Tour2ma
10-26-2004, 07:19 AM
Life with 3.1tl’s… by Tour2ma
I put these “little” SDA’s through their paces over the past couple weeks, but before I get into that…
I want to thank Joey for selling them, and Brett and Jesse for deciding they did not want them. Thanks also go to the Mrs., who green-lighted their taking up residence here. I believe I’d cry, if I had to part with them.
The set up…
Slipped these in front and inside of my SRS’s, the front stage of my HT rig. I borrowed my SRS’s MW feed from my Sunfire’s voltage output to power them with a mere 400 wpc.
As no SDA IC came with them, and my SRS’s blade-blade was not compatible, I rigged one from some old 16-ga lamp cord that was lying around. The simple cut, strip, twist and push into the Pin-Blade approach was aided by dual banana plugs on the speaker wire runs straddling the IC. Worked rather well…
Leveling was an easy one-man job, as was aligning them, thanks to the grid provided by a ceramic tile floor. The split was roughly 5’ from inside edge to inside edge.
And we’re off…
The test material…
I threw all my stock demo stuff at them: Flim and the BB’s “Tricycle”, DSOTM, Stravinsky’s “Firebird”, Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out”, Portishead’s “Dummy”Robbie Robertson’s “Storyville”, Dean Peer’s “Lord’s Tundra”, Horowitz’s “The Studio Recordings” and, yes, my beloved Dee-Lite “World Clique” and more.
The findings… SQ
At a little less than half of the enclosure volume of my SRS’s, I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of bass… Way wrong on that count. These little effers can thump. Not quite to the degree that the SRS’s can (Portishead did not quite rattle the rafters as much through the 3.1’s), but damn close.
The 3.1’s do take a bit more persuading than my SRS’s, about 6 dB more volume level, to achieve the same output, but they do get there. Through all the demo material the 3.1’s seemed to laugh and say, “Is that all ya got?”
While they thumped away, delivering a pleasant intestinal massage, they also delivered great detail. Not only did I hear everything I was accustomed to hearing, e.g., Dean Peer’s pre-plucking of his bass, I heard several bits (no pun intended) that I did not remember hearing before. Little “extras” came forth in several tracks, a smile producing, if not jaw dropping, experience.
The findings… Soundstage and SDA
Very impressed here. Now as the 3.1’s are “only” about 4’ tall, standing does noticeably drop the SPL. This just made sitting down even more enjoyable than the standard “take a load off”. I ended up doing most of the critical listening cross-legged on the floor about 6’ in front of them, kind of a pseudo, near-field position.
Orchestral placement was quite good in both width and depth. Occasionally the strings location was a bit smeared, especially 2nd violins, but SDA can do that. Horns and woodwinds were three dimensionally pinpoint, as was the percussion section.
On simpler ensembles, e.g., Dave Brubeck, the quartet’s placement was very good. I listened closely for the magic movement of Paul Desmond’s alto sax on ”Blue Rondo”, but it was not to be found here and thus remains the domain of Maggies and, to a lesser degree, CA’s.
The SDA is strong within this one…
Considering that in the 3.1’s the SDA drivers are outnumbered 4 to 1 by the stereo drivers, I expected a somewhat less than SRS level SDA experience. Again… wrong. Pink Floyd’s “Money” produced all the requisite SDA grins. However…
It was Dee-Lite’s “Deep Ending” that provided the sessions biggest, “WTF… Let me play that again”, SDA thrill. In this track there is a high frequency, rhythmic “rasp” that moves from channel to channel through out most of the track. The effect is entertaining enough on an ordinary stereo, bounded by the speakers. On my SRS’s it’s travel to and fro is nicely exaggerated several feet “outside the box(es)”, but is one-dimensional. The CA’s produce a circular, clockwise motion in this sound’s travel, adding up and down to back and forth. The 3.1’s displayed all the unbounded back and forth movement, and in place of the CA’s vertical “circling”, they added a flat circle protruding from and receding into the soundstage. Put another way, as the sound moved from right to left, it passed almost close enough to touch my nose, and as it moved from left to right it traveled to the wall some 2’ behind the 3.1’s. This is the stuff of which jaw drops are made…
On the other hand, dual-microphone, solo piano recordings remain unbearable for me to hear on SDA’s. There’s something about a twenty-foot wide keyboard that is just not realistic. Horowitz barely had time to complete “The Minute Waltz” before he was sent back to his jewel case.
I did no formal HT testing, but did make some casual observations, one of some significance. I have always felt that my CS400’s tone blended nicely with my SRS’s, and it does. The 3.1’s showed me what a really well matched front stage should sound like. Abso-friggin-seamless…
Conclusions
While my search for the speaker that does everything very, very well continues unfulfilled, these mid-sized Polk’s came closer than I thought they would.
The 3.1tl is a damn fine SDA representative. It just might be the one that Polk should bring back. It is not so big that it cannot fit in with a room’s décor, and delivers a very high percentage of the thrills of its bigger, low WAF brothers.
I never had designs on owning any additional SDA’s other than the CRS’s, that impressed me so much at Russ’s TX PF-II last January. Then these 3.1’s fell into my lap and they are not going anywhere other than the 2-channel room, where they now sit and where I thought they were destined to serve. However, it is very possible that they may end up as my HT mains pending the results of an upcoming test run with Mr. SVS. And since the SRS’s would not be too shabby in a dedicated 2-channel rig, how can I lose?
