Polk L200 Speaker Demo Reviews

dromunds

Very nice review. Thanks for the insightful thoughts.

JayCee

@ZLTFUL, really nice and thoughtful review. I appreciate the list and description of each song you used to audition. Similarly, there are small cues I look for in each of the songs on my demo list.

You have quite the collection of speakers on-hand to compare and give many CP members a relative point of view. Many of the target audience have experience with what you own.

I've owned the LSiM-705's (gave to my sister) and am excited you view the mids of the L200 an improvement. Although I REALLY wanted to like the 705's, and I did, they just didn't knock me over enough to keep them. Also impressive that you find the bass substantial for a bookie.

Currently, I have plenty of room for my full size speakers but have a pair of uber modded SDA-CRS+'s (4.1tl) saved for a time when I might have to downsize. Any direct experience with the CRS's and, if so, thoughts?

I'm very far down on the list for auditioning the West Coast walnut L200's but am very excited to get them in the house. Thanks again for your pictures and review.

John

Mike Reeter

Dang Ryan, outstanding write up! I think after my time with the 200's I'll just copy and paste your review

With such a good collection of Stand Mounts to compare the L200's to, I'd say you gave them a very fair assessment.

Good work!

erniejade

Great review. Having owned the Usher V-601 and lsim705's in the past, it gives me a good feel for the 200's on the comparison. Nice writeup!

EndersShadow

Ryan...... I’m gonna have to buy those V-601s back at some point lol.....

I sincerely miss them often....

indyhawg

Great review Ryan. I liked the fact you benchmarked against other speakers.

smglbrth

Nice review Ryan, I am surprised on your comparison with the Wharfedale Denton's, they must have done something very right. Now I am super intrigued about the Linton's...

Jstas

OK, so, my turn! This is long so there's gonna be a few posts.

First off, equipment list used with the L200's.

Amplification: Peachtree Nova
Turntable: Micro Seiki DD-35
Phono Pre: ART USB Phono Plus
CD Player: Sony Car Discman (don't laugh, has a killer line-level output)
Other Sources:
- Windows 7 PC using Winamp with lossless audio files/codecs
- SACD/DVD-A capable Bluray Dual Layer DVD-RW drives (snazzy!)
- Pandora subscription (high quality audio in the stream)
- YouTube (mostly garbage)


TL;DR - Impressive speakers for their size, better than expected for the price point. They seem flat and devoid of life until you realize what you're actually hearing. There's no midrange hump at all. That's odd to hear in a speaker with a 2-way crossover or even a 3-way crossover. Whatever Polk did to tame all of that must have taken a tremendous amount of effort. It shows.

Verdict - Worth your hard earned wampum. Just make sure you have lots of power and good sources because they will highlight weaknesses. They are not forgiving. They are not fans of vinyl either.

Jstas

Now for the TL part!

These showed up on a Saturday and I was not expecting them at all. I walked out the door, pulled it shut and locked it on our way to a kid thing. I turned around and there was the FedEx guy sneaking up on me, holding the box and saying he needs a signature. So thanks for the heads up and tracking number, @mrbiron. I almost missed it.

Anyway, I came home later that day and unpacked them to check for damage. There wasn't any although the box looked in rough shape for only it's 2nd trip through FedEx. I figured I should double box it because I have a feeling these will be raffled off at the end of the demo run and somebody might want the box in decent shape. So I was unboxing and noticed the note about the extra pointy phase plug. Can I just tell you how hard it was to get the damn things out of the box? Slipperier than @lightman after a weekend-long bender. I guess that doesn't matter much since the owner's gonna unpack once.

First thing I noticed, though, was size. These are diminutive. Not in a bad way either. They are bigger than my Totem Acoustics Rainmakers, though. Not by much. Bonus there, they fit the Rainmaker's stands just fine so no janky setup for them. Solid stands with good acoustic damping! WOOHOO!

