Sound & Vision reviews the Legend L800

TopperDude

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/polk-audio-legend-l800-loudspeaker-review

Dabutcher

Thanks for sharing. Peace. D

stones89

Yep, thanks for sharing. Interesting, would love to hear these babies compared to my 2.3tl's.

Viking64

stones89 wrote: »

Yep, thanks for sharing. Interesting, would love to hear these babies compared to my 2.3tl's.

I was thinking the exact same thing the entire time I was reading the review.

mhardy6647

Thanks.
I shall peruse anon.

FWIW, I would love to see Stereophile review 'em (or any of the Legend series, for that matter), to see some quantitative data (to wit, I'd really like to see the measured impedance curve). Unfortunately, since S&V and Stereophile have the same ownership at this point, I doubt that'll happen

EDIT:

AT A GLANCE

Plus
Enveloping soundstage from SDA-Pro tech
Dynamic, full-range sound
Flush-mounted elevation module option

Minus
Somewhat bulky cabinet design
Requires SDA-Pro interconnect cable

"Somewhat bulky cabinet design" ?!?! Jeepers, what a silly kvetch.
(the other minus is pretty silly, too)

tonyb

I know, right....pretty soon it will be a minus if a speaker requires cables at all. Looks to me like he was searching for something to put on the negative side.

mhardy6647

tonyb wrote: »

I know, right....pretty soon it will be a minus if a speaker requires cables at all.

"pretty soon" ?!?

Looks to me like he was searching for something to put on the negative side.

Yeah, exactly. To me, it looks like their implicit conclusion is that the biggest negative is that there's no negative.

mhardy6647

PS nice synopsis:

Polk Audio clearly packed a lot of history, effort, and love into its new statement speaker...

source: https://www.soundandvision.com/content/polk-audio-legend-l800-loudspeaker-review-page-2#QKhfpJLGwKiXAZzi.99

rooftop59

S&V usually has at least very basic measurements like frequency response on a simple plot don't they?!?

mhardy6647

Well... Stereo Review did. Dunno about S&V. I cancelled my subscription about 2 months after the change (which, yeah, was quite some time ago).

There's jack diddley (as we used to say) in this particular review, though.

dromunds

tonyb wrote: »

I know, right....pretty soon it will be a minus if a speaker requires cables at all. Looks to me like he was searching for something to put on the negative side.

This is something I mentioned in the review of the L200: negativity is ubiquitous, and can be quite implicit. Searching for negativity is a bad trait for a reviewer. He also complained that the SDA cable had to be "stretched on the floor between the speakers." Sheesh. There is implicit bias as well with many reviewers, (not just audio either.)

pitdogg2

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Well... Stereo Review did. Dunno about S&V. I cancelled my subscription about 2 months after the change (which, yeah, was quite some time ago).

There's jack diddley (as we used to say) in this particular review, though.

Agree there used to be a smidgen more meat to their testing. They have not in years used (or at least published) results for all 5,7,9,11 channels used power ratings on amps or receivers. I miss that stuff, it would at least give you a basic idea of how much grunt the power supply had.

Emlyn

The author was writing for the target audience of the magazine, which is people who are into neat and minimally obtrusive lifestyle home theater systems. Sound seems to have become of secondary interest to them over the years, but they do focus on system setups and display screens pretty well.

I think he hit his target with the review. Fussy purchasers may not get why an extra cable is needed or why the cabinet is so wide. A sales person is going to have to explain it, but I would not be surprised if some people who purchase the L800s are going to set them up so they're toed in anyway!

F1nut

He was at Polk the day I was there. Seemed rather distant like he wasn't happy to be there or something.

I question his choice of associated gear.

VR3

I will one day own the L800, yes I will. 😝

mhardy6647

F1nut wrote: »

He was at Polk the day I was there. Seemed rather distant like he wasn't happy to be there or something.

I question his choice of associated gear.

I took the choice of associated gear to be representative of the S&V core audience's interests... but I may mis-interpret them.

Tony M

From the beginning of the review;

The specific tweaks made for SDA-Pro include a 15-degree angle to the speaker baffles for both the regular and Dimension driver arrays. This eliminates any need for speaker toe-in since it's already built into the design.

When did SDAs ever need toeing in?

I'm now going back to continue reading...

His review made me reminisce about my first experiences with the SDA-SRS2's I was given. To hear sounds come from such an expanse has to be heard in person to truly understand its glory.

Clipdat

"The first cut I played was an audiophile classic, "Time," from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (CD layer of a multichannel hybrid SACD)."

Why would he play the Redbook layer of a hybrid SACD?

Furthermore, why is he using a Panasonic DMP-UB900 Ultra HD Blu-ray player for CD playback?

