New Polk Audio "Legend" Speaker Series shown at 2019 Hong Kong High End Audio Video Show

DSkip wrote: »

The pricing has always been due to eliminating multiple hands in the delivery of the product to market. Once a company gets as big as Polk, the infrastructure has to be in place to deliver which adds cost. On the flip side, the scale of manufacturing offsets some of these costs. Now people are getting the benefit of scale and no infrastructure.

This speaker line was basically never available at dealers/retailers and had VERY limited distribution channels from the start, mainly online.

That has not changed with most of the prices you’re seeing. The biggest factor seems to be that Polk needs to unload the massive financial anchor of their inventory of the LSiM line and just forget about making any kind of profit on them. Clearly Polk is contracting places like Adorama to basically be a clearance house for them.

But I’m still curious if the newer LSiM speakers are built the same as the original production runs.

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Looks like a bunch of NP electrolytics in that Focal XO.
The air core conductors in the Alpine XO are pretty cheesy. The ones in the Focal are better, but still nothin' special. The capacitor in the middle of the Alpine XO looks like perhaps a Bennic(?), and there are definitely NP electrolytics to the left and below it; cannot tell about the one on the far right.
NP electrolytics -- we're talkin' 50 cent capacitors (retail).
So... I must be missin' something?

Remember, its all relative. This is car audio. In the tough car audio environment, the adjustment ability of these passive crossovers is more rare than common. Its the sum of all parts as both of these are good performing 3-way speakers systems. Both are good looking and could be featured in show systems. The Focal is crazy expensive....and I don't know the details of the electrolytics, but there looks to be some poly in there as well.

Anyway, the point was made that the Elac had a better crossover. Then I indicated that may be true but that does not take away from the fact that Polk does a good job with their crossovers. The older car audio SR line and the home audio LSiM line both measure pretty well. Again its the sum of all parts.

I purposely compared the above well performing car audio systems to the Polk SR crossover as it holds its own. Polk used 1% resistors and 1% Mylar caps, Air core inductors, Zobel network, tweeter protection, 4 tweeter levels via a low noise jumper, all on a cast aluminum chassis. Again....Look at the white paper measurements:

The LSiM is much of the same when you look at the overall measurements of the line.

WLDock wrote: »

Take price, sound preference, and comparison to other speakers out of the equation. The scientist over at Polk have done a good job designing speakers and crossovers using the latest tools available. I took notice years ago with the SRS then the later the car audio SR6500 series speakers. Back then they were one of the few that offerd a white paper showing the science behind what they were offering. Their SR line could produce a pretty good response in the car which is not easy to do out of the box and takes some engineering and good components. It looks like the same engineering was used in the LSiM line.

SR6500 White Paper
http://www.specsserver.com/CACHE/FILE23773.PDF



Not the best, not the worst, but good design and crossover for the SR series, LSiM series, etc. Price to performance is up to the buyer to decide.

When we were at the old HQ for a Polkfest in, 2005 I think it was?

Anyhoo, the LCiRTS series was just getting released and they hooked up the show demo LCiRTS105's for us in the demo room at the HQ. While everyone was listening, myself and MacLeod were staring in the little windows of the speakers mounted in the wall.

Inside that little window was the crossover guts.

http://global.polkaudio.com/en/Media/POLK/Product Catalogs/RTS Catalog-English.pdf

Those guts had a little plate that said SR Series on it.

We asked the sales guy who's name escapes me right now if what we were seeing was true. He confirmed it and said that while the SR Series crossovers were not ideal nor the intended production equivalent, they provided the sound stage and crossover curves and points they were looking for to showcase the imaging that the original LSi in-wall speakers were capable of. Mainly because everyone thought that the ring radiator tweeters were going to be too directional and easy to localize.

The biggest difference between the SR Series and the LCiRTS crossovers were the SR Series used a 22mm (about 7/8ths inch) ring radiator tweeter vs the LCiRTS and LSi series home speakers 1" ring radiator tweeter. This caused the SR Series crossover to be a bit shouty on the larger 1" tweeters as it was truncating the lower range of the larger tweeter and was not damping the higher end peaks. Mainly because they occurred at different points on the response curve than the 22mm tweeter in the car component SR Series.

They used the SR Series crossover because the LCiRTS/LSi crossovers were not ready in time for show time.

The SR Series was, hands down, one of the best component systems ever put out on the car audio market. You don't see them come up used very often and when they do, people still want $400-$500 for them. They were $600-$700 new. You needed to upgrade to stuff like Focal Utopia to be able to at least match if not beat the performance from the SR Series. Especially when matched with one of the SR Series subs.

^^^^^ Doc; Thank you for that khorn link; I'll have to go through it when I have a bit more time to digest it all

nothing is gonna sound good that way.

"As an aside, the pic of the Lsim woofer (left) and the Elac woofer (right)"

No, actually -- I was 'going to' run them that way, but they'd be too far apart, I think, so I went with the "Cardas" golden ratio positioning (more or less, sort of).
http://www.cardas.com/room_setup_main.php

I do get tempted, but I'd have to move so much junk (including the pair of Altec Santiagos that actually are in the corners) that that notion has always died aborning.

Looks like these were the L600 (tower) and L100 (small bookshelf) and L200 (large bookshelf). This potentially leaves a couple other spots in the lineup. Maybe there will be a larger "SDA-style" tower as the top model in the line.

The prices have not been announced.

Thanks guys.

Regardless of how it looks, if it takes the L series to another level I am in.

Just something about Polk’s. I may not be a fan of the individual components but I am a fan of how it fits together.

Cheers.

Exactly ....
So sad ...Polk , once an icon , reduced to big box store , mid fi , good enough, speakers ....
Going for the mass market, big box store non-audiophile market ...
Trading on the time honored POLK name ....
Far cry from the 70’s - 80’s ...

I wanna see a modern day iteration of the SDA’s with high end crossovers and components like ribbon tweets and SEAS woofers , for example - like the “big boys” use ....

Something to be said for vintage quality ....

And .... I’m obviously not a audio snob .... look at my sig tag 😃

Bk

I doubt if that will happen. High-end speakers are a specialty market, not a mass market. I think at this point the owners of Polk are only interested in the mass market; that is “Good enough”. [/quote]

Ah

And exactly how many here, would buy high end, modern SDA speakers? Much of the same was stated in regards to LSIM at only $4,000 and look how that turned out.