So I got them set up in place of the Rainmakers. I had to dig up a set of banana plugs for this 'cause I swapped out the Rainmakers and the LSiM 703's for comparisons. For how small the L200's are, they sure are dense. Almost as heavy as the 703's despite being 2/3rds the size.

So I got them all hooked up and started running some MP3s through them just to make sure they were working. It was off-putting. I felt like there was something wrong but nothing wrong at the same time. I couldn't put my finger on it. I ran through a few dozen MP3s of all kinds of variety and started noticing that some sounded better than others. So I chalked it up to MP3 quality and shut everything down for the night.

The next day I was doing bills and had some YouTube videos playing in the background and again, I noticed something off. I got finished with bills and started looking closer at the videos I was playing. Most were music videos from VEVO and some sounded good, others didn't. So I switched to the Topic channel which doesn't use any videos, just audio and it's typically lossless. Things improved but some tracks still felt like they were playing through a sock. So I turned off the tube circuit on the Nova's pre-amp stage. No change. I thought maybe they just didn't get enough break-in time and just let stuff play all day. I queued up all 63,000 MP3's on my server and put Winamp on shuffle and went outside to rake leaves while the fam was out. Came back in at dinner time, shut everything down for the night.

Next morning everyone left for work/school and I was home by myself. So I turned it up to 11 and pulled out my remastered CCR albums and cranked Cosmo's Factory to excessive levels. Things sounded better with the CCR discs. Less sterile, less like a 90's boombox. I ran through most of the CCR library before lunch and figured if they didn't get a good workout to loosen them up at this point I dunno what else to do...except keep going! At this point I grabbed some of the initial tracks I was messing with and played them again. No change. WTF?

So I figured maybe it was something with the computer's CD/DVD burners (probably not, they're top notch, dual-layer, BD burner LG optical drives, weren't cheap, far from junk) so I stuck the Sony Discman on the RCA aux input on the Nova.

As basic as I could get. Still the same odd flatness. Just for the hell of it, I grabbed a micro SD card and loaded it up with some FLAC files I made from vinyl rips for my dad. Then I stuck that card in the xDuoo high fidelity music player I have and plugged the cable from the CD player into the line out on the player. Things were brighter and more lively but still odd. So I transferred some of the original MP3s to the music player and there it was again, that sterile, flat sound.

At this point I'm thinking maybe something is wrong with the Nova as several sources showed similar performance. So I swapped the LSiM 703's in and ran through some of the stuff I did before. There was that life to the sound again. So I swapped the Rainmakers in and again, vibrant, lively sound. Put the L200's back on and it was like a wet pillow.

Alright, time to stop **** around here.

Jstas

I went and checked all my settings on my PC, updated every codec to the latest and greatest, and made sure every driver was up to date. I'm running an optical cable directly to the Nova's internal DAC which, is pretty nice all by itself. All internal connections in the PC are TOSLINK too so no EM interference.

So I would know for sure that I am not losing anything with the PC as the source. I decided to use Audacity as the media player. I dropped in one of my favorite test tracks, Towards Home from Jonathan Elias.

My God, the L200's just woke up! Bright, powerful, accurate, dynamic, every positive word you could think of to describe it, that was it! So I grabbed the CCR discs again and queued Cosmo's Factory up. Turned Travelin' Band up to 11 and again, there it was, night and day difference from the Aux input to the high quality optical input. Same disc, just a different source. So I fired up the analyzer in Audacity which gives a pretty good physical representation of the response curves of the track you are playing. There was a full range on the CCR and the Jonathan Elias tracks. Dancing up and down the scale.

So, I wondered. I have an album from a group named Dirty Vegas. You've heard their stuff in some commercials. There's one track they have called Throwing Shapes. No vocals just a ton of very well mixed synthesizer instruments. It can really give a speaker a work out and I like it because it will show flaws readily. I have it on CD, in MP3 and FLAC. I made the MP3 and FLAC files myself from the CD. So I played the CD first, sounded amazing as expected at this point.

