M70 to RTi A7

pdxfj

Well.. upgradeitus bit and I picked up complete 5.1 RTi-A setup over the weekend with a DSW Pro500 sub.

Those here who have said the RTI-A line was more suited for HT were not kidding. The detail, clarity and sound stage is impressive. The A7's and A6 soak up the power from my amp.

Will be able to make back about 90% of what I paid for the RTI's with selling my Monitors, A3's and the DSW sub.

Very nice improvement over the Monitors. Just so happens I know someone who wants to do a small HT and hey.. I have a pair of A3's and a sub for them. :biggrin: Shouldn't have any issues selling my M70's and CS2 for at least what I bought them for.

tonyb

Congrats on the upgrade. Puts a nice smile on your face eh ? Enjoy !!

jbooker82

What did you get for the rear surrounds? FXI's?

Lietuvis91

where did you get your whole rtia setup from? what rear speakers are you running?

pdxfj

I picked up the entire setup off Craigslist. I had been keeping an eye on it for a few weeks and after a fairly large price drop, I bit and took my amp along to see how they sounded. I managed to get the seller down a bit more.

The entire setup consisted of:

A7 mains, A6 center, A3 surrounds and a DSW Pro500 sub. I don't need the A3's or DSW. Not to mention the A3's are way too tall to comfortably fit in my living room as surrounds.

I already have FX300i's for my surrounds and some R10's for back surrounds. The R10's sound a bit flat and I'm thinking of changing out the high end caps to see if that will brighten them up a bit.

Not in the mood to buy anymore speakers at this time since I have a house that needs new windows, siding and paint this summer. I actually used some of the money I set aside for siding to get the speakers. Getting as much of that cash back in the next couple of months is very important.

Lietuvis91

Oh cool, I see, I thought maybe you got them from new egg. So a big difference between a7 and m70s huh? Any more detail on the differences between the two. Seems like you think it was worth effort to make the swap?!

pdxfj

There is no denying that the M70's are a lot of bang for buck and start to really shine when you feed them more power. I always felt they were a bit much for my room and were fighting with the surrounds. Sound stage was always decent and they had good clarity. I could hear finer details in movies that were trying to come out, but no matter how much I fiddled with placement, toe-in, etc it felt like things were being held back.

After I put the A7's in, gave them a bit of toe-in and re-ran Audyssey things got very interesting.

Detail and clairty suddenly jumped out. The sound stage is so big, it makes my 50" Plasma seem small now. I don't even need to think about Height or Width speakers. The FX300's came to life (like I hadn't heard before) and filled in the back end. Running a 7ch soundtrack or even ES Matrix was just icing on the cake. The A7's put out much tighter and deeper bass than the M70's and complement my PL-200 sub very nicely. A number times the sub would hit hard enough along with the A7's to surprise me. Hard hitting bass seemed almost predictable with the 70's but with the A7's, I guess you could say everything has more breathing room now and bass is much tighter and hits harder than before.

I haven't listened to a whole lot of music through them yet but will this week. Watched Resident Evil: Afterlife last night for the first time and it has a very aggressive soundtrack which sounded better than I thought possible with my equipment.

If there were any Polkies in my area looking to upgrade I wouldn't have a problem giving them a demo. Friends think I'm nuts since it wasn't too long ago I bought the M70's and now I've gone out and bought more speakers.

slammin86

I wonder if this is the same setup?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Polk-Audio-Speaker-System-RTi-A7-Home-Theater-System-/140388682535?pt=Speakers_Subwoofers&hash=item20afd14b27

gp4jesus

slammin86 wrote: »

I wonder if this is the same setup?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Polk-Audio-Speaker-System-RTi-A7-Home-Theater-System-/140388682535?pt=Speakers_Subwoofers&hash=item20afd14b27

to slammin: Nope. Different sub & rears. He bought A3 surrounds and a DSW Pro500 sub. That link "comes" w/FXiA6 surrounds & a DSWPRO600 Sub

to OP: How $ fer those 'A3s? or am I askin' wrong time/place?

BTW: whatcha usin' for power?

pdxfj

Nice setup on the ebay link. Although I think you could do better price wise putting it together on your own.

As far as selling the A3's, I would like to wait and see how close a couple of people I know are to wanting a small HT in their basement before tossing them up for sale here. They would make good mains or surrounds depending on their budget.

I am running an Onkyo 808 which powers my surrounds and back surrounds and a Sony TA-N9000ES amp in bridged (BTL) mode running the A7's and A6 center. It's a 5ch amp @ 120w/ch. Bridging it gets me 200w/ch for the mains and leaves the 5th channel (120w) to run the center. Nice warm sounding amp that shows no signs of struggling no matter how hard I run it. At just over $300 shipped to my door it was a damn good buy. Late 90's vintage amp, but everything I read about it said it was one of the last amps Sony put out when "ES" still stood for something. I'd buy another without question if I ever had the need for it.

Lietuvis91

pdxfj: your input really makes me want to try these a7s... even though i am at the moment fairly content with m70, minus their size, they r a bit too big for my room.