Polk L200 Speaker Demo Reviews

mhardy6647

ZLTFUL wrote: »

Just for the sake of disclosure, I just sent the L200s on to their next victim, @tonyb

I have a very busy day today with work and personal stuff but will be working on my review and comparison tomorrow.

Okey dokey... shivering with antici...

well, you know



here.

tonyb

Can't make any promises but I'll try and keep the garlic smell off them.

F1nut

The demos are moving along smoothly, thanks for that guys. There should be a few new reviews coming along, so stay tuned.

ZLTFUL

For the TLDR types, the L200s are a fantastic bookshelf speaker. They have a pleasant presentation, really nice imaging, and are very well balanced from the bottom to the top of the frequency range. At first, I felt the tweeters were a tad bright but the more I listened, the more I realized it wasn't a brightness I was hearing but more detail compared to previous Polk bookies.

Now on to the real review.

Unboxing

Jesse did a great job of reinforcing the Polk packaging. He added extra reinforcement to the corners and added some foam insulation to the areas not covered by the stock packaging's Styrofoam.
Polk could take a lesson from these simple additions as it does a great job protecting the fairly heavy packaging from typical careless shipping company workers.

The stock packaging is pretty standard for what we see these days but Polk did add a nice cloth sock over the speaker itself with the grille in its own plastic wrapper and then the whole speaker in a plastic bag of its own.

They fit nicely into the Styrofoam endcaps and that prevents any movement within the box itself. As stated above, Jesse's additional packing will help prevent damage if the cardboard outer shell is punctured.

The first thing I noticed when unboxing the L200s is that they have a nice solid heft and feel to them. There are nice warning stickers that give you a heads up that the tweeter does have a hard, semi-sharp point.

Opening the cloth sock enclosing the speaker, I was surprised to find that the black ash finish was very well executed. As a woodworker (hobbyist), I am usually pretty underwhelmed by speakers finished in plain black. I know it has huge WAF but to me, it is usually boring and poorly done.
I have to say that these Polks do the black ash finish exceptionally well. Enough so that I would have no problem displaying them openly in one of my smaller room systems. The woodgrain "pops" really nicely. I personally would prefer the Walnut finish but the black ash is in no way inferior in any way.

The magnetic grilles are done very well too. They have a much better fit and finish than the LSiM series grilles which tend to be a bit less well thought out and fitted.
The badging is nice and simple. Not that I minded the older heart logo but I have a bit of a thing when it comes to what I consider "free brand advertising". I want to be able to show people what brand I am using but I want it to be something I have to point out and doesn't bring too much attention to itself.
The L200s logos/badging are nice and simple. They do not scream, "I'M A POLK AUDIO SPEAKER, LOOK AT ME!!!". But more of a, "Hey, I'm a Polk speaker...nice to meet you."

Moving on to the speaker itself, the binding posts are *very* nice. Arguably the best ones ever to grace a Polk product. I am a bit of a fan boy of the style of binding posts that Polk used on the LSiMs but the Legend series binding posts are a nice solid and meaty post with a nice clean finish and a solid grab on my nanners on my SCs.

The drivers themselves are beautifully crafted. I am a huge fan of the Scanspeak Revelator ring radiator tweeters and this Polk "Pinnacle" tweeter is very similar in design as well as fit and finish.
The woofer and its "turbine" style cone is quite a deviation from Polk's tendency in the past to use much more conventional style woofer cones. But it doesn't look or feel cheap in any way.

Polk did decide to put some "feet" on the speakers in the form of a rubber pad near each corner of the bottom. I used my 24" Sanus stands and the stock pads on the Polks easily cleared the top plate of the stands without any trouble.

Associated Gear and Setup

My system consists of the following:
Rotel RC-1570 Solid State Pre-Amp (MM and MC phono pre built in)
VTL Compact 100 Monoblocks running Sovtek 5881 power tubes, NOS 1967 Amperex 7308 orange label gold pins on the input side
North Star Designs Incanto DAC
Denon DVD2900 via coax to the NSD
Kenwood KD550 TT
Laptop to NSD via USB
Pangea PCs
Onyx Blue ICs
Nordost Heimdall SCs
Wireworld USB and Coax

Stands are Sanus Natural Foundations in Cherry and 24".

Setup was pretty straight forward. I removed the binding post jumpers as I have bi wire speaker cables. I set the L200s on the Sanus stands that were center to center 7.5' apart and then 9.5' from the listening position. I experimented with toe-in but ultimately ended up with the L200s squared up to achieve the best presentation and imaging within my particular space.