Then I queued up the MP3. The L200's sounded flat and lifeless again. Hmmm....FLAC file next. They came back to life! Not quite as good as the CD but good enough that only super anal critical listing to dig out the differences could tell.

This made me wonder what was going on. So I watched the tracks for the same song in 3 different media formats in the analyzer in Audacity and recorded them. Then I played them all back at the same time (no sound, just watched the analyzer video) and Audacity showed where the MP3's compression was truncating mid-range and highs with an exaggerated slope on the low end fall off. None of that was on the CD or the FLAC files.

OK, I think I know what's up but I need to test now. So out comes the remastered Sam Cooke CD. I played a few tracks and that Sam Cooke CD...it was like Sam was in the room signing along to a recording of his backing band. Very odd thing. So odd that I wondered what a female vocalist would sound like because I'm pretty sure I know what's going on. So out comes Gretchen Lieberum - Siren Songs and I queued up the track "You Closer". It's basically Gretchen singing front and center, right in front of a baby grand and there's a drum kit and guitar or bass off to the right of the baby grand. I know this because on the Amazings powered by the Silver 7t's with the Adcom GFP-750 and Denon SA CD player, that's where the most realistic soundstage I have ever had in front of me put them. The L200's put them in the same place. But, again, Gretchen felt like she was in the room with the piano and the backing band was an after thought on a recording. She sounded perfect, though. You could even hear her breathing.

Alright, now to figure it out for sure. Jamiroquai - Automaton - Cloud 9. Well produced, wall of sound level of music. Threw that in. Yeah, everything was there in the recording, some of the highs sounded ethereal and the bass was digging super deep and clean. Clean clean clean clean clean. No port farting, no cone distortion, no resonances. Just....whoa. I must have listened to this track 10 times in a row just listening, not to the music, to what the speakers were doing and completely in awe.

Then it hit me.

These speakers have no mid-range hump at all.

That's what's odd about them. That's why they can sound lifeless. Everything else out there that I've heard is either tuning to or compensating for an over-boosted mid-range. I don't know what the response curves for this speaker look like but even the Carver Amazings with a single driver frequency response between 80 Hz and 28,000 Hz still need foam blocks to tame that mid-range hump. These...nothing. It's just not there. The mid-range response has to be flat as a board. That's why vocals seem pronounced or focused on. Any recording where mid-range is bumped up is going to sound odd on these because of the flat response.

That mid-range hump? That's why you see so many equalizers with the V formation to tame that mid-range hump in so many recordings. That's why singers sound disembodied or disconnected from the rest of the track with these speakers.

That's why MP3's sound dull and lifeless.

These speakers are unforgiving because there's no crossover dips, no mid-range hump, no driver separation at all. The entire unit, drivers, enclosure, port and crossover are one unit and behave that way. The drawback here is that they will expose sloppy recordings or poor recordings and substandard mastering. You're not going to realize that because it doesn't manifest like it would in other speakers. In the L200's, it's the reason that Diana Krall and the piano sound like they are in the room, clear as a bell but, on the very same track, the backing band sounds like it's playing in another room and being reproduced in the recording studio through a set of monitors, not actually in the studio.

Once I had that epiphany of what was going, I selected my demo material in a smarter fashion.

Jstas

Now, about the speakers. I ran tons of programming through them. I played music, I played movies and even video games. I probably put about 80 hours on them as I was doing most of my listening during work hours. Since I work from home, it's easy to fire up the stereo and let it play all day. So I'll break down strengths and weaknesses per material type.

