See the complete review of the Legacy Audio Wavelet Preamp/Processor

Legacy Audio is primarily known for their well-regarded speaker designs. A few, in fact, have received a good deal of praise from various writers here at Secrets over the past few years.

It may be slightly less known that Legacy has also marketed audio components over the years, mostly preamps and power amps. At RMAF last year, Legacy Audio founder and chief engineer, Bill Dudleston pointed out their new Wavelet Processor which was acting as the control center for his “V” speaker system that was filling the demo room with wonderful music.

Legacy Wavelet Front Panel

The Wavelet combines the functions of a preamp, (up to) a four-way crossover with time-alignment, DAC, and speaker/room correction system in one box. I immediately began to wonder if my studio 2.2 channel system would see any benefit from using such a device. I currently use an analog preamp, an external analog crossover and an analog bass equalization system in my rig. Three separate boxes that, while sounding satisfying in unison, does not make for the most streamlined affair in my component rack. The Wavelet’s speaker time-alignment and room correction system is licensed from Bohmer Audio and all internal processing is said to be done at a 96kHz sampling rate.

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While the Wavelet is predominantly used with Legacy’s Aeris and “V” speaker systems, Bill Dudleston did state that they were slowly amassing a library of measurements from various speakers by other manufacturers whose data could be loaded into the Wavelet to make it compatible. He said if I could ship him one of my speakers, they could do the same thing for me and we could conduct a review of the Wavelet tuned for my system. Well, twist my arm!

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Initial Impressions:

The Wavelet itself is a handsome and solid looking piece of equipment that is somewhat minimalist in appearance. There is a large dot-matrix display on the front face with a large, flush volume control to the right and a line of 7 small selection buttons to the left. While a basic remote control is provided, the precision settings are accessed via a custom remote app that is available through the browser on your computer, tablet or smartphone. The Wavelet also comes with a calibrated microphone for the room correction system and a Wi-Fi dongle to get the Wavelet logged into your home network.

Stay Tuned:

In the next few weeks I will be completing setup, doing some listening, taking pictures and making measurements with an eye to having a full review to you shortly thereafter.

See the complete review of the Legacy Audio Wavelet Preamp/Processor