I like that you don't oversell the impact of the no-res. That's honest salesmanship. I tried your no res on Klipsch Forte IIs and I definitely noticed a difference and was glad I did it. Whether it's a good "value" is subjective, of course, but if you like your speakers already I think it makes sense in most cases depending on the build quality. It was also just fun to see what difference it made as I was skeptical that it would make any noticeable improvement.
I think you make a good point about already liking your speakers. Awhile back I put $400 worth of Iso-Pucks under some speakers. The improvement was noticeable so I just couldn't return them. But I already liked the speakers..I wasn't trying to fix them in some sort of way. Was it a good value? I don't know..but I liked the results.
nice! i have the r200 anniversary addition with the nice crossover. i actually ended up upgrading the crossover even further by replacing all resistors with same value jantzen superes aswell as upgrading all the caps on the woofer side with jantzen cross cap aswell as claritycap pur on the tweeter. the inductors in the ae version are already all air core so i didnt bother with that. good to know they are decent in your opinion. all in i have $700 in them so im rather pleased.
I bought a pair of these couple years ago for under $600 new. Not bad. They are worthy of upgrading/modding imo. I put oversized iso-pucks under them which helped a bit. I still have the larger R700..they have some similar issues. I took a look at the R700 cross overs...whole lot of parts involved. Expensive upgrade. If you can set the R700's up right (have the space) they are good for under $2k mainstream speakers. I enjoy them but already looking for something different. I like trying different speakers
I’m still loving my Encores Danny! Best bang for your buck. My “best value” system is Outlaw Audio R2160 mkll, Wiim pro and Geshelli Lab Jnog2 DAC. Great sound!!!
Just get a pair he praises that is convenient for you. Like maybe the 3-way Polk. I personally think the elac ub5 are decent, especially with JBL studio 580. Or you can get the cheapaudioguy's cheap $450 system (Sony and Wiim). Or pay shipping one time and try Danny's bookshelf.
My friend firstly awesome videos and capabilities you have. I wanted to ask have you ever done radio shack genexxa pro lx5. In the uk the guys were called tandy. If not i will consider contacting you to see what can be done.
I've always suspected that production drivers vary significantly from what manufacturers used to design the speaker. The driver may have been designed with the right amount of damping to eliminate the 1k peak, but during production something changed, maybe some machine in part of the cone making process had a part shift, or maybe the temperature in the factory changed, or a chemical was old or mixed slightly differently.
Would this upgrade benefit the L100 speakers at all, or is it a totally different animal? If not, will you be offering an upgrade kit for the L100's? I have had them for a few months and absolutely have fallen in love with their sound. However like any good audiophile, things can always be better 😮. I did remove the drivers and lined the cabinet with 10mm closed cell foam and some wool batting. Tight quarters to say the least but the cabinet for the L100's is built like a tank and the lining has improved bass response and impact more than i expected. I run an 8 inch sub with dsp to fill in the lows and i swear out of the MANY MANY bookshelf/stand speakers ive owned throughout the years, the L100's have provided me with such enjoyment. Im talking Kef, Elac, Monitor Audio, Klipsch, Q Acoustics, even my beloved Heco Celan Revolution 3's!! I loved those speakers. And i can honestly say the Legend 100 is just better. Granted I am pushing 185 watts of B&K Reference quality into them with the absolutely amazing Nad M51 Dac. God I love that thing. I think it could make a couple of coffee cans with a string sound good. Thats enough rambling. Love your work!!
We generally don't look at competitor's products. (Parts-express, Madisound, CSS, etc.) And on the rare occasion we do, we don't publish that information. It's for us and the customer who sent the speaker to us.
I know you mostly focus on electronics in your upgrades, but with these woofers in steel baskets and a ringing at ~1,100 hz, would it make sense to try some dynamat type material on the woofer baskets, before attacking the xover? This seemed to provide an audible (and visible on the waterfall plot) improvement on my Klipsch Cornwall IIIs.
@@dannyrichie9743 I am not saying there aren't other problems. I am just suggesting you pointed out a potential issue, the steel basket, but didn't further investigate whether it was contributing to the problem. Lowering the Xover frequency and taming the peak obviously reduced the stored energy. All I was asking is, "Would damping the basket provide an audible benefit?" I do not know the answer to the question, but it might be interesting to find out.
I just looked at ebay these go for $800-1000 with shipping. This $500 from what i am seeing in the market to upgrade a pair of speakers is inline with other vendors. This speaker will now compare to $2000-2500 factory speakers in my opinion.
$2000-$2500 doesn't denote performance nor quality so I don't think that makes any sense unless you are only looking at cost. What if I find a $2000 that sounds like crap? Point made.
