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Polk Legend L800 Tower Measurements

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I hope you get an R200 to evaluate @napilopez -- that one might be an excellent deal. The L200 is quite nice, but the price strikes me as out of line with what it is. The R200 seems... about right. [/QUOTE]

I just got the r200's, and I like them better than my ELAC Debut Ref. 6.2's - I hope that Amir will get to review them.
 
I am not sure if this is related, but: Do Polk Dealers offer discounts or can you get these cheaper in any way?
 
I'm a huge fan of crosstalk cancellation tech. Polk was the first to really introduce a solution with SDA, Carver followed up with Sonic Holography, Ambiophonics then came into the picture being promoted by Ralph Glasgal offering a compelling solution to fix some of the shortcomings, and finally Edgar Choueiri with BACCH. This is Polk's attempt to re-enter the market seriously with SDA as SDA speakers are still in relative demand in the used market.

Someone I had introduced to Ambiophonics made a post on it here. If you're interested in xtc tech and what it can do to possibly improve the sound try some of the samples he made. It's like taking the strengths of headphones and speakers and combining them.

I personally use 4.1 ambiophonics at my PC since there's going to be less arguments or concern over a sweet spot there.
 
I'm a huge fan of crosstalk cancellation tech. Polk was the first to really introduce a solution with SDA, Carver followed up with Sonic Holography, Ambiophonics then came into the picture being promoted by Ralph Glasgal offering a compelling solution to fix some of the shortcomings, and finally Edgar Choueiri with BACCH. This is Polk's attempt to re-enter the market seriously with SDA as SDA speakers are still in relative demand in the used market.
...

I thought Linn had speakers back in the deeps of time that used off-channel cancellation to increase the stereo effect, but now I can't find it or recall it.

Carver was famous for it with the sonic hologram processor built into some of their preamps (and as a standalone unit), but Hughes also developed the concept somewhat later with the "Sound Retrieval System", first marketed to the airlines for on-board sound systems. Their AK-100 was the expensive, discrete version. I have an AK-500 that I bought for fun after reading about it on Roger Russell's page--the cheaper version that was housed in a large-scale integrated circuit. I agree with his conclusion--with properly located loudspeakers, the effect is neutral or detrimental. It's interesting with small, narrowly spaced speakers, though mine has too high a noise floor to be something I would use routinely. I do have a small system with narrowly spaced speakers in a bedroom we use for exercise equipment--I didn't think to try it there but I might. For these, the out-of-phase off-ear signal is delayed slightly to cancel only the crosstalk. The Polk SDA does it with separate drivers so that the cancellation is all acoustic.

I would describe the Polk SDA speakers of old as a cult product with a devoted following. I suspect that those who get used to the effect miss it when it's not there. But in my experience, the effect is limited to a sweet spot, and other listening positions in the room get worse.

Rick "who moves around too much" Denney
 
Totally fair. I don't particularly care about polk or revel one way or another, but unless many people have heard both speakers in the same setup, I just think we shouldn't just assume revel is better just because it's ~~revel~~, you know?

It is all over these forums. Genelac and Revels seem to be on everyone's hot list. Just sayin.....
 
I am not sure if this is related, but: Do Polk Dealers offer discounts or can you get these cheaper in any way?
I just got an open box pair with the L900 atmos modules (they needed to be there as part of the B stock) for $4500 then got a good discount on the center. I ended up paying $6100 for the LCR plus “Atmos” (even though I already have 4 in the ceiling and won’t use them)
 
I just got an open box pair with the L900 atmos modules (they needed to be there as part of the B stock) for $4500 then got a good discount on the center. I ended up paying $6100 for the LCR plus “Atmos” (even though I already have 4 in the ceiling and won’t use them)
Thanks for the info! Did you find that at a local polk dealer?
 
Thanks for the info! Did you find that at a local polk dealer?
Yeah, StereoLand in Minneapolis. I had to drive 4 hours to get there but I had family in the area. I bought them site on seen. They were exactly the upgrade I was looking for.
I’m coming from Paradigm Prestige which is in the $3K region. Whatever that means. I side by side with the Paradigm Founders Flagship which was “cleaner” but also much more sensitive. I’m not sure what the Parasound was pushing in the listening room. It was 5 Channel so I can’t imagine it was more than 200W and these are hard to drive.
 
I owned and sold Polk's original SDA speakers in the mid 80s. While it appears there have been improvements, the overall concept seems the same.

