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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 23, 2021 21:10:21 GMT -5
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F1nut
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Posts: 1,027
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Post by F1nut on Mar 23, 2021 21:25:37 GMT -5
I like the cabinet design better than the Legend, which have that strange bottom. I really like the look of walnut version.
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F1nut
Member
Posts: 1,027
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Post by F1nut on Mar 23, 2021 21:26:58 GMT -5
Forgot to mention, bad timing on Polk's part releasing these while the forum is down.
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F1nut
Member
Posts: 1,027
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Post by F1nut on Mar 23, 2021 21:40:24 GMT -5
The R200, not exactly impressive specs.
frequency response: 51-38,000 Hz nominal impedance: 4 ohms sensitivity: 86 dB recommended amplifier power: 70 watts high-current amplification from a quality power amp or integrated amp is recommended for best performance
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vr3
Member
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Post by vr3 on Mar 24, 2021 0:14:02 GMT -5
The way this reads, the drivers are identical to what is used in the legend series?
Now I completely understand there can be other differences, but for joe blow consumer, what an odd choice. Will be a hard up sale to get the same drivers in arguably uglier enclosure at a much higher price and supposedly higher performance in the legend series?
The walnut enclosures are great looking though, I am assuming vinyl but I didn't read that it was vinyl or veneer?
Looks like a great value though from polk, just makes the legend series odd to me
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F1nut
Member
Posts: 1,027
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Post by F1nut on Mar 24, 2021 1:27:55 GMT -5
The answer to the walnut version.
"Featuring nine models available in matte black, matte white, and walnut woodgrain finish"
Definitely vinyl.
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vr3
Member
Posts: 77
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Post by vr3 on Mar 24, 2021 1:31:06 GMT -5
The answer to the walnut version. "Featuring nine models available in matte black, matte white, and walnut woodgrain finish" Definitely vinyl. Vinyl can look good, I'm assuming that means the black and white are also vinyl. I will say the original lsi line looked much better painted than vinyl. The r700 is intriguing, first Polk in a long time to use passive 8 inch woofers.
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Post by xschop on Mar 24, 2021 4:53:42 GMT -5
Vinyl? First mod would be some black paint. Flat-black maybe.
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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 24, 2021 6:18:18 GMT -5
In fairness, the original Polk monitors had that lovely Contact Paper vinyl finish precisely to save money. The focus was on performance per dollar. I am not sure that strategy will work any more, as the current world seems more focused on appearance than performance as a function of price (at least in many consumer sectors). Of course, any company that designed products based on my opinions wouldn't make it through one fiscal year!
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Post by pitdogg2 on Mar 24, 2021 6:55:47 GMT -5
How does passive radiators work with a port? Am I missing something here?
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vr3
Member
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Post by vr3 on Mar 24, 2021 7:25:26 GMT -5
How does passive radiators work with a port? Am I missing something here? Which one has a passive radiator
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Post by jstas on Mar 24, 2021 7:54:56 GMT -5
*yawn*
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Post by pitdogg2 on Mar 24, 2021 8:23:08 GMT -5
The r700 is intriguing, first Polk in a long time to use passive 8 inch woofers. Not awake yet when I read that. I went to passive radiator not thinking the last few series were internal powered drivers... none of the legend line is powered woofers are they? the L800 10" are passive. carry on.
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Post by xschop on Mar 24, 2021 8:50:16 GMT -5
In fairness, the original Polk monitors had that lovely Contact Paper vinyl finish precisely to save money. The focus was on performance per dollar. I am not sure that strategy will work any more, as the current world seems more focused on appearance than performance as a function of price (at least in many consumer sectors). Of course, any company that designed products based on my opinions wouldn't make it through one fiscal year! Not much quality to go around these days. You're better off improving/perfecting what you've got.
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tonyb
Guns
The 5 Star General
Posts: 2,662
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Post by tonyb on Mar 24, 2021 9:25:23 GMT -5
I gotta say, kinda uninspiring. The usual monkey coffin styling does nothing for me and why no cherry. Is it me or does every line look the same with the only difference being the drivers, and even then not always.
Kinda seems like they are introducing lines that compete with each other like the Legend series. Who would shell out the coin for the Legends when this line has the same drivers and is cheaper ? Not me. I dunno, could be just me but Polk is awash in mediocrity with little that sets it above the abundant competition.
