It seems like Qobuz is everywhere these days. A virtual, er, tidal wave of promotion led by my pal David Solomon. I walked into the Legacy Audio room and off to the side, some sweet music was playing. I walked in and Bill Duddleston and David were there with the stand-mount Calibres doing some set up. David left soon after, and after some reconfiguration, Bill got the music going playing a mostly hirez playlist he had created in Qobuz. These were his passiive Calibre speakers at $5,500 and they were connected to the Wavelet processor ($4,950) that also does DSP on the room and the PowerBloc2 amplifier ($1,800). The PowerBloc2 outputs 325 Class D watts into 8 ohms and 650 watts into 4 ohms. This pairing sounded simply fantastic. Beautiful midrange, airy highs, and more bass than you would have expected. The Wavelet was taking care of the room in all the right ways.
The Calibre uses, in the companies own words, “our high power handling 4″ AMT ribbon, a precision 7.5″custom midrange/midbass built in Florence, Italy, and the best 8″ bass driver available with a full inch of displacement capability”. Frequency response is 38hz to 30khz. The XD version has 500 watts (!) of ICE amplification. The stand-mounts were paired with the Legacy Wavelet processor that is a “control preamp, a high-end DAC, a 2/3/4-way digital crossover with time alignment and a speaker correction system that will literally “learn” your room.” I believe that AMT ribbon is responsible for some of the magic. The high frequencies were super clean and natural. The Calibre is 90.5db sensitive and has an impedance of 4 ohms.
The soundstage, as I have come to expect from Bill’s speakers was vast in width and depth dimensions. The imaging was really working. Combined with Qobuz serving up some really fine quality files, the effect was mesmerizing. Bill has some terrific taste in music judging from his playlist but I would point to two songs from the Wailin’ Jenny’s, a Canadian vocal group with alluring harmonics. This system recreated the beautiful layering of the trio’s voices on “Swing Low, Sail High” from the Bright Morning Stars album. The country-twang picking on The “Devil’s Paintbrush Road” track from Firecracker was right on the money. Dynamics were excellent on the tracks I heard.
I would also point to some perceived build quality. The finish on these speakers was top-notch. They weigh 50 pounds each! The appearance is well designed and easily passes the “would you put it in the living room?” test.
This was one of several rooms showcasing stellar stand-mounts like the Joseph Audio room and the Ryan room. A terrific way to show off the wonders of Qobuz hirez and a rather magical Calibre loudspeaker. Congratulations Bill and David!
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