Back then, we only detailed the technology to those who were very interested. The benefits of SDA are immediately apparent when the speakers and listeners are positioned correctly. The width of the stereo image expands well beyond the distance between the speakers, and even the room walls. If I remember right, we were provided an A/B switch that eliminated the effect, to demonstrate the difference. I do not know whether it simply disconnected the A1 SDA interconnect cable, or switched its polarity.

POLKSDA.com is a site dedicated to the original series. It links to this in depth 1985 article in Stereo Review describing the technology. I owned the compact SDA CRS model , proving that SDA can be put into a stand mount speaker. While impressive, I did think the effect seemed somewhat artificial...not tied too closely to the intentions of the recording engineers.
 
I owned and sold Polk's original SDA speakers in the mid 80s. While it appears there have been improvements, the overall concept seems the same.

Back then, we only detailed the technology to those who were very interested. The benefits of SDA are immediately apparent when the speakers and listeners are positioned correctly. The width of the stereo image expands well beyond the distance between the speakers, and even the room walls. If I remember right, we were provided an A/B switch that eliminated the effect, to demonstrate the difference. I do not know whether it simply disconnected the A1 SDA interconnect cable, or switched its polarity.

POLKSDA.com is a site dedicated to the original series. It links to this in depth 1985 article in Stereo Review describing the technology. I owned the compact SDA CRS model , proving that SDA can be put into a stand mount speaker. While impressive, I did think the effect seemed somewhat artificial...not tied too closely to the intentions of the recording engineers.

I have to agree. I found the SDA effect, to be fairly artificial sounding. The better the recording the more fake it sounded.

No real benefit, but it DOES sound "Cool" on some music for sure!
Anything well recorded gets butchered by this, not enhanced.

I used to own a pair, and I could switch the effect on and on as you mention,(a switch that opens the circuit in the connecting cable) and while it was a fun and cool sound, it always felt like some fake DSP type of effect, Cool, but not natural or the real thing.

To add some insight, I have done some actual recordings in the day of a few church groups, mostly acoustic, and completely knew what the sound SHOULD sound like.

The SDA just created this really false "Big and wide" soundstage that was NOT in the original recording at all. I know some live and die by these and claim it creates something more real, but honestly outside of Polk Fans and a few reviewers most pros or guys that DO recordings shun this stuff completely.
 
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It’s for their crosstalk cancellation. You run a wire between the two towers, it then uses that data and does something with it (inverted phase?) such that your right ear doesn’t hear the direct sound of the left tower and your left ear doesn’t hear the direct sound of the right ear. If you don’t have the wire connected, only one tweeter and mid play.

I guess it’s supposed to sound like you are wearing headphones, but with room interactions and bass impact. Not sure.
The actual circuit is VERY simple.
Nothing fancy at all.
It is simply the HAFLER circuit employed with the 2 "Dimensional" speakers providing L-R and R-L information. In other words, the "Difference signal", as opposed to the SUM signal.

It is literally a wire coming from the Left Positive amp output, through both dimensional speakers (by the SDA cord) and back to the Right positive amp terminal.

What you get is everything sound wise, that is out of phase or only on just the left or just the right. The opposite of a mono signal.

By positioning the dimensional speakers on each side of the normal stereo pair, our brain tricks us into hearing a wider image. There are no REAL imaging cues created, but simply a wider false image.
 
The actual circuit is VERY simple.
Nothing fancy at all.
It is simply the HAFLER circuit employed with the 2 "Dimensional" speakers providing L-R and R-L information. In other words, the "Difference signal", as opposed to the SUM signal.

It is literally a wire coming from the Left Positive amp output, through both dimensional speakers (by the SDA cord) and back to the Right positive amp terminal.

What you get is everything sound wise, that is out of phase or only on just the left or just the right. The opposite of a mono signal.

By positioning the dimensional speakers on each side of the normal stereo pair, our brain tricks us into hearing a wider image. There are no REAL imaging cues created, but simply a wider false image.
The question is then, what about mono elements or even playing a mono track? Would nothing come out?
 
The question is then, what about mono elements or even playing a mono track? Would nothing come out?
The stereo drivers would create the Mono signal. There are 2 sets of drivers, one set is hooked up just like regular stereo, and the ones on the "Outside edge" are hooked up across the positive terminals.
 
The actual circuit is VERY simple.
Nothing fancy at all.
It is simply the HAFLER circuit employed with the 2 "Dimensional" speakers providing L-R and R-L information. In other words, the "Difference signal", as opposed to the SUM signal.