- Music - they like mid-range heavy stuff like rock, heavy metal, country. They excel at that stuff. Probably because of the mid-range stuff I talked about above. Vocals, I found that unless it was very well produced, it was odd listening to a vocal performance. Vocalists could seem disconnected except for live performances. A live performance gave you a front row, center stage listening position with a wide and deep soundstage, just like if you were at a concert. One exception for a live performance was opera. No matter where the recording was made, opera sounded like the singer was the main focus with backing music being played over the house speakers. The better the recording the less pronounced that was. They did well with classical music though but, again, recording quality was important here. Junk recordings or highly compressed recordings showed faults and sounded like a transistor radio at times. Everything else from hip hop to techno to dubstep to whatever sounded just fine with sterility being more pronounced from the lesser quality recordings.

- Movies/TV - They did well here. Mostly because of the dynamics. The accuracy of the speakers really shines in the complex programming that stuff like a TV show with a laugh track or a action movie brings with it. This was where I really noticed the low-end capabilities because what would normally require a sub to at least be audible was present with just the L200's. They would need a sub to cover the deepest extensions of bass that a movie can produce but they were 90% of the way there for the majority of the programming information.

- Video games - Life like is the best way to put it. The sounds of a tank rolling through a battle ground or the crack of a first person shooter's rifle or the runs through the RPM range of a race car...all of it had a life-like tone to it. It's hard to explain. The best way to put it is stand next to, I dunno, a Mustang GT that's idling. It has a throaty rumble to it's lazy loping idle. In person you hear and you feel it. It also has resonances that don't often get reproduced in video games. At least not well. Half of it is because of bandwidth available but the other half is because computer speakers often just are incapable of reproducing it. So that Mustang in a video game sounds more high pitched because it's missing a lot of the low end rumble and all of the mid-range resonances that make it sound the way it does. The L200's have enough of a dynamic range and are missing no mid-range info that when you listen to that Mustang idling through them, it's right there in the living room with you. Make sense? 'Cause even stuff as simple as a human voice or even a cat meowing in the video game sounds real enough that my actual cat, Eddie, was inspecting the speakers like there was an actual cat in them.

Jstas

So things I noticed while I was running through all the programming material.

- Not good for near field listening. I don't know why, can't put my finger on it but I'm betting it has something to do with the ring radiator tweeter. Even the Blackstone TL3's with the RR Tweeter can be fatiguing to listen to near-field. The only reason these worked so well for video games for me was because they were significantly far away, like 8 feet, from the computer so a lot of the directionalness that seemed to beam the sound right past your head and bounced it off the wall behind you wasn't there. Sit right in front of them, though and they feel like they are playing around you, not to you. It's like if you put your head right between the speakers and your ears were just even with the plane of the front baffles. You can hear them just fine but despite them being pointed right at you, they feel like they are set up for someone else.

- Tremendous low end extension for any speaker, not just bookshelfs. Digs very deep and does it cleanly. Hits frequencies so low that they will pressurize a small room and response extends outside the listening room. Does so without a sub. Not much is missing. Bass response was more than impressive. I wanted to see how deep they dug so I pulled out an "old" album of sorts. Rhianna's first album "Music of the Sun" specifically for two tracks. "Pon de Replay" and "Here I Go Again". She's from Barbados and her first album has a super heavy Reggae vibe to it and subsequently a bass track that digs all the way to China. I'll put it this way. I was playing "Pon de Replay", slowly creeping it up to 11 to find the limits where they started to break up (spoiler alert: they didn't, at all) and I saw the motion lights come on outside which meant Jackie was home. She walked in the house and came up to the library where I was listen to music way too loud and asked me what I was doing. Well, after I muted it she did. I said "Listening to the fancy speakers." she says "I heard it when I stopped at the end of the driveway to get the mail!" The mailbox is about 75-80 feet away at the end of the driveway and all the windows were closed in the house. She said it sounded like the cars that drive by with the loud music.

