Legacy Wavelet II Processor
$7950
Yes, I gave the original Wavelet a Golden Ear Award in 2020, and I’m repeating it this year, at the expense of outstanding components like the Van Alstine DVA M225 monoblock power amplifier. I’m giving it a second award for two reasons. First, I keep coming back to the fact that it provides an amazing amount of help with virtually any speaker in dealing with what now may be the worst component in my system: my main listening room. Frequency compensation is only part of the story. Thanks to the correction of reflections, the improvements in soundstage detail are equally important. Best of all, you can use the Legacy Wavelet with virtually any brand and model of speaker. Second, I keep hoping that if I mention it often enough, Robert Harley will send me a major competitive challenger to try out. Seriously, I believe that digital correction will become the wave of the future, but so far, it seems more of a ripple.
By Anthony Cordesman
I've been reviewing audio components since some long talks with HP back in the early 1980s. My first experiences with the high end came in the 1950s at the University of Chicago, where I earned part of my tuition selling gear for Allied Radio and a local high-end audio dealer, and worked on sound systems for local night clubs, the Court Theater, and the university radio station. My professional life has been in national security, but I've never lost touch with the high end and have lived as a student and diplomat in Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, NATO, Asia, Iran and the Middle East and Asia. I've been lucky enough to live in places where opera, orchestras, and live chamber and jazz performances were common and cheap, and to encounter a wide range of different venues, approaches to performing, and national variations in high-end audio gear. I currently hold the Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and my open source analyses are available at that web site. What I look for in reviewing is the ability to provide a musically real experience at a given price point in a real-world listening room, and the ability to reveal the overall balance of musical sound qualities that I know are on a given recording. Where possible, I try to listen on a variety of systems as well as my own reference system.
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