Room treatments are minimal except for some absorption at the left side first reflection point. Otherwise, my space is fairly neutral with only a minor bit of reflection from some of the hard surfaces. There is no real over-damping.

I used all 3 sources in my evaluations...CDP (Denon), Records and streaming (Laptop...not ideal but used as a Roon endpoint only).

Initial Listening Impressions

After leaving the amps on for a couple of hours to come up to temp, I was ready to do some listening.
I started my listening session with a couple of playlists that I created based on Skip's demo and set up playlist he has posted elsewhere on this forum.
I also created a separate playlist with some of my favorite songs.

First up was Deadmau5 "4Ware" from his W:/2016ALBUM/ release.
Initial impressions were that the imaging of this song was pretty accurate with the kick drum front and center and the blip/bloops wrapping well around to the sides. A sense of spaciousness is not lost at all.
I did feel that the first listen through of this song was a bit more lively than I was used to which I mistakenly first labeled as "bright". But the more I think about it, it is more accurately described as more lively and dynamic in the upper ranges. My reference speakers have a slightly rolled off top end that, while very accurate, tends to soften some of that upper range for a slightly warmer presentation.
Don described the L200s as "fluidly analytical" and I think that is a very accurate description.
Disclaimer: This isn't to say that they are harsh or brittle in any way...just that they present a bit more bright than your LSiMs or Ushers (More on this later).

I next listened to several songs in a cappella. Pentatonix "Hallelujah", "Daft Punk" and "Sound of Silence" as well as Rajaton "Little Drummer Boy" and Perpetuum Jazzile "True Colors".
These speakers do voices tremendous justice. Smoothly transitioning through the various vocal ranges while never seeming to strain at all. The bass and baritone voices don't lack anything as bookies are sometimes wont to do (a drawback of the typical bookie is a loss of low end bass but these do really well until you get to the realllly deep registers).
I never felt anything was missing when reproducing vocal music and they did a great job of placing each singer in the smaller ensemble within the soundstage.

ZLTFUL

More Critical Listening
At this point, I decided to let the L200s run softly playing music through that night and the following day while I worked.

The second evening with the L200s was my most critical listening with them.
I shifted to listening through whole albums/compositions at this point.

I started with Daft Punk "Random Access Memories" on vinyl.
This album starts off with the electro-funk song, "Give Life Back to Music".
Niles Rodger's funky guitar riffs come floating out of the soundstage and present a lifelike flow around the front as he moves around the studio jamming.
I have listened to this album on many combinations of source gear, amps, speakers and this song on this combo ranks right up at the top for me. The L200s play really nice with the funk.
A couple of songs later, we have the song "Giorgio by Moroder" which is an Italo-disco inspired song with Giovanni Giorgio Moroder speaking about his early work as he began his career in Europe during the late 60s and early 70s.
The L200s had no problem reproducing the spoken word while a very dynamic disco influenced music track plays.

I then moved on to my DSD copy of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here".
This is arguably my favorite album from the group and I won't gush over how good it is or how well it flows and turns into a single very long song instead of individual songs on an album.
What I will do is cover the 3 things I always look for with this album.
A few minutes into the first track, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Parts I-V", David Gilmour does his his solo and it is one of those solos that gives me goosebumps *when it is reproduced accurately*. The L200s do it justice. Definitely got them goosebumps.
During the intro of "Wish You Were Here", there are 3 things I always look for...and if I can hear all 3 of them, then I know I am listening to a good speaker.
First, about 25 seconds in, David clears his throat...a nasty phlegmy one too but it is the most noticeable of these 3 things I look for.
The second, about 5 or 6 seconds later, is a sniff. Nothing special, just a normal slightly runny nose sniff.
And the third, just before the acoustic picking begins, an intake of breath.
The throat clearing is fairly obvious and I can pick it out even in the car going down the highway.
The sniff is very subtle but it is there and you can pick it out on good speakers.
Then the intake of breath. Not impossible to pick out but easier to hear on good speakers.
The L200s reproduced those 3 "quirks" perfectly.
Then on "Welcome to the Machine", the door slams have actual impact when properly reproduced. The L200s didn't need a sub to get that impact. A good reference on how well they do deeper in the frequency range.

The third album I listened to is the Telarc Jazz release of "Brubeck After Dark" on CD.
This live album is everything you hope to find in a jazz club recording. Dark, quiet ambiance. Dave Brubeck tickling the hell out of the ivories and the rest of the quartet doing a tremendous job. The whole recording has almost a jam session vibe to it but with the ambiance of a cozy club.
The L200s shine here. Great imaging. You actually feel like part of the audience when they applaud a solo or a song. A lot of the times, albums like this image poorly because everything feels like it is in front of you. The audience *should* sound like it surrounds you while the band should take their respective locations on the stage.
The L200s produce these ambiance cues very accurately and not once did I feel like I was listening to a recording of a live jazz show but instead felt like I was at the show, live.

