2002 Products of the Year:
Dynaudio Evidence Temptation and Polk Audio LSi15 Loudspeakers
Determining the onhifi.com Products of the Year for
2002 was simple. In a year when I listened to a lot of great-sounding products and
when I heard not one, but two amplifiers I would nominate for best I ever heard, it
was actually two speaker products that dominated my listening experience: the Dynaudio Evidence Temptations
($30,000-USD/pair) and the Polk
Audio LSi15s ($1739.90-USD/pair).
Two speakers? And one priced at about one-twentieth
the cost of the other? How can that be?
They both illustrate that speaker building is an art and
a science. Both started with solid chunks of sound speaker-building theory and then
their designers started listening and their final iterations began to evolve.
But that's not why they both got Product of the Year
status. Each earned that one disc at a time.
 Dynaudio Evidence
Temptation Loudspeakers
The Temptations illustrate what a company can do if it
throws out every preconception about loudspeakers and lets a world-class crew of engineers
start with a blank piece of paper. Dynaudio is one of the world's leading loudspeaker driver
manufacturers and one of Europe's leading loudspeaker manufacturers, so its R&D
department is the stuff of fantasy, compared to what's available to smaller, less
technologically intensive firms.
And they really pushed the limits in designing the Evidence
line (the Temptation, the no-holds-barred Master, and the Center), developing a rigid
front baffle constructed of over an inch-and-a-half of aluminum, a special crossover unit,
and custom-built drivers that incorporate features that would put them out of reach for
any ordinary loudspeaker. And, being Danish, the designers didn't stop there -- they made
the speaker's lines as clean and simple as Arne Jacobsen's classic Weber & Asmussen
radio, which hid all its complex electronic innards beneath a sleek wenge and Formica
case.
However, it wouldn't matter how much theory went into the
Temptations, nor how lovely they looked, if they didn't deliver the goods -- and deliver
the goods they certainly do. Do you like music? If you haven't heard the Temptations, you
ain't heard nothin' yet.
Forget all your preconceptions; the Temptations won't fit
into them. I thought I didn't like big loudspeakers. It so happens, I don't like
large speakers that step all over the music, masking its grace with their box-resonance or
obscuring its clarity with their broad baffles. But when I hear a big'un that doesn't add
any colorations and still manages to render deep bass and loud orchestral climaxes with
the speed and precision of the real thing, I like big speakers jes' fine.
The Evidence Temptations happen to do all that better than
any other loudspeaker I've ever heard -- and they image as precisely and soundstage as
holographically as any compact monitor you can name. Maybe even better, since they have a
bottom end no compact monitor can match and can play louder than anyone could ever listen
to without a trace of dynamic compression or limitation.
As a result, I spent hours, days, weeks, months reveling in
their sound and listening to my favorite recordings over and over. And I developed a new
frame of reference for the loudspeaker art. That, after all, is what a reference
loudspeaker is supposed to do.
For setting the bar -- for establishing the standard
against which every loudspeaker I'll hear from now on is judged -- I simply had to
name the Dynaudio Evidence Temptation loudspeaker Product of the Year.
Polk Audio LSi15 Loudspeakers
 Fantastic as the Temptation is,
however, its cost will prohibit most of us from ever owning a pair. There's no debating
its worth -- both iconic and genuine -- as an expression of what is possible and as
a template that will pay off in future products that are more affordable, such as the new
Confidence C4 and C2 loudspeakers.
Besides, it's not so much the Temptations I covet (not
much!) as what they deliver: the sheer magic and transportable joy of the music they
reproduce. And, thank heavens, that's also what the Polk LSi15s manage to do at
such a reasonable cost.
Now understand, I'm not equating the two. But there are
more similarities between them than a difference of $28,390 might lead you to expect. Like
Dynaudio, Polk is a big company (one of the top two or three American speaker
companies) and it devotes a lot of its resources to honest-to-gosh research. Also, like
Dynaudio, it builds its own drivers (although it also knows when to buy from other
vendors, as in the case of the LSi15's Vifa ring-radiating tweeter). Polk's founder
and guiding light Matthew Polk is second to none when it comes to a belief in engineering,
but like Dynaudio, Polk uses that foundation in solid engineering as the base on which to
build a great-sounding loudspeaker. That's when the art starts, not to mention the
listening.
But all of that applies only to the logical side of my
brain -- that little accountant checking off pluses and naughts trying to make the books
balance. Logic is all well and good, but falling in love doesn't happen simply because the
figures add up.
Quite simply, the Polk Audio LSi15s sent showers of
neural sparks coursing through my brain, stimulated my corpus callosum, and produced
endorphins by the bucketful -- or, to put it in lay terms, they made music.
With acoustic music, the LSi15s had an enveloping
sense of presence I've never heard from any speaker even approaching their price point.
Their seamless integration of the entire musical spectrum is startlingly even-handed and
natural. Feed 'em some hard-driving rock'n'roll or soul or jazz and they'll roar like a
lion; feed 'em a soothing folk air and they'll purr like a kitten. And no matter the
musical material, the LSi15s delivered its letter and spirit intact.
That's not just pretty good for a speaker under $2000/pair
-- that's pretty good for a speaker.
But factor in price and it's darn near miraculous.
So, for living up to the highest ideals of the audiophile
sensibility, the Polk LSi15s deserve to be one of onhifi.com's 2002 Products of the
Year. And for doing it at such an eminently affordable price, they deserve to be huge.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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