It is literally a wire coming from the Left Positive amp output, through both dimensional speakers (by the SDA cord) and back to the Right positive amp terminal.

What you get is everything sound wise, that is out of phase or only on just the left or just the right. The opposite of a mono signal.

By positioning the dimensional speakers on each side of the normal stereo pair, our brain tricks us into hearing a wider image. There are no REAL imaging cues created, but simply a wider false image.
it's a sureal effect. It's as real of an effect as taking LSD is a real effect. Is it "real", no; is it really fun? Absolutely! I love these speakers.
 
it's a sureal effect. It's as real of an effect as taking LSD is a real effect. Is it "real", no; is it really fun? Absolutely! I love these speakers.
Oh trust me, I really loved the effect "at times", but simply after a few months of fun, with my vintage SDA speakers, started finding stuff that it did not compliment, and in fact degraded the soundstage or experience of "reality".

The more "natural and real" recordings became, less natural and odd and unusual sounding. Like really well recorded acoustic stuff, and classical, and my church recordings, all came out LESS like what they should sound like.

A lot of Rock and Pop Studio created affairs, came out more fun, wider, and just a cool experience.

I guess I was caught between it being fun and cool at "Times", but with really well recorded stuff or things I KNEW how they should sound first hand, they added a false layer or enhancement, that took away from the known reality.

I know SDA has a Love/Hate thing between purist audiophiles and Polk fanboys, but I ended up simply not using the Effect most of the time, and I guess the thrill wore off for me. I sold those huge SDA speakers and went with the smaller Polk tower, the RTA11t and got a much more natural sound and soundstage overall.

That was years ago. I have NOT heard the latest version at all.
 
I just bought these, and thought I would do a quick editorial review and commentary. My apologies since it will be entirely subjective, since I am not sure there is really any "objective" way to measure or describe these speakers--at least not, the important thing about them. Skip to the end for the tl;dr.

After reading all of the technical whitepapers and such, I finally broke down and bought one of the last remaining new pairs still in the wild. I waffled a bit due to a few concerns about various measured technical issues, particularly tweeter compression, but I finally pulled the trigger, since it was becoming increasingly clear it was now or, quite possibly, never. I would not be surprised if Polk never does a production run. That would be unfortunate.

After ordering up a pair in the walnut finish, about a week later a giant pallet with two boxes, each large enough to hold a small refrigerator, arrived at my curbside. After digging out a hand truck from the shed and gingerly walking the 150 pound boxes--consisting of 120 pounds of speakers and 30 pounds of packaging--up my front porch steps, I carted them inside and began the unpacking process. It takes a bit, because the speakers are huge, but the ingenious and intelligent packaging design makes a job that could have been horrific entirely manageable by one person. After extracting them from the boxes and shuffling them properly into place about 6 feet apart, I fished through the audio archives of my attic to find something to feed them a source. My primary two channel system has been dormant for entirely too long, and lay in bits and tatters. Kids, projects, too many commitments, and all that.

First, I needed a preamp. I had five or six to pick from, but grabbed my trusty old Technics SU-9070, and pressed it back into duty. This was one of those "golden age" components which is entirely under-appreciated. I've owned this sample for over 20 years now. While it is built like a tank, expensively built, and nicely engineered even by today's standards, would it still work? The switches were a bit scratchy and could use some deoxit, and the whole thing could probably use a good recapping, but it seemed okay. Unfortunately, the volume knob is a bit scratchy and being a sealed multi-gang Alps Black unit, may not be serviceable. Hopefully that cleans up. If not, I may pop something else into its place temporarily. Criminally, this is ultimately getting replaced with an AVR with room correction, which is en route. For purity's sake perhaps I'll set it up with a "real" front end as well. We'll see how it all works itself out.