- They don't shine with vinyl. It could be my rig isn't set up to make the L200's shine but it was a night and day difference between the Rainmakers, the LSIM 703s and the L200s. The L200s just sounded...I dunno...cold, muted. Like how everyone describes tubes as being "warm" because of the inherent dynamics in the harmonics in the amplification process, the opposite is true of the L200s. They reproduced all the same sounds, they just seemed to be almost robotic in the reproduction. I mean, they were as accurate as any speaker I've heard if not more so, they just were missing something, some level of life to the sound. It got better when I turned on the tube stage of the pre-amp for the Nova so it's probably partially due to the synergy of the components. I think I'd just be running through a good chunk of gear before I found something really meshed well with the L200's for vinyl.

- They absolutely LOVE power. The more power you throw at them the better they get. If they were mine and not demo speakers, I'd have strapped them up to the Carver Silver 7t's (575W x 1 each) and given them the beans to see how far they could be pushed. But I did run them through an old Kenwood stereo receiver I have in the garage that puts out a legit, high current 100 watts per channel. It's got this massive block of copper windings in it and when pushed at 4 ohms, it's a bit over 150 watts per channel. It got those cones hoppin' and the L200s ate it up like a fat kid eatin' pixie sticks. I did not get them to a level that was uncomfortable, though. Not because I couldn't but because I didn't want to damage them and I was fearing for my gear burning out on me trying to drive them at that level.

- The mid-range is unlike any conventional speaker I've ever heard. It's blended so perfectly you can't even tell it's multiple drivers. Carver Amazings are the only ones that miss that mid-range hump that I've heard and even then, they need the foam blocks to tame it. These speakers, though, they will take a snare drum and you get the snappy thwack of a snare drum hit but the sizzle of the snare on the bottom of the drum sounds like it's in the room with you. In the same vein, sibilance is very well tamed. Let me see if I can illustrate what I'm thinking here better. Cymbals have a natural sibilance, just like a snare on a snare drum. It can be hard to reproduce because it has all the same artifacts as driver sibilance and audio engineers try to tame it out of recordings because of the hiss that comes from it. But it's necessary for many things from woodwind instruments reed vibrations on the top ends of their registers to the sizzle of a snare drum or drum brush to the sizzling hiss of a cymbal or high hat. These come through in the L200 like few other conventional driver based speakers I've heard. That's in addition to hearing all the other things like piano key armature movements, fingers sliding on frets, woodwind valves popping open and closed and even musician breathing that are hall marks of quality recordings that less than optimal gear often misses in reproduction.

Jstas

Now my review here is a bit naive because I only spent a couple weeks with them. I know I'm coming off as harsh and critical but the thing is, if I had $1800+ burning a hole in my pocket, I'd have a set of these replacing my Totem Rainmakers in the Library rig like yesterday. As an all around speaker, they are stout, stellar performers that will fit pretty much any tastes.They warmed up as my time with them went on and they were different by the time they left me too. I'm bettin' @gmcman had a better initial impression than I did 'cause I put them through their paces, for sure. That said, for music only duty...I like the LSiM 703s better. I also like the Totem Rainmakers better. If I had more time with them and the chance to swap gear more, I'd probably change that opinion, though. All around speaker that does double duty in the home theater playing The Angry Birds Movie for the umpteenth time and then rockin' out to some hard core Boston when the wife and kids are out shopping or something and you got the house to yourself...you can't beat these. They a re very good option for a "compromise" because the wife doesn't want speakers everywhere. They are a good compromise in that respect because they are uncompromising in execution.

They are accurate, powerful, clean, clear...I don't know what else to say about them. Words are failing me to describe them well enough. They are an improvement over any other series Polk Audio has ever put out, for sure. They are a bargain at their price point 'cause the LSiM 703's were $1500 a pair and the Rainmakers I have were $950 a pair...15 years ago (gawd I feel old, it's $1300 in today's dollars) and these, even at $1800 are better speakers than either of them by a long shot and most everything at their price point.