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Post by jstas on Mar 24, 2021 10:52:34 GMT -5
In fairness, the original Polk monitors had that lovely Contact Paper vinyl finish precisely to save money. The focus was on performance per dollar. I am not sure that strategy will work any more, as the current world seems more focused on appearance than performance as a function of price (at least in many consumer sectors). Of course, any company that designed products based on my opinions wouldn't make it through one fiscal year! Not much quality to go around these days. You're better off improving/perfecting what you've got. Well, the contact paper thing was done to save money because solid wood isn't cheap and kinda counter-productive to speaker design due to resonances. Works great for instruments that you want to resonate but not for speaker enclosures that you want to be sonically dead. But they were also put together in the 70's where high quality wood veneers were not cheap or readily available in large quantities. So if you wanted to use them you were stuck with what was available from a manufacturer that was already secured to a substrate. So if you wanted black walnut in an oiled finish on plywood, it may not have been available and you were stuck with a particle board substrate. So instead of using what your design specs didn't call for and changing the entire end product because you wanted MDF or plywood as a backing, you go with an MDF with a vinyl veneer. It's not going to last as long as wood but it will get you the look you want and you don't have to order a custom run of material specific for your design, which drives up costs. Now, though, veneers are much better and consistent than they used to be and they can get thinner veneers out of a tree than they could 40 years ago. So better material and more material from a single log, prices go down, quality goes up. So the market has greatly expanded to the point where you don't have to go to a specialty lumber yard just to order what you need and wait for it. Common veneers like cherry, maple and oak are readily available at Home Depot. You can order a number of other ones that get to you in a day or two as well. So the availability has brought costs way down and if all you're making is a standard box without any complex curves, unless you're using a black vinyl to get your finish, people are seeing, say, a cheap set of Sonys at Walmart's "high end" with a real wood "cherry" veneer for about $300 a pair but Polk Audio is selling a $4,000 a pair speakers with vinyl with a picture of wood on it? Yeah, that's a bad look. Even if the Sony speakers "cherry" veneer is some southeast Asian rain forest tree that kinda looks like cherry and they stain it to look like American Cherry when it's really just Indonesian Cheapfauxcherry. It's still real wood and looks and feels like it and it's barely more expensive than vinyl. Besides, in some cases, especially with the common veneers like cherry or oak, you can get them cheaper than what a vinyl would cost and if you don't want a typical cherry finish, the rainbow of stains and tinted finishes that are available now means you can get almost any look you want out of a real wood veneer for pennies compared to 40 years ago. You can even see it if you look at some of the online lumber suppliers. Ebony is a perfect example. Fake Ebony is usually something like rock maple or maybe a African Mahogany (not real mahogany), stained black, depends on the Ebony grain pattern they want to duplicate and it'll be like $50 for 30 square feet. But the only way the average person is going to know the difference between that and real Ebony is put them right next to each other. But 30 square feet of ebony would be like $150 for a straight grain but a burl or birdseye grain pattern veneer would be over $300 for 30 square feet. Those prices aren't real but you get the gist. Polk has always cut corners to cheap out on finishes. Lets them focus on the insides more. That's fine by me but when you get someone with an elitist or snobbish attitude who sees, like, Wilson Watt Puppies and the fine furniture level of finish quality and compare them to Polk Legend 800s, the Polks may be the better speaker but because they look and feel "cheap" or inexpensive, they are going to be looked down on and passed over in favor of the speaker that under-performs for it's price point. All because it's more pleasing to look at with better aesthetics because it looks like it should cost $45K a pair. Even if it gets it's ass kicked by a $4K a pair speaker that looks like a $400 a pair speaker. I mean, this is how Bang and Olufsen has made their living from the start. Junk speakers that are designed to fit the Ikea decor at an insane price point and they sell them like mad because people think that stretching some tweed fabric over a stainless steel ring and covering a basic 2-way design is worth 4-5 figure prices when they could do the exact same for about $400 in parts and materials, all from Home Depot and Parts Express. But they LOOK expensive and only those who know understand what Bang and Olufsen really is. But that demographic is puny and they don't care about it because the people who want to look and feel wealthy and opulent will pay exorbitant amounts of money for Bang and Olufsen while giggling at "Polk Audio". Heh, heh, he said "polk"! So you're stuck with trade-offs if price point is the concern. Pretty and under-performing? You have a wide market, some with deep pockets. Ugly and outstanding performance? You have a narrower market but that market is willing overlook lackluster finishing at a higher price point. You're alienating a good portion of your potential market by doing that but then you can just release a cheap line of surround bars and get all those people back. For the Reserve series, I get it. It's the Legend series' RTi counterpart. It's 70-80% of the Legend series performance for 30% of the Legend series prices. It's going to look a bit mundane.
