Sda Poll

[BobMcG]

Lets see how much interest there is in a new line of quality SDA speakers.

[TroyD]

who wouldn't be ?

Troy

[JohanK]

I'd only be interested out of curiousity; I think Polk would price these hypothetical SDAs very high.

[wangotango68]

they would have to sound a hell of a lot better then the older sda's and not look like everybody elses tall skinny speaker i like my old big speaker and it likes me.

scott

[BobMcG]

Only twenty votes? Who hasn't voted yet?

[hoosier21]

I can't vote

[George Grand]

You're not really waiting for the other 25,500 or so "silent" members to chime in are you?

George Grand (of the Jersey Grand's)

[BobMcG]

Yes! Yes I am! I'm keeping this on top untill all members have voted!

Ok, ok, maybe not untill all have voted but maybe half.... no? Ok, How about a quarter? Ok, maybe I'm setting my sights too high... how about double the twenty...forty. That's not asking too much is it? Alright, fifty percent more...thirty. That's not unreasonable. Or is it?

Hey, look! It's up three now!

[BobMcG]

Almost thirty now, mabe forty isn't impossible after all.

[BobMcG]

It looks like thirty seven is the number. Not bad, when it seemed to go stale at twenty. Thanks to the people who voted! This must come close to representing the regulars in the forum and the general interest among us pertaining to new SDAs.

[gidrah]

I had just got done filling out the monthly drawing comment suggestion on this very subject. I started out saying that the Monitor series should return, then set my sights higher. I don't know if they read this stuff, or if it is just a random number generator (for the drawings), but I know within myself.

[BobMcG]

Wow!

I can't believe the added votes! What a nice sight to see this weekend. 51 votes means there is a pretty good size group of regulars here. Larger than you'd think. This is a good thing. A very good thing.
Thanks for the participation in this survey!

[Commodorefirst]

BTTT for more votes. Got mine in.

[BobMcG]

To break the sixty mark?

It looks like we could, soooo..... BTTT with it!

[Micah Cohen]

My thoughts (and they don't count, since I work here): SDA is a good thing. Not just because of this fanaticism that it inspires, but from a marketing standpoint because it gives Polk Audio something no one else has. Simple as that.

Will The Powers That Be ever do anything about that? Who knows? I'll make sure people see this poll.

Thanks Bob!

MC

[mjmcg]

It wont let me vote...but my mark would be obvious.

[Aaron]

....after your first 61 votes, it decided that was enough from one person! :D

Aaron

[I-SIG]

SDA=Good!

Wes

[vanmyster]

I can't believe the 3 votes for no interest in the SDA's. I have a set of 15 year old SDA IIA's and have recently tried to find something that I could replace them with for under $2,000, no chance, nothing even close including everything Polk makes today. If Polk brings back the SDA's, don't make them ported... Bring back the old Monitor series as well, The Monitor 10's were the best speaker money could buy for the $ for years...

[BobMcG]

Wow! I can't believe it's nearing the seventy mark. With sixtyeight showing and sixtynine if it would take Mike's vote, maybe I'll come home to see the seventy mark reached. Thanks to all voters!

[George Grand]

It's 12:05, and I am 5 minutes into one TALL glass of Gosling's rum. Finally off telephone alert. I am enjoying this rum too much to figure out what percent 70 is out of 27,000. Right off the top of my rotten little head, I'm figuring you got LESS than a 1% response from this forum. I wish you were here right now Bob, so you could bask in the glory of this excellent Bermudan rum, and we could both laugh our balls off about that pathetic percentage.

This stuff is sharpening me right up. I'm thinking .25% of the forum responded. No reason why Polk shouldn't run right out and start up the SDA line again.

George Grand (of the Jersey Grand's)

[predator]

Hi All,
Sorry I haven't been around, but summer is Car time and winter is Audio time! I put in my vote and of course I am extremely interested. Frankly the SDA line is a high-end line and I wouldn't expect most here to have even heard SDA's never mind vote how they liked them and how interested they would be. They have been out of production for a while. I would be willing to bet a very large % of visitors here don't have high-end speakers (based on my post views). IMHO a new (and improved) SDA line would attract a newer group of listeners to Polk. The kind of listeners that people listen to their opinions! It's time for Polk to realize they still need a med-high end to high-end line to support their mid-fi line. Bean counters will not understand this and will fight it to their death! I don't mean to be disrespectful at all, I know it is difficult to justify a line that will never pull in the same $$ as the upper mid-fi lines which is where I see most of the Polk stuff. I am also sure Polk has many discussions on this kind of subject and I suspect there is still research going on. I don't think Matt is sitting back doing nothing. Also, I am not knocking the current lines because I still think they are great quality and performance for the $$. I just feel a lot of people look to the high end Audiophiles for opinions and there isn't much there from Polk now. I don't consider myself an audiophile and still a lot of people ask me a lot of questions. I think it's an uphill battle for Polk to sell at a higher price point than others that have similar specks without higher-end listeners supporting the higher quality and performance claims. Let's face it, most people listen to opinions not specs, because specs don't mean much.

