Hybrid Audio Technologies Legatia SE - Manual (Page 61)

Legatia SE User’s Manual ©Hybrid Audio Technologies Page 61 of 73
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 SE 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 SE installation. The first important matter is the physical installation of your
Legatia SE midbass and/or midrange, and more specifically with respect to improving the Legatia SE
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 SE installation. The Legatia SE 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 SE installation. In other vehicles, you may have attached the
Legatia SE 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 SE midbass and/or midrange, there are certain “tricks” and techniques that may
be applied to get the most out of your Legatia SE 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 SE 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