@@Davidvariance I agree with your point, most speakers are built to a price point. We find more that sound worse and will not compare. Danny is right about the 5x cost to get the speaker to market. Even when Bose was big I could tell junk, twice the cost of mine. I met people and thought they were as great as buying sliced bread, better than my $2000 system, Klipsch and Denon. Why did we choose this hobby? It's just like paying $400-500 for a softball bat and your 14 years old daughter cracks it in the first game yet it was in the top 5 bats. Hard to get quality anything these days.
Regarding the presence of steel along the electrical path, does a single piece of steel spoil the circuit, or is signal degradation cumulative? In other words, does the amount of steel present directly correlate with the level of signal degradation?
@@dannyrichie9743True. The conductivity and resistivity of steel is at least three times worse than copper, plus the electromagnetic effects of steel make it a no-no.
I have the SDA-2 which uses a connecting wire. There's a guy with a website that does the upgrades to the crossovers. Many optional levels of parts. But I'm unsure if there is alteration of the circuit.
hello from Argentina, everything is expensive here, if I gonna to buy a upgrade kit what speaker worth it se200 vs r200 (r200 x2 the price of the se20). Please help me. Thanks.
Hi have you come across Quad Z3 floor-standers? I recently bought a pair but I’m really struggling to enjoy them the mid-bass doesn’t sound right to me
@@ChicagoRob2 Yes, but look inside. The crossovers are all made in China using very inexpensive parts. The wire is PVC coated and they use push on connectors made of Tin. I think there may be steel parts in the binding posts. They even use sand caste resistors. There is a LOT of room for improvement.
Have you tested the polk audio R700 yet? I was thinking about buying a set they are $2200. What towers would you recommend in that price range? They will be used primary for music but also as a home theater system and pushed by a Onkyo TX-rz50.
Do a search and you'll find an on-line retailer (not sure if I should mention them here) that has the Legend L600's, factory refurbished, for $2K. I have purchased many pieces from them over the years, and all look factory-new and I haven't had an issue yet. They also have a Polk 2-year factory warranty. And... Danny reviewed them and thought they were pretty decent, stock.
@@stevenbullock9276Thanks I'll research that speaker and see what the test and reviews say. I did notice that it only has a 7 inch woffer though and was thinking that a 8 inch woofer would be a lot better for rock music?
No need, they have major design flaws that can not be addressed with a new xover. The no rez does help them a ton. You are better off ordering a kit or complete set.
had a pair of the previous model, RB35, sounded weird. loud treble + shouting from the 8" metal woofer because of a way to high crossover. sold them after a few weeks.
Those bumps on the midwoofer cone are a put off to me. Wharfedale also does it. Do you ever test the internal binding posts on the tweeter and mid/woofer for ferrous material. If they are, what to do about it?
They are almost always copper. They terminate a copper thread going from the voicecoil to the termination, usually glued or threaded to the spider on nicer drivers. No need to change material Also the bumps on the cone are the retain rigidity of the structure. Odd driver design for sure though. Probably just as much an aesthetic choice by polk
@@Luke-qs2cg I was curious and tested some old Wharfedale Diamond III's I had opened for an upgrade. Both the tweeter and mid woofer had ferrous posts.
Danny don’t do reviews. He does upgrades on speakers that people send him and then he makes a YT video. If you got these Monitors, send them to Texas. Look at his other upgrades before you post anything.
@@rikardekvall3433 I live thousands of miles away so that ain't happening. Hopefully someone who lives in the US can send him some. Oh and he does review the speakers. Measuring them, taking them apart and analysing the crossover components is absolutely reviewing them.
That was the note from the customer with his contact information. We always tape customer contact information on the speaker. Usually we can stick it on the back side.
The verticle off axisis is certainly an improvement, but the rest to me seems personal preference. The Polks are designed to have a certain sound that makes them a bit easier to listen to (I have these, and its true, they are quite pleasant and easy to listen to), and that appealing character will be reduced with these changes, unfortunately (IMO, as others make prefer that). Powered monitors are probably better for people who like a flatter sound signature or to control the speaker more.
Not really. A smoother response curve is just a small part of this upgrade. The major improvements in this case are in clarity, detail levels, a more natural vocal region, less smearing, better imaging, a deeper sound stage, a more layered sound stage, etc.
Hmm, really. Half of those things you mention are just the response curve. Sure, you'll get slightly better sound maybe with better quality parts, but how much is audible to most people is debateable. And like I said, you then lose the point of the speaker. People should really consider getting a much better (and probably cheaper) flat result by buying powered monitors if that is what they are seeking.
@@wolfblaide No, the response was pretty flat to begin with. It just had a stored energy issue that is now gone. The sound quality isn't slightly better with the high end parts. It is considerably better. Also, the typical powered speakers in these price ranges are really bottlenecked by the cheap electronics. The powered monitors are not even close to these in performance when used with good gear.