F1nut

Ed Zachary

tonyb

Clipdat wrote: »

"The first cut I played was an audiophile classic, "Time," from Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (CD layer of a multichannel hybrid SACD)."

Why would he play the Redbook layer of a hybrid SACD?

Furthermore, why is he using a Panasonic DMP-UB900 Ultra HD Blu-ray player for CD playback?

This is why you have to take many of these magazine reviews with a grain of salt. As a professional reviewer, I would be ashamed. When 6 moons does a review, you get the meat most others leave out.

rooftop59

Again, target audience: IF I was going to actually play a silver disc (which I’m not lol), it would be through my cambridge 752BD, a universal blu ray player, because that’s all I got. BUT...I would never review gear for a publication...

BlueFox

Geez. What a bunch of whiners. A good review gets published, and the whiners start complaining.

Edit: Sorry if I offended anyone. I have calmed down, and removed the unnecessary verbiage.

GospelTruth

Guess I don't understand the hate here for the player selected in the review. Yes, it's two years old, but the specs and reviews for it's audio section were no slouch. It's not like he picked a sony entry 4k UHD player to play CDs on - but one would think that based on the comments. No it's not boutique, stand along CD player, but neither is Polk a boutique speaker company.

Audio section of the DP-UP900
Panasonic clearly designed this player with audiophiles in mind. While it can’t play SACD or DVD-Audio discs as some universal audio players do, it does support playback of a variety of hi-res audio formats (besides the usual Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio) from attached USB drives or streamed over a wired or wireless network, supported by a 192-kilohertz/32-bit DAC. These include FLAC (up to 192/24, 5.1channel), WAV (192/32, two-channel), ALAC (96/32 up to 7.1-channel or 192/32 in 5.1-channel), and DSD (2.8 megahertz up to 5.1-channel and 5.6 mHz in two-channel). The company says it used high-quality analog circuit components for that part of the audio chain.

The newer player, the DP-UB9000 even out performs the OPPO-205 audio section which many here love. Neither Panasonic player plays SACD or DVD audio. That is the drawback to these players, but they do play from a hi rez music from a USB drive if you have your music ripped or downloaded there. The reviewer could have done that if they wanted hi rez, but chose not to do it. Don't know why.

The latest Panasonic review:
https://hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/video-player/blu-ray/panasonic-dp-ub9000-ultra-hd-4k-blu-ray-player-review-part-2-audio/

The review in my mind was positive - regardless of the sources used. He sounded like I did the first time I got my 2Bs. I kept putting in CD after CD in the player and filtering through my music to see what next to put on the those speakers. Everything was like listening to music all over again. I got that sense from the review. The negatives were "size", which he said was needed for the SDA and they still went well with his decor. I do agree his "minus" remarks were pretty insignificant based on everthing else he said the Polks did so well.

Viking64

Another thing stuck out for me:

"The original SDA models dealt with the issue of interaural crosstalk in a purely acoustic way by using a second set of drivers (the Dimension Array) on each speaker. These directed a "cancellation" signal—essentially, an out-of-phase version of the sound being emitted by the opposite speaker."

Wasn't this "cancellation signal" an "out-of-phase version" of the interaural crosstalk as opposed to an "out-of-phase version" of the "the sound being emitted by the opposite speaker"?

It seems that producing an out-of-phase version of the entire signal coming from the stereo drivers (as opposed to the SDA drivers) would possibly degrade the sound in some way. I thought part of the uniqueness of the L800s was the beveled baffle. Or are the classic SDAs closer in design to the Legends than I originally perceived?

-WCNFSD in Cincinnati

VR3

I believe you are seeing what regurgitation looks like versus understanding

K_M

SDA technology uses the "Difference signal", obtained by simply going across both positive terminals to create, the difference, or what is not on both channels equally.

In other words, the opposite of a Summed signal or "Mono"

Out of phase is simply one signal inverted.

Same thing as the Early Hafler Circuit, as mentioned in the past.
Except the hafler circuit placed speakers in the rear of the room, SDA places them literally on the baffle close to the normal stereo drivers.

K_M

tonyb

I dunno man, you guys are arguing over split hairs in my view. Personally, as an audiophile, I could care less if there's 2 squirrels on a wheel in there, as long as it sounds good, who cares what technology is used.

nooshinjohn

tonyb wrote: »

I dunno man, you guys are arguing over split hairs in my view. Personally, as an audiophile, I could care less if there's 2 squirrels on a wheel in there, as long as it sounds good, who cares what technology is used.

Reported for cruelty to animals...

mhardy6647

But... are they peak squirrels or RMS squirrels?

asking for a friend.

Viking64

The first squirrel is the most important one.