My 4th album was the Highwaymen "Highwayman" on vinyl. This is an original pressing and has seen a LOT of play over the years, first by my late step-mother and then by me.
It is one of those 80s massively over-produced albums but it does it in a fantastic way.
There is a surreal quality to the recording that adds echo and reverb in an abundance and the L200s did a great job reproducing this.
The title song is one of my all-time favorite country songs and the L200s make the guitars and voices sound amazing.


Personally, I never felt the need to add a sub into the mix but depending on the type of music, I could see a musical sub doing some of the lowest octaves more justice than the L200s can. But they don't need it for probably 90+% of what I listen to.

Comparisons to other bookies
I currently have an abundance of bookshelf speakers residing in my office/2 channel room and decided to do some impromptu comparisons just for grins.

I won't go into too much detail but below is a list of what I compared with the L200s, how they ranked versus them, and a brief description of what I though they did better or worse than the L200s.

1. Wharfedale 80th Anniversary Dentons - Better imaging overall, smoother presentation in the mid and upper frequency ranges. Less bass but that is overlooked with what they do better.
2. Usher V-601s - For the price and performance, the V-601s are very close in almost every regard to the L200s. They have a slightly smoother or more fluid upper frequency presentation but it is almost impossible to differentiate the midrange between them and the L200s. The L200s do dig a bit deeper and I think that is due to the front firing slot port on the Ushers vs the Powerport on the L200s.
3. Polk Audio L200s - These and the Ushers could easily have switched places. And depending on my mood and the day, they easily should.
4. Polk Audio Monitor 5 Series II (RD-0198 tweeters, Sonicaps, Mills, Jantzen Inductors) - The problem with the Monitor 5s in the grand scheme of things is that the tweeter in this case outclasses the rest of the speaker so it tends to have a bit of a disadvantage in this group. But honestly, if all I could listen to was classic rock, the M5s would be my speaker of choice. They just aren't quite on par with the 1-3 on this list.
5. Polk Audio LSi7s - I feel like the L200s just do everything better than the LSi7s. The LSi7s aren't bad at all. But they are like a college football player who just didn't quite make it to the pros while the L200s are an 8 year pro veteran. They can both do the job in their respective areas but one is just that much better.

I did throw my Silverline Audio Sonatinas and my new LSiM705s in for comparison sake and I will say that the L200s sound better in midrange and upper registers than the LSiMs.
My Silverlines are my reference. While they can't hang with the LSiM705s on the low end, they produce a buttery smooth midrange and upper range than any other speaker in this comparison.
Nothing I saw above will be displacing them.

ZLTFUL

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would say that the Polk L200s are a very nice improvement on previous products from Polk Audio.
They have the ability to reproduce nicely dynamic tracks without making them sound harsh or the bass bloated.
They are very easy to listen to for hours on end and provide accurate reproduction of the nuances we "audiophiles" look for when doing some critical listening.
One thing I will say is that I think the price point will be hard for the general population to swallow.
The $1800 price point puts them about the price of some seriously stiff competition...
Just off the top of my head, in the $1500-$2500 price range there are some superb speakers...
Wharfedale 85th Anniversary Lintons, Elac Adante AS-61s, Kef LS50s, Revel M105s/M106s, Dynaudio Evoke 10s/20s, B&W 707s/706s, Harbeth P3ESR...

But I digress.
Only you can decide if they check all your boxes at their price point. For me, that's a hard call but I can say that I would not kick them out of the room if I had a pair.

A few pictures I snapped...

mhardy6647

. . .

pglbook

ZLTFUL, that was a masterful review; better than a lot of "professional" reviews I have read. Thanks for the great detail and clear and effective writing. I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it. The speakers sound wonderful; it looks like Polk hit a home run with the L200s.

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!

ZLTFUL

I don't have any direct comparisons to expound upon in relation to the older SDAs...

But I will say that I would take the L200s over the L800s. The main reason being that I do not have enough room to make the big boys work well in my room at all.
But to a lesser extent, the L200s checked more of those boxes I spoke of for me.

If I could have a nice 2 channel rig in my living room, I would be hard pressed to pick between the L600s and L800s though (having only heard the L800s so far).

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...

ZLTFUL

smglbrth wrote: »

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...

You and me both.

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: »

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.