@dannyrichie9743 do you have them? They certainly aren't what I'd call flat. And the measurements show that also. The Polks are great for the price, but I've had monitors that were a fair bit better for around the same. Some monitor brands put lot better electronics in at this range, it will depend on the brand and model.
@@wolfblaide They are far from perfect. That is why they were sent in for an upgrade. They aren't exactly in the same league as any of our DIY kits, but after the upgrade, they are not bad.
@@dannyrichie9743 Just took my pair into the shop for a tuning up, but the tech is having trouble getting the caps etc. Do you guys have any of those parts for this speaker?
Be extremely careful buying used LSIM speakers. The tweeters were known for burning out, and Polk does not make replacements. Forums are full of guys asking for replacements and modding cabinets to install aftermarket units. I sold my 703s a couple years ago when I found this out. Kept my 704, but I only use it in my bedroom at extremely low listening levels so I’m really not concerned it’ll fail.
Polk should have stuck with their old passive radiator designs, and improved the development of those, instead of the backwards step to ported design. Polk has also historically been cheap about the design components ultimately used in volume manufacturing. I don't think that was their intention in the 70's, but it went that route after too many consumers were unwilling or unable to pay the high prices required for carefully crafted speaker designs.
Quick question, I’ve noticed in a lot of your crossover designs that the horizontal off axis response loses more midrange energy than the original, causing a humped up response at 3khz at the widest dispersion. It’s odd to me because that area of the FR should be well past the crossover point, and I would expect the tweeter radiation pattern to narrow somewhat linearly from bottom to top of the treble region, and then fall off a cliff above 10khz at 45deg and beyond. Can the crossover components in the tweeter circuit affect radiation pattern, or is it more of woofer beaming issue. Thanks.
As the tweeter plays lower the output levels exceed the plane of the front baffle and begin to reflect off of the baffle. So they pick up some surface reflections from the baffle.
@@dannyrichie9743 Understood, but I’m still not understanding so why is there less energy in the crossover region at your widest data point. I’d expect that vertically but not horizontally. Especially when the original has a more linear roll off at wider listening angles.
@@MechAdvThe woofer's pattern is narrowing at the top end of its range in the new crossover. You can see the same narrowing (roughly) in the before horizontal response in the 1-2kHz range. The farthest off axis measurement is down maybe 4dB from on-axis in both cases. But in the original crossover the system more or less keeps a constant beam width from 1.5kHz up to ~7kHz. It's possible the original designer prioritized the evenness of the horizontal beam width over other factors and pushed the crossover up until the beam width of the tweeter more or less matched the woofer over that wider frequency range. The new crossover is going to emphasize the 2.5-4kHz range a bit more due to exciting the reverberant field of a room a bit more in that range. Personally I'm not sure I would make that decision as I like less output in that range.
@@JohnSheerin I tend to be quite sensitive to the 3-4Khz region, and will typically EQ it down if a speaker does not have a downward sloping in room response. I also tend to do stuff around the house while I’m listening to music, and I’m not always seated in the sweet spot when we’re watching movies and shows. I was just trying to figure out is this behavior that I’ve seen in a few of these crossover designs by Danny was specifically a trade-off that he was making to accomplish a more flat on axis response.
at 8:42 in video, when comparing before and after frequency response, why aren’t the two graphs setup identical. why is one showing from 70-90 and the other 75-100? Wouldn’t it look less suspicious if they were identical?
@@alexw890anyone who works for adults won't put up with that ametuer shit, I give presentations to VP's and you don't fk around with changing graphs in a comparison.
@@dannyrichie9743 why have red stop signs then, anyone can see a blue stop sign. If you're going to do graphs there is a correct way to show it, or do it like a 5th grader.
Everyone said that the legend series was to expensive that polkaudio was catering to people with money. So Polk gave them what they wanted and now they are complaining about the quality.
You don't need to apply a formula to work it out... On the front of any speaker baffle you have four edges. just make sure that the centre of the drivers is not equidistant to any of the four edges. So top edge, both side edges and the the bottom edges are all different lengths from the centre of the driver.
@@alexw890not so much an issue with modern speakers with a narrow front baffle, but it never hurts to do it. There is no downside to offsetting the drivers other than cosmetic considerations.
The disapointing thing is good isn't hard or expensive to acheive. They either have absolutely 0 cares, or they are deliberately keeping our expectations low.
We had one of those sent in. It measured rough and had a bad resonance issue in the woofers response. The problem was that it was really tough to get the drivers out and we didn't think that the average customer would be able to remove the drivers.
@@jackykimes nope, but correcting phase issues and better crossover parts will HELP this speaker. Tried it myself on vintage speakers and they came to life, again, but better. Even though my hearing is from a 59 year old guy.
