Hybrid Audio Technologies Legatia - Manual (Page 58)

Legatia User’s Manual ©Hybrid Audio Technologies Page 58 of 65
200-member orchestra, or a four-piece fusion band, nothing compares to the phenomenon of live
music.
Take this as Hybrid Audio’s official request: become a student of music and your mobile audio sound
system will be better for it. We want nothing more than to know there are great sounding audio
systems around the world using our products, and you’d make us all very proud if you became a
student of music and learned its beauty and passion.
Advanced Installation of the Legatia Component Systems
Mounting Baffle Considerations
Now that we have revealed five of our most important “Lessons Learned”, we can now apply these
lessons to the Legatia installation. The first important matter is the physical installation of your Legatia
midbass and/or midrange, and more specifically with respect to improving the Legatia midbass’ or
midrange’s mounting baffles. Most vehicles’ factory mounting locations for speakers are less than
ideal. In most cases, the OEM speaker mounting flanges are likely nothing more than flimsy extruded
plastic, and provide no sonic benefit to your Legatia installation. The Legatia drivers are long-throw
midbass, and high-performance midrange, and the plastic mounting baffles that come from the
factory in virtually every vehicle will lead to buzzes, rattles, vibrations, and resonances, all of which
negatively affect the Legatia installation. In other vehicles, you may have attached the Legatia
midbass’ or midrange’s directly to the door metal (hopefully with a layer or two of self-adhesive sound
damping in between), but this is still not entirely ideal. In whatever scenario you have installed your
Legatia midbass and/or midrange, there are certain “tricks” and techniques that may be applied to get
the most out of your Legatia component set, specifically the midbass and midrange installation, as
follows:
Mounting the baffle, sound damping, and “decoupling”: the mounting baffle or mounting location
should either be secured extremely well to the vehicle’s body, or completely isolated from the
vehicle’s chassis. The reasoning is that the speaker baffle panel will vibrate and will radiate sound.
Even small vibrations can result in the baffle itself radiating more sound than the actual speaker at
certain frequencies. The mounting baffle or mounting location should be damped with a layer of
typical sound damping to reduce the Q of the baffle and lower its vibration resonance frequency
below the range of the driver’s frequency response. In many cases, using thicker baffle panel in
concert with self-adhesive sound damping can also be advantageous, provided the rearward wave of
the speaker has no obstructions created by the baffle itself. Finally, if possible, the speaker should be
mechanically decoupled from the baffle. This can be something as simple as a layer of self-adhesive
foam tape, to more exotic examples of decoupling, including rubberized rings or multiple-layer septum
shielding.
Building solid mounting baffles: in many cases, it is advisable to mount your Legatia midbass’
and/or midrange’s in high-stiffness wood or high-density fiberglass (or wood treated with fiberglass
resin). Hybrid Audio Technologies recommends the use of a solid hardwood, such as birch or oak,
namely because these woods are stiff and help to dissipate resonance, and screws can be inserted
and removed multiple times without stripping. Avoid Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF), particularly in
wet environments like the door, as the MDF will act like a sponge with humidity and moisture, and not
only that, the MDF is a dense, but not stiff type of wood, and the results may not be particularly
noticeable if you use MDF. Once your baffle is built, it must be covered in one or two layers of a