Decisions, decisions… ain’t life great? :D
I put these “little” SDA’s through their paces over the past couple weeks, but before I get into that…
I want to thank Joey for selling them, and Brett and Jesse for deciding they did not want them. Thanks also go to the Mrs., who green-lighted their taking up residence here. I believe I’d cry, if I had to part with them.
The set up…
Slipped these in front and inside of my SRS’s, the front stage of my HT rig. I borrowed my SRS’s MW feed from my Sunfire’s voltage output to power them with a mere 400 wpc.
As no SDA IC came with them, and my SRS’s blade-blade was not compatible, I rigged one from some old 16-ga lamp cord that was lying around. The simple cut, strip, twist and push into the Pin-Blade approach was aided by dual banana plugs on the speaker wire runs straddling the IC. Worked rather well…
Leveling was an easy one-man job, as was aligning them, thanks to the grid provided by a ceramic tile floor. The split was roughly 5’ from inside edge to inside edge.
And we’re off…
The test material…
I threw all my stock demo stuff at them: Flim and the BB’s “Tricycle”, DSOTM, Stravinsky’s “Firebird”, Dave Brubeck’s “Time Out”, Portishead’s “Dummy”Robbie Robertson’s “Storyville”, Dean Peer’s “Lord’s Tundra”, Horowitz’s “The Studio Recordings” and, yes, my beloved Dee-Lite “World Clique” and more.
The findings… SQ
At a little less than half of the enclosure volume of my SRS’s, I wasn’t expecting too much in the way of bass… Way wrong on that count. These little effers can thump. Not quite to the degree that the SRS’s can (Portishead did not quite rattle the rafters as much through the 3.1’s), but damn close.
The 3.1’s do take a bit more persuading than my SRS’s, about 6 dB more volume level, to achieve the same output, but they do get there. Through all the demo material the 3.1’s seemed to laugh and say, “Is that all ya got?”
While they thumped away, delivering a pleasant intestinal massage, they also delivered great detail. Not only did I hear everything I was accustomed to hearing, e.g., Dean Peer’s pre-plucking of his bass, I heard several bits (no pun intended) that I did not remember hearing before. Little “extras” came forth in several tracks, a smile producing, if not jaw dropping, experience.
The findings… Soundstage and SDA
Very impressed here. Now as the 3.1’s are “only” about 4’ tall, standing does noticeably drop the SPL. This just made sitting down even more enjoyable than the standard “take a load off”. I ended up doing most of the critical listening cross-legged on the floor about 6’ in front of them, kind of a pseudo, near-field position.
Orchestral placement was quite good in both width and depth. Occasionally the strings location was a bit smeared, especially 2nd violins, but SDA can do that. Horns and woodwinds were three dimensionally pinpoint, as was the percussion section.
On simpler ensembles, e.g., Dave Brubeck, the quartet’s placement was very good. I listened closely for the magic movement of Paul Desmond’s alto sax on ”Blue Rondo”, but it was not to be found here and thus remains the domain of Maggies and, to a lesser degree, CA’s.
The SDA is strong within this one…
Considering that in the 3.1’s the SDA drivers are outnumbered 4 to 1 by the stereo drivers, I expected a somewhat less than SRS level SDA experience. Again… wrong. Pink Floyd’s “Money” produced all the requisite SDA grins. However…
It was Dee-Lite’s “Deep Ending” that provided the sessions biggest, “WTF… Let me play that again”, SDA thrill. In this track there is a high frequency, rhythmic “rasp” that moves from channel to channel through out most of the track. The effect is entertaining enough on an ordinary stereo, bounded by the speakers. On my SRS’s it’s travel to and fro is nicely exaggerated several feet “outside the box(es)”, but is one-dimensional. The CA’s produce a circular, clockwise motion in this sound’s travel, adding up and down to back and forth. The 3.1’s displayed all the unbounded back and forth movement, and in place of the CA’s vertical “circling”, they added a flat circle protruding from and receding into the soundstage. Put another way, as the sound moved from right to left, it passed almost close enough to touch my nose, and as it moved from left to right it traveled to the wall some 2’ behind the 3.1’s. This is the stuff of which jaw drops are made…
On the other hand, dual-microphone, solo piano recordings remain unbearable for me to hear on SDA’s. There’s something about a twenty-foot wide keyboard that is just not realistic. Horowitz barely had time to complete “The Minute Waltz” before he was sent back to his jewel case.
I did no formal HT testing, but did make some casual observations, one of some significance. I have always felt that my CS400’s tone blended nicely with my SRS’s, and it does. The 3.1’s showed me what a really well matched front stage should sound like. Abso-friggin-seamless…
Conclusions
While my search for the speaker that does everything very, very well continues unfulfilled, these mid-sized Polk’s came closer than I thought they would.
The 3.1tl is a damn fine SDA representative. It just might be the one that Polk should bring back. It is not so big that it cannot fit in with a room’s décor, and delivers a very high percentage of the thrills of its bigger, low WAF brothers.
I never had designs on owning any additional SDA’s other than the CRS’s, that impressed me so much at Russ’s TX PF-II last January. Then these 3.1’s fell into my lap and they are not going anywhere other than the 2-channel room, where they now sit and where I thought they were destined to serve. However, it is very possible that they may end up as my HT mains pending the results of an upcoming test run with Mr. SVS. And since the SRS’s would not be too shabby in a dedicated 2-channel rig, how can I lose?
Decisions, decisions… ain’t life great? :D