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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 24, 2021 14:51:10 GMT -5
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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 24, 2021 14:52:47 GMT -5
Crutchfield was disarmingly upfront in their own write-up about the kind of load that the R200 presents, too:
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Post by JayCee on Mar 24, 2021 16:36:30 GMT -5
Reserve: Legend:
Legend Series for reference/comparison:
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Post by JayCee on Mar 25, 2021 0:38:59 GMT -5
"Polk Audio releases Reserve Series speakers March 25, 2021 Written by The Editor
IF you’re a fan of Polk Audio speakers, here’s something new from the company – the Reserve Series, aimed at hi-fi and home theatre enthusiasts looking for butt-kicking performance on a modest budget.
Polk tells us the the Reserve Series features “our transducer array that we released with the Legend series… a new Hi-Res Pinnacle tweeter and new Turbine Cone, combing to give a flagship sound. Polk Reserve will feature two new technologies – Power Port 2.0 and X-Port. All pieces combined deliver an amazing sound at the fraction of the price versus competitors.”
The line-up comprises two bookshelf models (R100, R200), two centre-channel units (R300 and the slim R350), three towers (R500, R600, R700) and the R900 “height module” (Atmos, essentially).
“The Reserve Series uses the same custom-made transducers originally developed for Polk’s award-winning Legend Series loudspeakers,” says Polk Audio president Frank Sterns.
“Featuring the proprietary Pinnacle Tweeter, Turbine Cone midrange and Polk’s latest bass-management and resonance control technologies – PowerPort and X-Port – the Reserve Series delivers Polk Audio’s signature quality sound at an approachable price,” Sterns adds.
We’re told that Polk Audio engineers created “rigid, internally braced cabinets while leveraging driver and port technologies from the Legend Series speakers to achieve breathtaking levels of balance and realism.”
The Pinnacle Ring Radiator tweeter features a finely-tuned waveguide to dramatically improve the dispersion of high frequency energy, ensuring a broad sweet spot, while the critically damped rear-chamber helps defeat unwanted resonances. Turbine Cone midrange driver combines Polk’s proprietary foam core driver design with molded Turbine geometry, which dramatically increases stiffness and damping without adding mass.
X-Port Technology, making its debut here, uses a set of closed-pipe absorbers precisely tuned to eliminate unwanted cabinet and port resonances. The Power Port 2.0 design is a Polk-patented loudspeaker port application that enables bass frequencies to extend more deeply and at higher output levels than traditional ported speakers.
The Reserve Series is now available in black, with white and brown options planned for June."
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tonyb
Guns
The 5 Star General
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Post by tonyb on Mar 25, 2021 10:52:24 GMT -5
Never been a fan of any of the Polk speakers with that power port design.
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skrol
New Member
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Post by skrol on Mar 25, 2021 13:23:38 GMT -5
They do look pretty in the walnut
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drumminman
New Member
Where are the other forum topics: For Sale, vintage speakers, etc.?
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Post by drumminman on Mar 26, 2021 8:33:00 GMT -5
Not sure what this says about Polk: either the Legend series is overpriced, or the Reserve series is underpriced. Will be interesting to read reviews of the performance of these along with comparisons to the somewhat analagous Legend models.
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skrol
New Member
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Post by skrol on Mar 26, 2021 14:16:44 GMT -5
I was thinking about turning away from modern day Polks because there was such disparity between the ones I could afford and the Legend series but the Reserve series has my attention.
I wonder if they can best my LSi15?
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Post by mantis on Mar 26, 2021 15:33:11 GMT -5
They are interesting either way. I'd like to hear and see them. They seem nicely priced. Anyone get to hear a pair yet?
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vmaxer
Administrator
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Post by vmaxer on Mar 26, 2021 15:35:17 GMT -5
They are interesting either way. I'd like to hear and see them. They seem nicely priced. Anyone get to hear a pair yet? Welcome
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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 26, 2021 18:32:59 GMT -5
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F1nut
Member
Posts: 1,027
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Post by F1nut on Mar 26, 2021 18:37:23 GMT -5
They can't help but shoot themselves in the foot.
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Post by mhardy6647 on Mar 26, 2021 18:53:22 GMT -5
They (or their contractors) don't seem to be too good with website design. On the other hand, it's a cute "404" graphic.
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Post by pitdogg2 on Mar 26, 2021 19:14:37 GMT -5
It's sad actually.🥺
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