Post your Vintage Polk Speaker Magazine Reviews Here

Gardenstater

I'll start it off with one I just found, which is the Polk SDA-2, High Fidelity, Jun 1984, p. 30:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-High-Fidelity/80s/High-Fidelity-1984-06.pdf

mhardy6647

Well...

This 'review' was widely reproduced in early Polk ads and PR materials. This was taken from Audio July 1977.



https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/80s/Audio-1982-07.pdf
https://forum.polkaudio.com/discussion/180156/a-project-for-2018-compendium-of-polk-audio-ads-etc/p1

Gardenstater

I was having trouble reading that one, maybe this is clearer from Audio magazine:

Gardenstater

Polk Mini-Monitor, Stereo Review, Aug 1979

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Audio/Archive-Stereo-Review-IDX/IDX/70s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1979-08-OCR-Page-0065.pdf#search="polk"

mhardy6647

That minispeaker shoot out article from SR is well worthy of attention if one is interested in such things. It is surprisingly candid (for a massmarket audio magazine review) in some observations made about the little loudspeakers assessed for it.

Gardenstater

Polk Model 9, Audio, May 1975, p. 36:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/70s/Audio-1975-05.pdf

Gardenstater

@mhardy6647 I think you're a good person to ask.......When I bought my Polk 7Bs back in 1979, I had read a glowing review in one of the magazines recently and I can't for the life of me remember which one it was. Haven't been able to find it so far in those online archives of Stereo Review, High Fidelity, and Audio. I think there was another one called Sterophile? I know that I had a subscription to whatever it was but didn't keep a copy of it. Do you or does anybody else have any idea which mag it was? Thanks.

mhardy6647

I have no recollection of any Monitor 7 reviews from that time frame. Stereophile is still alive & kicking and has a fairly comprehensive (although not exhaustively so) website and archive of articles.

https://www.stereophile.com/

A quick search did turn up this interesting little tidbit (shown here completely out of context).

Fig.7: Deviation 3.7–6.01: Acoustic Energy AE2 (black); Amrita AMRIT-Minimonitor (red); JMLab Micron (sample 1) (green); Acoustat Spectra 11 (yellow); SOTA Panorama (sample 1) (blue); Dahlquist DQ12 (sample 1) (pink); Focal Aria (sample 1) (cyan); RSL Speedscreen II (gray); DANA Audio Model 1 (dark red); Apogee Stage (dark green); Monitor Audio Monitor 7 (dark yellow); Celestion 3000 (dark blue); Polk RTA 11t (dark pink); Cambridge Ambiance (dark cyan); Vieta Pro-5 (sample 1) (dark gray).

[emphasis added]

Fig.7: This final group is to a large extent the rogues' gallery when it come to frequency response. It is a rare speaker as unflat as the majority of these that gains anything but a very qualified recommendation from Stereophile's reviewers unless it is extremely inexpensive. The major exception is the Apogee Stage, which ends up here due to its sloping response across the band resulting in a high standard deviation. As DO's review pointed out, however, the smoothness of its response trend leads to a very natural, seamless midrange quality which can easily become addictive. Note also the Celestion 3000, which has a seamlessly flat midband typical of speakers in the higher groups. It ends up in this group, however, because of its early HF rolloff, which is accentuated by a peaky mid-treble. But in general, if you design a loudspeaker with these kinds of frequency-response aberrations, the worst thing you can do is submit it to Stereophile for review. (To be fair to Polk and Cambridge SoundWorks, we went out and bought our review samples.)

context: https://www.stereophile.com/content/ja-loudspeaker-measurements-page-3

context:

Gardenstater

Thanks! It's really starting to frustrate me to no end. I wish I had kept that magazine. As far as *I* know there were the 4 magazines: Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, and Stereophile. I can't seem to find access to Stereophile back issues.

Gardenstater

Polk RTA-12B, Stereo Review, Jan 1982, p. 32:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1982-01.pdf

mhardy6647

No access to back issues per se, but they do have many old articles on line. I didn't find any Polk "Monitor Series" reviews, though.
There were/are a few other semi mass-market hifi magazines, though. Listener, The Absolute Sound and Positive Feedback (off the top of my head) in the US, and What Hifi? in the UK, e.g. I may be forgetting (or suppressing the memory of!) some, too.

Gardenstater

The Absolute Sound....yes! That may have been it. But it was a very complementary review and I haven't read a single Polk advertisement that referred to it.....hmm. I wonder if it could've been in Musician magazine, although I'm certain I did not have a sub to that.......

Gardenstater

Polk SDA-1, Stereo Review, Dec 1982, p. 32:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1982-12.pdf







The picture in the review is so bad, so here's an ad in the same edition:

Gardenstater

Polk SDA-CRS, Stereo Review, Nov. 1984, p. 38

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1984-11.pdf

Gardenstater

Polk SDA-SRS, Stereo Review, Nov. 1985, p. 86:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1985-11.pdf

Gardenstater

Polk SDA-SRS 2.3, Stereo Review, Nov. 1988, p. 43:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1988-11.pdf

Gardenstater

Polk RM-3000 Reference Monitor System, Stereo Review, Feb 1990, p. 58:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/90s/Stereo-Review-1990-02.pdf

Gardenstater

Polk SDA-2A, Stereo Review, Dec. 1986, p. 52:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1986-12.pdf

Gardenstater

Polk Model 10, Stereo Review Jan 1980

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/80s/HiFi-Stereo-Review-1980-01.pdf

Gardenstater

RTA 15TL, Stereo Review Dec. 1990, p. 68:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-HiFI-Stereo/90s/Stereo-Review-1990-12.pdf

bcwsrt

Timely. Lol

mhardy6647

Stereo Review did review a slew of Polk's products. Lots of lab coat guy ads in SR in those days, too. Coincidence?