Build them and they will come,
Ralph-

[TroyD]

I have to disagree to a certain extent with some of what Ralph says. I think that Polk IS trying to enter the higher end with the LSi line.
As much as we would like to see SDA ressurected, I wouldn't hold my breath. I have heard from a few "audiophiles" and believe even Matt Polk said that SDA never gained true audiophile endorsement. If that is the case then yes that only makes it even less likely that SDA's would be brought back. That being said, I personally don't believe that endorsement from the audiophile community is the last word on anything however. I also don't think that Polk is a company run by bean counters but there must be some pretty compelling reasons why SDA is not being employed. My personal opinion is that the buying public is generally disinterested in large, non-powered speakers that require a good power source as opposed to an A/V reciever that couldn't do them justice.

Troy

[rmh1]

Have not logged on in a long time. Interesting to see the poll. I have a pair of SDA-SRS-1.2's that will never, ever leave my house. There is STILL no way to obtain a better reproduction of the sound stage unless one is willing to spend many thousands. It would be super for Polk to re-introduce this technology but with current standards of drivers. However, as it was last year on this question, my understanding is the production cost versus sales would not sustain the line of speakers.

[BobMcG]

rmh1,

While it's true, Polk probably wouldn't quickly sell thousands of a new breed of modern SDA speaker, there would still be a market for a lot of them. The prices would be high, but worth it if the quality was there.
Take a good, long look around in the world of audio. There are dozens of excellent higher-end speaker manufactures out there. Yes, some of their speakers are rather pricey, but they are well thought out and working designs, with exceptional quality parts, fit and finish. They don't sell enormous volumes of them. They may not make a thousand of them a week or even a month, but they do sell them and they are very fine products.
IMO, it doesn't sound as though Polk is interested in small production runs. It seems if they can't pump out thousands of a model run at a good pace, for rock bottom, mass production prices and fill the shelves and warehouses of a number of mass market sales outlets, they aren't interested. They'll claim they can't justify doing it. That's all just well and fine. It's up to them. No problemo. It's good the others are out there. It seems to me, Polk would be in a fair position to be able to do it though. You'd think that with the popularity and success they enjoy in the market, they'd be able to support another less mass produced line.
But then again, what do I know about the inner workings of Polk? So, maybe I'm wrong. It wouldn't be the first time by any means, nor will it be the last. It's just my wandering thoughts.....

And BTW: As far as the problem with the SDAs never really being accepted by the true "audiophile" community... who gives a rats ass? They have a good, strong, faithful following anyway.
I do consider myself an audiophile. Why? Because I love audio as a hobby and take it quite serious. However, I know I'm not a member of the true "audiophile " community though. Because: I don't have the price of a house invested in my two channel playback system. I don't support both analog and digital and have the price of a sports car into just the analog playback portion of my system. I don't have season tickets to the opera, or to hear an orchestra, or to listen to live chamber music. I don't have "tube" everything. I don't use 15watt single ended triode amps or the like. For these and other reasons, I'm simply just not with it at all! Audiophile I'm not! Just ask a real one, they'll tell you...

[George Grand]

Beautiful Bob. The latest Stereophile (got it a couple days ago), while saying nice things about the new Polk Lsi line, also has a $75,000 turntable as a "recommended component".

This plants me FIRMLY in the audio "enthusiast" camp, not the audioPHILE camp. My turntable was only a grand (arf-arf!).

George Grand (of the Jersey Grand's)

[wangotango68]

i could not say it any better myself.hell i bought a $20 pioneer turntable just to here my old albums,and i use my reciever as my preamp. what the hell does that make me? smart i guess, i view
my audio gear as a hobby,not my life when most audio mag.
get of there high horse and catter to the working man,then ill
listen. and the comment that polk is not a "true audiofile speaker"? as bob says "who cares"!!

scott

[wangotango68]

speaking of your rum george the little hotty girly girl down the street stoped in a couple of hours ago and said they were moving
to indy. so she gave my wife a brand new bottle of smirnoff vodka
and a half gallon of "premium" gin she said here dad did not know about it and she wanted to keep it that way. as van halen
says "bottoms up"!!

scott

[George Grand]

You got it Scott! I should clear the air. My turntable is an $800 Thorens, with a $300 Joe Grado cartridge on it. I saw it in a used hi-fi shop. Guy wanted $95. I went home and got two Fisher receivers and traded those for it. While I DON'T think vinyl sounds better than digital, there are some parts of my vinyl collection that will NEVER be available on a digital format. You do what you have to do.

George Grand of the Jersey Grand's)

[I-SIG]

Rant mode on:

Personally, I think we're a different definition of audiophile. I think this about myself and more than several others lurking around this Forum. I think most of those of us who have an appreciation for the music, not necessarily just the equipment, are audiophiles in a more grassroots interpretation of the word. If my gear can reproduce my music in such a way that makes me grin even with songs that I've heard over a hundred times or the first time, then what more can I really ask for, whether I've spent a few thousand or a few score thousand? When it comes down to it, it's the music that counts and truly makes the system.

This brings me to my next point. If I have to listen to opera, chamber music(?), or whatever else to be a classic "audiophile", then I'll gladly take an additional hole in the head than put up with that $#!+. Why is this music considered to be for the audiophiles? Last time I checked, I'm gonna need and want the same equipment dynamics and characteristics whether I'm playing Eddie Vedder or Pavorati(?), a fiddle or a violin, a bass guitar or a stand-up bass, etc., etc. Faithful reproduction is faithful reproduction, no if's, and's, or but's about it!

Rant mode off

Wes