“As Bill is widely recognized as an authority on speaker design, room equalization, recording and active speaker systems, I thought this afforded the perfect opportunity to have him discuss the principles behind the design of the VALOR.” – Doug Schroeder’s Interview with Legacy Chief Designer, Bill Dudleston

Question: The Valor is a stunning achievement. I am shocked at the disparity in performance between it and the previous flagship, the V Speaker System. What drives you to continue the upward march to ever greater flagship speakers?

Answer: The end game is restoring the elements of stereo playback sequentially back to the vectors that were originally present at the recording event. Better directivity control for the early signal, cancel reflections from near room boundaries and present the ambient information at appropriate time and levels.

While more sensitive, the Valor has extraordinary dynamics to be exploited on 24-bit recordings. Even at modest listening levels the dynamic crests are higher with the Valor.

On Acoustic Steering:

Valor is unique in that the four drivers that make up the central section are all radiating on the same axis in height. The acoustic center of it all is the center of the coaxial driver. As a result it does not exhibit the vertical lobing issues (cancellation notches) of an MTM array as shown below.

Symmetrical MTM Array: The hallmark of this design is the deep cancellation lobes that occur when above or below the central axis.

In contrast, the coaxial design of the Legacy VALOR, below, is lobing free:

Read the entire interview, here.