TSi mating to a small receiver help sought

rbailen

I'm looking to pipe stereo into my living room and space is tight on the existing bookshelf. I'm thinking of mating a small Onkyo receiver/CD player with Polk TSi bookshelf speakers (to replace the Onkyo speakers that come with their small unit). Anyone set up a small configuration like that? Living room is good size with 11' ceiling but volume would generally be low as the kids' bedrooms are upstairs. I want some sweet stereo awesomeness while drinking wine and pondering the fish tank. If small isn't so great I could go nuts and replace the small bookshelf with a bigger cabinet to hold a real receiver and CD player and drive a pair of sweet cherry towers. I fear those would have a low WAF- wife acceptance factor!

cnh

Welcome to Club Polk!!

While getting a separate AVR and CDP are preferable you can probably run a pair of TSI-200s off that Onkyo....which I think is rated at about 20 watts/channel RMS. Not sure how loud that will get you though. The good thing is that you can always keep the TSIs and upgrade everything else later. Certainly the 200s with their 50hz bottom end will do better than the speakers that come with the Onkyo unit.

But please do check the Onkyo's impedance handling on the back...what does the ONKYO say it can deal with impedance wise? 4, 6, 8 ohm? What is the impedance of the Onkyo speakers? I'm pretty sure it should be OK because even the Onkyo shelf units have WRAT and high current designs?

Enjoy!


cnh

rbailen

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to measure my space and try to swing the TSi300s. Otherwise it looks like the bookshelves will work with the Onkyo mini receiver based on the specs.
My wife will be good to go with towers if she can put plants on top as she's been looking to green up the living room and maybe I can swing the towers for dual purpose. Our old klipsch speakers had a small fish tank on it for years- those poor buggers. I'll check this forum for TSi300 chats in the meantime.

EndersShadow

rbailen wrote: »

Thanks for the feedback. I'm going to measure my space and try to swing the TSi300s. Otherwise it looks like the bookshelves will work with the Onkyo mini receiver based on the specs.
My wife will be good to go with towers if she can put plants on top as she's been looking to green up the living room and maybe I can swing the towers for dual purpose. Our old klipsch speakers had a small fish tank on it for years- those poor buggers. I'll check this forum for TSi300 chats in the meantime.

Also look for Monitor 50's stuff as they are the same. If you can find some of the original Monitor 50's on Newegg you can normally score a massive deal on them and save even more cash..

Just as a heads-up the difference between the TSi 300's and 200's is that basically the 300's are 200's with built in stands.

I ran the Monitor 40's (TSi 200's) as fronts in my bedroom and they worked just fine. Only thing is that there is a port at the back so they need some space from the wall if possible (I had mine like 2 inches out). Sounded quite good in my bedroom.

But like I said I would go with the Monitor series over the TSi just to save some cash. They vary a tid in overall esthetics, but not enough to be a dealbreaker IMHO

tonyb

Plants ontop of speakers ?? My wife gets chewed out if she places a remote on one.
You want plants,get a plant stand.

rbailen

Yeah I hear you guys, I would cry like a baby if water spilled all over my new speakers so any flowers would have to be of the "silk" variety now that you mention it. The living room is nice with cherry hardwood floor and 11' ceiling so I'm actually inclined to spend more to get those beautiful cherry cabinets whether I go for the towers or bookshelf speakers. I've got big black Klipsch towers and black Infinity towers elsewhere so this would be my "fancy lad" setup. I'm gonna measure it up tonight!