Power Unleashed
I FIRST encountered the i·V 7 seven-channel amplifier at CEDIA 2019, where Legacy Audio founder and chief engineer Bill Dudleston was displaying it alongside the company’s many freestanding and on-wall speaker offerings. Although Legacy Audio is best known for those real wood-finished speakers that it designs for the high-end home and pro audio markets, the company also has an impressive portfolio of electronics, including the Powerbloc2 and Powerbloc4 Amplifiers that Sound & Vision reviewed back in 2017.
With the 2- and 4-channel domains covered by the Powerbloc pair, the logical next step would be to develop more-channel options to handle the system expansion that Dolby Atmos and other immersive formats require. The i·V family of amps, which are available in configurations ranging from two to eight channels, is that next step.
Similar to the Powerblocs, the new i·V (representing power as the product of ) models are based on class-D amp technology from Denmark’s ICEpower a/s, a company that was originally founded to design built-in amplification for powered Bang & Olufsen speakers. What’s new with the
