2. speakers
  3. 151806-63

THE NEW POLK LEGEND SERIES

I recently read Dennis Burgers' review in Hometheaterreview on the smallest bookshelf model from Polks' new Legend series, the L100.
Ignore the review. This guy has a brain the size of a walnut. In the review he states " I plopped them out of the carton and put them up on the shelves", then proceeded to hook them up for listening evaluation and concluded the tweeter
performance was on the cool and bright side. No burn in time whatsoever to the crossover network.
Another typical "politcal" review to damage the sales of the new lineup. We all know that you never evaluate a good high end designed speaker unless its burned in at least 200 to 500 hours so the crossover components can reach their maximum synergy of performance. Having owned their top bookshelf in 2005, the LSI 9's, the tweeter performance of the Vifa ring tweeter was excellent and anything but cold and bright. At the time my kit included the Pass X-1 preamp and the Parasound Pl 2000 preamp , and the Nuforce Reference 9 mono's hooked up with Harmonic Technology cables. At the time, I sold my Paradigm Active 20's. The Polks' smoked the Paradigms. And now they have a new crossover designer, Scott Orth, who worked on the Lsim series, whose current work is superior to their previous crossover's. Look forward to honest, legitimate reviews in the near future of the new series and keeping my eye on the new L600 towers.
audiozen
yakbob
465 posts
 
I was originally very excited about the new legend series and seriously considered the new L800 for my next speaker. It would have been the first Polk product in my home but ruled it out when I saw the bobsled seating arrangement used in demos...in. every. single. demo.

While the SDA engineering makes sense, these speakers appear to have a sweet spot about 8" wide at the listening area.

Its odd that they market/demo the L800 as a 2-channel product, when many of the features appear to have value for home theater users. The drop in "height modules" for one, the required stadium/theater seating arrangement another. I suppose the surround and height speakers needed for surround playback would make up for the narrow sweet spot. I just wonder why they aren't going all in on the HT crowd, and demo the L800 with a full compliment of surround speakers. There's certainly a larger market.

kenjit
1,771 posts
 
We all know that you never evaluate a good high end designed speaker unless its burned in at least 200 to 500 hours so the crossover components can reach their maximum synergy of performance.

no such thing as burn in. If the tweeter is bright, the crossover DESIGN is what needs to be adjusted. It may be something as simple as reducing the highs by a couple db. It may be more complicated such as changing the slopes. But burn in will not fix the problem because its still the same crossover design and that is what needs adjusting.


clearthink
1,421 posts
 

kenjit"no such thing as burn in."
Any item of any type, design, or construction that contains, employs, or relies on moving parts is subject to break-in as a result of friction, gravity, and/or heat pretending that it does not exist reflects you're unfamiliarity with simple physics.
audition__audio
1,441 posts
 
Kenjit
Read what clearthink says on this subject. You are wrong and he is correct! Further, the burn in of components such as capacitors is a well known phenomenon. 
audiozen OP
831 posts
 
Kenjit..It is absolutely essential to burn in the components on the crossover boards. Quite often, you will notice that high end speakers have several crossover boards as compared to low end speakers with one board. The parts that make up the boards are inductor coils, capacitors, and resistors and some  boards have as much parts as a preamplifier or a mid size amplifier and I assume you agree that the parts in a amp or preamp have to be burned in so  the components can reach their full bloom for maximum performance. The crossovers job is to filter 
the incoming audio signal by frequency and to split up and send specific frequency bands to each driver to match the frequency bands each driver handles. Very simple science.
More to discover