Adam Rayner
I visited the Bristol HiFi show recently. In its 21st year, it has seriously overshadowed what used to be the show of greatest importance held in a hotel near Heathrow in September time. That one has become messed up by a spoiler show on the same dates and now the Bristol show is where some really heavy duty news and products are released. I swagged a pre-press copy of ‘Earth’ on Blu-ray and heard and saw it in a £65,000 Denon/B&W/Projection Design/Chord system. I also saw the future of HD TV and it’s backlit LCD (You read it here first called BrightSide technology) Wow! Spidey three on BD is the A/V dem disc of choice right now.
I took the car and was so excited I thought I would listen to my new fave demo disc on the way down. Regular readers will know it is Focal’s The Spirit of Sound #6. Top track the one the goes ‘Whaaa-heedda!’ Anyway, I get to one room in the show where it sounds awesome and sort of reach for my disc, only to find I have left it like a tit, in the dash in my car in a car park halfway across Bristol. Doh! (It was hellish, the whole city is being redeveloped and two car parks are shut.) Thinking the next best would be the lovely goddess-voiced Kate Nash, I offer up the CD single I bought. Of course on kit of that pedigree in home hifi, the sound was less than impressive as the production values were not rare-breed label but pop music. Compressed, tizzy, confused and little real imagery in stereo. Shamefaced at how crap my taste seemed, I politely got the disc back and slunk off, glowing pink.
Thing is, the best equipment is capable of revealing weaknesses in the recording. Arif Mardin’s Chaka Khan Album of the Eighties had a warning on the back about how CD could reveal flaws in the recording. I swear to this day that it was because you could hear a terrible slewing slur in the entire track at one point, where some fool tape operator (Yes they used tape back then, even in digital) had caused the reels to drag and created a cock-up they couldn’t get rid of. It was not long after CD was born. I’m oldbut not yet suffering from age-related high-end hearing loss.
All of which is a horribly long preamble to where I’m going with these speakers.
They had the biggest build-up I ever had which cannot have done them any favours as I was in a ‘come on then impress me’ sort of a mood over them and the maddest set of requests from the manufacturer. I was to have one set to examine and one set neatly installed into ‘Semi-Infinite-Baffle’ boxes of their own making and I was to listen to them at least three feet away from a wall on each side. So, rather than dismantle my built-in 12V rig, I extended the speaker lines with posh 12Ga Esoteric Audio wire and placed them either side of the loft hatch. Then popped my boko up in between them at range such that they were reasonably toed-in (on-axis) and of course relatively near field as you would hear them in a car.
The point is that the boxes sounded like a pair of hifi enclosures. You didn’t quite get the last degree of that holographic divorced-from-the-boxes sound that happens with the very finest hifi, where the cunning of the cabinet design is married to superb speaker driver engineering and you are not in the near field. As after all, the product is intended for individual acoustic alchemy by competition grade installers but what I did hear was superb.
I could hear brushed cymbals in the background I had never heard before (and I have been playing this disk to death lately) I can hear edits and cuts. Hell I could almost see the bloody faders in my mind’s eye. So analytical, so sweet and with pin sharp placement of the instruments. A fabulous speed and rapid rise time for impulse sounds like the leading edge of big thumps. Front and foremost and clean as a whistle.
And then I turned the Genesis Stereo 100 rig up. Holy Incredible Audio Batman! The bass became huge, chest beating and yet remained as tight as a small cat’s butt. I was yet again losing the plot and just rocking off to the vibes only to realise somewhat foolishly that I am stood on a loft ladder having a minor acoustic epiphany.
It felt goood.
Then I realise, these potent, spanky and incredibly high quality and crisp definition loudspeakers are not £1,000 like the JBL set I tested or even £1,400 like the Morel I tried but are £560 plus whatever you want to do with an individually designed passive or else six channels of super clean amplification. That makes them the most bonkers VFM, too. They are not especially mad in their efficiency specifications but that is like complaining about a Lamborghini Diablo’s poor drag coefficient. It used to just have to push more air out of the way at 200mph and besides, 89db is pretty seriously keen conversion of a watt into sound when measured at a meter, so they do score plenty highly enough here, too.
All of which adds up to an unbeatable-at-the-money package of truly fabulous speakers. Yes, they take super-experts to fit them but the UK distributor will hold your hand all the way and seems to glow from within with enthusiasm for this equipment. I really had to wait a bit to check them out and now, of course, I get it. This is Talk Audio’s second ever State of the Art award winner.
Awesome.
Overall 9.6
Sound Quality 10
Build Quality 9
Power Handling 10
Efficiency 9
Value For Money 10