For a suitably large amplifier for speakers the size of small coffins, the similarly massive Parasound HCA-3500 would do just fine. The Polks need lots of power from a common ground amplifier, and this 100 pound pig has that in spades. I hauled it out of some pawn shop ages ago when it was about a year or two old. I'm sure there's an unfortunate story there. The HCA-3500 is basically a two channel version of the current JC-1. Or, perhaps more accurately, the old version of the current JC-5. Parasound has never actually reengineered much of anything over two decades. They just swap out components and faceplates. There might be a bigger transformer here, or a few extra paralleled output devices there, some tweako resistors over yon, and revised circuit boards everywhere, but the dirty little secret is that all of the important bits have never changed much. Except one--there is excessive second harmonic distortion due to a transistor manufacturer deviation from specs in, I believe, the gain or driver stage. I have the write-up somewhere, but I've never gotten around to switching out the part. Audible, I don't know. But I bet all that second harmonic makes it sound "tubey"! :rolleyes: It does show up in measurements. But let's get back to the speakers and end the suspense. At least some discussion of the amplifier is necessary, though, since internally bridged amplifiers will not work properly. All driving current must come from the red speaker terminal and none from the black for proper SDA operation.

Speaker wires were connected up to the old Parasound brute, the SDA cable run, and finally the power switches (plural) on the beast amplifier were ready to be flipped back on for the first time in a few years. Engage. Protect light. Ack! Check the connections. Try again. Success. Now, were I doing this right I would have paid more attention to setup, room treatment, and all that good stuff. But this was hurry up and play with new speakers time! Now for some tunes. Uh-oh. Cell phone through a 3.5mm jack? Nah. An old DVD player and some CDs would have to do, for now. Good enough. Peter Gabriel, original 1986 CD (or therabouts). Play.

Wow. What is this? How?! The superlatives that were hurled at these after their introduction were justified. This is an experience. And it ain't like the "experience" you get from whatever nicely measuring pair of speakers that have been Klippeled to death. That's a great experience too, but this is next level. This is some serious what-is-happening-right-now-OMG-what-is-going-on level stuff. Grin and giggle stuff. I've only had an hour with them, but that hour was possibly the best hour I have had with a pair of speakers. I think the reason no reviewer has these in their "reference" system is because they can't. These speakers are not even playing the same game. They make "regular" speakers sound boring and broken. I disconnected the SDA cable and while the speakers were still fabulous, all the magic was gone.

It is very difficult to explain just what these speakers do. An analogy to light is perhaps helpful. If a speaker were a flashlight, most speakers light up the area between them. The Polks do not do that. Like a flashlight pointing out, the Polks evenly illuminate everything in front of them--including to the sides. It's like adding a center channel and front wides that aren't really there. A 15 or 20 foot wide soudstage from speakers placed 6 feet apart, with no gaps in the soundstage. All this from a speaker 6 feet apart and me 8 feet away. How is this possible? I shut my eyes, pointing to where I heard various sounds and instruments emanating from (all of which sounded quite natural), and then opened my eyes. I was pointing well past the outside edge of the speakers. Yeah, you need to keep your head in an absolute vice to make it work. But it's worth it. Pinpoint imaging, uncongested neatly arrayed soundstage, all the typical audiophile nonsense--but now it makes sense. When speakers are only throwing an image as big as they are apart, how does any of that nonsense make sense? It doesn't. But here, it does. This is like a full blown front stage with a left, right, center, left wide, and right wide. From two speakers pulling it off acoustically and not via whatever Dolby has in their latest algorithm.

I almost caved and bought Revel Salon 2s. Glad I didn't. I already have plenty of nice, flat measuring, well-behaved speakers in various other secondary systems or the theater setup. That's an incremental improvement. More Tonal Balance! Ooh. More "Inner Detail" (whatever that is)! Ahh! A little more shimmer on that triangle, or a bit for boom from the bass drum! Eh, sure. The Polks have plenty of that, but again, this is a different ballgame, and when I only have an hour a week (although now I might have to make more) to "seriously" listen to 2 channel (and usually don't, because it is a bit boring), I would rather spend it with these weird looking things with their one-of-a-kind party trick. Calling it a party trick sells it short. They're doing what every other speaker wishes it could. What I've been wishing speakers could do for many, many years. What I, at one point, believed they could do based on the florid nonsense in the audio rags. None of them ever could, but these actually can.

A fair warning though, these speakers are only for you. 180 degrees off axis, it's ... weird. Out of the perfect center, and it falls apart. But on axis, it's just sublime. And if for some crazy reason SDA is not for you or you need to entertain a crowd, just yank the SDA cable and you have a speaker at least as competent as anything else Polk has ever made, if not more. But once you hear it, you won't unplug that cables. Cables in audio are often described as having magical properties. There is nothing magic inside of Polks cable, but it helps to create magic in a way nothing else I have ever heard does.

tl;dr: Great speakers. Unique, and amazing. Buy before they are gone, possibly forever.
 
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