They're better than lots of stuff at twice their price too. But that's always been a hallmark of Polk Audio. But these are different, this time. The LSiM 703s are out of this world good for $1500. They were better than anything else in the $1500-$4000 price range when they dropped. They made waves and purposefully so. The negative reviews were from butthurt people just grasping at straws to hold against them because of the name on the front and nothing else. Polk had gotten away from the stellar value for a little bit. Even the LSi series was a bit lackluster compared to what we've seen Polk do in the past. But this time....these are in a completely different league. It's not super high end like Sonus Faber or Wilson Audio or something like that. But these leave the PSB, Jamo, Focal, Klipsch, Def Tech and KEF comparisons behind. I've heard speakers at this level before but the names were names like Usher, Dynaudio, ELAC, Quad, etc. That's where the L200's and likely the rest of the Legend series is at for less than half the price. My biggest disappointment with this whole demo is that I don't have the gear to make these shine as well as they could.

What these feel like to me is that Stu got sick and tired of not getting any respect for anything from Polk Audio's critics for decades and this ended up being Stu and Scott Orth's dual birds flipped at the world at Stu's mic drop retirement.

If you're in the market for them, their worth every penny but you'd better make sure the rest of your rig is up to snuff because these will expose your problem areas and make them annoying.




For reference, my test tracks used:
Creedance Clearwater Revival - multiple tracks (CD)
Jonthan Elias - Towards Home (CD)
Dirty Vegas - Throwing Shapes (LL Digital, CD)
Channel Live - Lock It Up (LL Digital)
Candlebox - Far Behind (LL Digital)
Alaskan Nights - David Schwartz (CD)
Rihanna - Pon De Replay (CD)
Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou (Live, Black and White Album) (DVD-A)
Chris Stapleton - Traveler (Vinyl)
Same Cooke - Sixteen (Vinyl)
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill, Still Growing Up Live (DVD)
Portugal. The Man - Feel It Still (HQ Streaming)
The Avalanches - Because I'm Me (LL Digital)
Kimbra - Settle Down (LL Digital)
The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name (CD)
Vance Joy - Fire and the Flood (HQ Streaming)
Jamiroqui - Cloud 9 (CD)
Shinedown - Simple Man (CD)
Frank Sinatra - Summer Wind (1966 - Reprise)

nooshinjohn

Excellent review John.

The L200s just sounded...I dunno...cold. Like how everyone describes tubes as being "warm" because of the inherent dynamics in the harmonics in the amplification process, the opposite is true of the L200s.

This part has me wondering how well they will respond to high-powered tube amps and if that will warm them up a bit.

dromunds

Very nice review. I’m intrigued by the various thoughts we all have of these speaks. I totally agree with your second to last paragraph about Stu making essentially swan song speakers. I really liked them. I thought they represented intent and will, in a classic sense. Funny, you thought they were not good near field but my gear is pretty near field and I thought they excelled at it. I also thought they were good with music and vinyl. I also preferred them to LSiM 703’s even with music - although that was tempered somewhat by the solid low end of each. There seems to be something related to gear, sources,etc., and of course we all have different tastes and insights and set ups and it’s really interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts. But I sure agree these are powerful, clear, articulate, and clean. And that they are an improvement over any other series Polk has produced I also think the better the gear the better they sound. As you said they like GOOD power. They will expose weaknesses. In gear and in sources. But overall I had the same very very positive experience you describe. I thoroughly enjoyed your review. Thanks for all your thoughts.

dromunds

nooshinjohn wrote: »

Excellent review John.

The L200s just sounded...I dunno...cold. Like how everyone describes tubes as being "warm" because of the inherent dynamics in the harmonics in the amplification process, the opposite is true of the L200s.

This part has me wondering how well they will respond to high-powered tube amps and if that will warm them up a bit.

John, I can tell you that I had them with tube gear with arguably some of the best iron ever made and they were never anything that I would describe as cold.

nooshinjohn

The best pairing I have ever had has been tube power and solid state pre. I know this flies in the face of conventional wisdom, but it works for me, and those that have had the pleasure of kicking me out of the sweet spot never want to get up from it.