But the end results will yield a speaker with sound quality worth quite a bit more than the $1000.00 spent. And even if one were to take that $1000.00 for the speakers and the upgrade kit, and buy a set of, lets say, $1500.00 - $2000.00 speakers, you will still get a speaker with crappy crossover parts, that will still lack the detail, better imaging and soundstage, that this upgrade will get you. So, there will still be more compromise with a more expensive speaker, that there will be with these speakers upgraded.
@@pandstarand this is what a lot of people don't get. They get sucked in by a slick salesman peddling a particular brand, or justifying the cost of these more expensive speakers that we have, but seldom does anyone look past the lipstick on the pig. I have owned several sets of speakers costing 5 figures, and inside them you expect to see something wonderful in terms of a crossover and box design, but it seems the majority of the money is spent on the outside of the box to justify the high price, while mediocre parts are used inside. That is why over a decade ago I went DIY to get real value for money. I will never produce anything that looks like 5 figure looks, but I can produce something that has 6 figure sound. In fact the drivers I am using are featured in several 6 figure speakers.
I would also suggest after getting rid of those speakers buy one (a pair) of GR's speaker kits. When my small shop is finished, (if a shop is ever finished), that is what I plan to do. I won't even consider any others, be it kit or ready made. I decided that before building a shop at home. What was I thinking...
In terms of notch filters, why are companies designing speakers that produce unwanted peaks? And releasing them with filters on to mask the problem? Seems ludicrous. Your services are different, customers are asking for you to increase the accuracy and balanced response, but the manufacturers?!
Danné, I explained to you what you should see when you look across a 20 mile wide lake and what is "missing" It's an optical phenomenon and not a "physical one" I've been looking into this for 9 years so I know what we know about this very complex deception. Stop hiding from your fears bruh! Anyhow, I'd throw some norez in that box, along with some polycaps and Gucci tube binding posts and then Rawk Out man! Phish Babaaay!
@@dannyrichie9743 Don't know. Do you know what the Ant ark Tick treaty prevents? I do. Some good documentaries show the extent that travel/research is controlled S of 60 degrees lat.
@@nyobunknown6983 No, it's true. They all have a resonance frequency and by design a stamped steel frame will have a considerable ring compared to a caste frame or a polymer frame.
@@dannyrichie9743 The best sounding speakers I ever heard were my old Klipsch Cornwalls from 1969 that had a woofer with a stamped frame. If they had the ringing you claim I couldn't hear it. I owned those speakers for over 25 years until I sold them because of their large size, and I wanted a home theater. Those Cornwalls were the most realistic live sounding speakers I have ever heard. with an amazing sound stage. They sounded like a live band. Other speakers that had a purer sound did not sound realistic and live.
In the scope of quantity that larger audio companies are producing speakers I wonder how much it would actually cost them to improve internals by a factor of 1. I am not saying use the best their is but a step up from current basement level components. In doing so they would counter other brands with their improved sound and measurements as a selling point. I guess the reality is 95% of the consumer market can't tell the difference between a speaker from Walmart and $2000 speaker from a higher end company. Turn the volume up on a cheap one and most will say it's better.
It can measure ok , but after auditioning them at the store I didn't like them at all. Sorry not my cup of tea even though the cabinet looks pretty well built.
Nope. This port is a gimmick. You can simply make the port a little bigger in diameter and equally bigger in length, to keep the tuning the same, and the air velocity would be reduced and there is less port noise.
I wont be too harsh with you as after all you did menage to address part of the problem and lower THD but more on twitter side along with ringing at 1100 Hz to a expense of lower impedance which is not acceptable to me foliage to 3 Ohms. Why on earth you didn't add high pass just above Fb I will never understand. Simply put for less than upgrade cost you can buy Elac's DBR62's and Andi did box great for minimal budget and when crsssed at Fs 120 hz with pair of sub's those have waterfal to desire.
We have had a handful of the Elac's in house. Andrew did a great job with the design, but they were REALLY built to a price point and need an upgrade worse then the Polk's.
@@dannyrichie9743 yes but he had peanuts budget and most of it went to cabinet which is deacent. I play with digital crossovers which don't change impedance. What's the use of better caps and components if they will fail faster thanks to higher operating temperature thanks to increased amperage. Not complaining to you just saying. Another point is individually taking into account actual space when doing digital one's but it's not for everyone nor will ever be. Have a nice time and thanks for the answer.
'Unbelievable' I doubt. There are very few speakers that can make that claim. Maybe 'How to make junk speakers sound good for very little money' would be more honest.
You can spend $10,000 or more on speakers and usually won't get to the quality level of the parts used in the upgrades. The upgrade by far is the biggest bang for the buck.
