Time for change...

Upstatemax

Well I just placed an order for A TL3 front sound stage for the living room.

I'll keep the Velodyne subs, Denon, Oppo and FXi3's in the living room.


However the Parasound, LSi's, Cambridge and Pro-Ject are moving into the Pool Table room to become a 2ch system again.

I will need a 2ch preamp and a CD player for the Pool Table room and new speaker cables for the TL3's. Other than that I have pretty much everything else either in use already or in the closet.

The TV was moved to over the fireplace and the TL3's will be mounted below it right under the mantle. I will be building an equipment rack for the Denon and the Oppo that will be right next to the Fireplace in the corner.

Wife and I came to the conclusion that the living room had to become more about entertaining and less about the TV. I was fine with this as long as I could start a 2ch system again...

Upstatemax

I read in a review that the TL3's come with wall mounts.

I'm guessing it's the keyhole slots?

Can anyone comment on what they come with?

Upstatemax

Okay...

I had the TL3's in the system for a bit and what HUGE let let down. "Big speaker sound without the big speaker" is simply a line that carries no weight. The top end was not too bad, but midrange and anything close to male vocals were awful.

I let them burn in for about 80 hrs and the low end came in a little bit more smooth. Nothing acceptable, just not as terrible.

I guess I let the monikers and online reviews cloud my better judgement that a speaker with the TL3's specs could sound better than they should.

I was going back and forth between the TL3's and the Definitive Technology ProMonitors. After having the TL's in the house I placed an order for the DT Pro 800's and 1000 center to run a back to back.

Right out of the box the DT were a better fit. They can dig far deeper and sound far more natural. Obviously good subs are mandatory for either of the speakers.

However with the TL's I had to push the crossover point to 120hz to fill in and male vocals were clearly coming from the subs. With the DT's I was able to bring it down to 80hz with no issue.

One of the things that drew me to the TL's was all the people calling them "baby LSi's". Since they were replacing my LSi 9's they were an obvious draw since I needed something MUCH smaller. However, the DT sound much closer to the LSi's than the TL's to me. Much more neutral than I was expecting. The Al tweet is actually smooth.

Female vocals are very well rendered with great imaging. Male vocals are far more natural with decent presence and no flab. The TL's sounded very strained to reproduce anything in the lower frequency.

Female vocals were good on the TL's but anything too much higher or lower just did not blend very well with the speakers sweet spot.

Overall the DT are a FAR more complete speaker. The top blends well with the mids, the lower end carries some real weight and punch.

No matter what, they both need good subs. The DT's just blend better and carry themselves with some decent authority, they don't just sit in the background like the TL's did.

I would also like to point out that the TL3's and the ProMonitor 800's are basically the same size...

Polk made it VERY easy to send the TL's back with no issue what so ever. Kind of sad to make my first real speaker purchase that's not Polk. But I was made to feel better by the Polk Rep that informed that DT is Polk's sister company!

Hope this helps a few of you guys and please let me have any feedback.

boston1450

Great review & impressions on the two of those.

tonyb

You would have thought lessons were learned when another manufacturer said you could replace your 5k sound system with these little speaker cubes.

Glad you got it worked out anyway, congrats man.

EndersShadow

Sorry it didnt work out the way you wanted, glad your happy with the results.

Upstatemax

I knew I was going to be taking a big step back going with a smaller Sat based system, but I just did not like the TL3's. To me they did not live up to the "baby LSi" comparison.

I just think the DT's are much better thought out design and execute on much higher level than the TL's do. For the same money and size, I can't think of one reason to buy the TL3's over the ProMonitor's.

The main complaint I have about the ProMonitors is the binding post set up...

PIA to hook them up with anything other than banana plugs. Spades you can basically forget about it. Bare wire can be done but it's clumsy at best. I had to bend the wire at an angle just to insert it into the binding post.

The only banana plugs I had laying around were some old GLS locking plugs so I'm using them for now.

seanmcd72

Are you STILL happy with your Promonitor 800 + 1000 procenter setup?? I have the TL350 setup currently and I want to upgrade to possibly that or the PM1000 + pc2000 setup. The TL350's do sound nice, and are a great size (I need to stay on-wall) but they just don't go down low enough.

cfrizz

The "Baby LSIs" is certainly not correct, the only thing they have in common is the tweeter maker.

I use mine for pc speakers and by themselves they do fine, but I still have the bottom end supported by a small sub. To use them in a HT setting, you would absolutely need a sub or two to back them up simply because there is no way they can go that low simply because they are too small.

Size makes a difference, and you really shouldn't expect little speakers either cubes or bookshelves to match a full size system anchored by tower speakers.

Upstatemax

seanmcd72 wrote: »

Are you STILL happy with your Promonitor 800 + 1000 procenter setup?? I have the TL350 setup currently and I want to upgrade to possibly that or the PM1000 + pc2000 setup. The TL350's do sound nice, and are a great size (I need to stay on-wall) but they just don't go down low enough.

I'm still very happy with my ProMonitor setup.

If I had the extra space, I would love to give the ProMonitor 1000's and ProCenter 2000 a run.

seanmcd72

Yep I replaced the front three speakers of my TL350 setup with PM800's and a PC1000 (still have the TL3's as surrounds, with an SVS pb10-nsd sub). SOOooooooo much better. Music in stereo with the two pm800's + sub sound 10 times better.

Worst part about the Deftech's are the mounting (promount 90) with 3 inches of wall mount before the speaker, resulting in them sticking out way further than the TL350 setup. I'll get used to that though.