I look forward to the L200 getting some time here, and if anybody knows who I need to speak to at Polk, I would love to host a showing here for the L800 as well.

smglbrth

Thanks for the review! I can definitely see some similarities in reviews now that more are coming in...

Jstas

dromunds wrote: »

Funny, you thought they were not good near field but my gear is pretty near field and I thought they excelled at it.

It depends on your definition of near-field listening.

If you have these on a desk and use them as speakers for your computer, that puts them within a foot and some inches of your head. That's near-field.

If you have them 3+ feet away, that's a bit more than near-field and while being that close they were easy to localize left and right channels even with toe-in to focus the "sweet spot", the beaming effect was significantly reduced to not really be a concern.

mhardy6647

dromunds wrote: »

show previous quotes

nooshinjohn wrote: »

Excellent review John.

The L200s just sounded...I dunno...cold. Like how everyone describes tubes as being "warm" because of the inherent dynamics in the harmonics in the amplification process, the opposite is true of the L200s.

This part has me wondering how well they will respond to high-powered tube amps and if that will warm them up a bit.

John, I can tell you that I had them with tube gear with arguably some of the best iron ever made and they were never anything that I would describe as cold.

I think I described what I heard as on the warm side of neutral, as well (and it warn't on tubes). Just shows to go how important the whole package is to the perceived performance.

erniejade

Great review. Enjoyed reading it.

DarqueKnight

I have received the walnut finish L200 review pair.

Let the games begin! Tower speakers on each end: LSiM 707. Bookshelf speakers L-R: Legend L200, LSi9 (modified), LSiM 703, SDA CRS+ (modified).

Only one pair of speakers will be in the room at one time.

Order of listening:

1. LSiM 707.
2. SDA CRS+.
3. LSi9.
4. LSiM 703.
5. L200.

The bookshelf speakers will be set on 30" Metal Technology TMT-30 stands in the same locations as the 707s.

In the future, when I am more dedicated to audio than I am now, I will form a posse of 10 and repeat these trials with scientifically valid quadruple blind test methods. But for now, I.will.just.listen.carefully. and take good notes.

Note: I don't know why Vanilla is causing everything to have quadruple spacing.

vmaxer

Can’t wait to read your reviews.

Geoff4rfc

DarqueKnight wrote: »

I have received the walnut finish L200 review pair.

That just looks like a primo PolkAudio advertisement right there......I don't care who you are, that's beautiful!!!

gmcman

I enjoyed the L200's....will get to a quick review hopefully tomorrow.

Donovan84

Ryan, what are the floor standing speakers in your photos? Assuming you like them?

K_M

@Jstas

"At this point I'm thinking maybe something is wrong with the Nova as several sources showed similar performance. So I swapped the LSiM 703's in and ran through some of the stuff I did before. There was that life to the sound again. So I swapped the Rainmakers in and again, vibrant, lively sound. Put the L200's back on and it was like a wet pillow."


both those speakers you mention (703's and Rainmakers) have a boosted top end.

erniejade

Round 1. L200
Associated equipment: , PS audio direct stream jr High Fidelity Reveal RCA into T+A intigrated 1530r, Audioquest cv8 72v ( yes i need to change speaker cable soon lol ). Source music is a combination of my own uncompressed wav rips and Qobuz \ Tidal.

First impression while playing with the placement, very clean and more open then previous Polk bookies. Some rooms i think they might be on the brighter side in but in my livingroom where the acoustics are dead, they sounded right. Fast mids, great tone, clean punchy low end.

More to come later on when i have a more time with them but just wanted to say off the bat, impressive sounding so far.

Jstas

K_M wrote: »

both those speakers you mention (703's and Rainmakers) have a boosted top end.

What the hell are you talking about?

stangman67

Can’t talk from a rainmaker perspective but the 703s are pretty lazy up top (not in a bad way). They have a boosted midrange to make up for a lack of organic lower frequency reproduction but certainly not boosted on the top end