Which speaker is best for me?

gardenboy

Nowhere can I find an explanation of the main differences between Polk speaker lines. Can anyone help me? I am looking for music listening, not home theater use. What is the difference between the Monitor, RTi, and TSi? Do any of these have a built in subwoofer? Polk sells online through eBay the Monitor 70, RTi8, and TSi500 for about the same price. Thank you.

tonyb

Welcome to the forum Gardenboy. Your question is kinda like asking us which ice cream flavor you should like, but lets try and break it down.

The Monitor and TSI lines are Polks budget friendly lines. RTI stands for Reference Theatre Improved, a more upscale speaker for Home theatre use. All 3 lines are theatre first speakers but certainly doesn't exclude them from being used for music, and many do and are happy with them. The LSI and LSIM lines are more so a music first speaker....but can also be used for HT too.

Maybe you can tell us the size of your room, associated gear you'll be using, your preferences in sound....more forward/more laid back, you like to listen to mostly rock music, jazz, classical, all...

We can then move forward and suggest some things for you if you provide a budget to work within. Hope that helps some and looking forward to helping you on your path.

afterburnt

don't take this as gospel but I have heard that the difference between Monitors and TSIs are more cosmetic than anything else. When I bought my first Monitors I was looking at TSI's and compared the specs. I don't recall any significant difference. That was when I bought my first Monitor 30's. I have since gotten quite a few pairs of Monitors.

tonyb

The Monitor 70's are a good choice with that receiver, should drive them well enough. Are you going to be using them with a subwoofer ?

If yes....I might suggest the RTIA5's with a subwoofer, a bit better musically.

afterburnt

I guess $400 is good, I paid a little less for mine about 8 months ago

tonyb

The M70's is a good all arounder....just be careful using for outdoors. Sound dissipates fairly quickly outdoors and that usually tends to drive people to keep turning up the volume....until they go kaput.

Even so....if your youngsters worry you, maybe a better bet would be to find something used off of Craigslist for much cheaper. I know if it was me spending 400 bones on something and the kids destroyed it, I might get a tad hot under the collar.

cnh

I'm with Tony on that outdoor stuff. You'd need a LOT more POWER to use M70s as an outdoor party speaker and you're likely to clip that Sony and trash the speakers doing that.

Party? Outdoors? Volume? Get the MOST efficient old school Cerwin Vegas you can and blast them because the quality of sound doesn't mean much outside. You just need cranking bass and volume and the CVs will do that.

Keep the Polks inside. M70s could also do with some more power than that Sony can put out to sound good! So set your Sony to 80Hz for the M70s and send the BASS below that to your sub. It's easier to drive the M70s if you're NOT trying to drive them FULL RANGE!

cnh

I use M-70s in my home theater. They're hard to beat for value in such a set up. But you need some power. The absolute minimum for me is my Onkyo TX-SR805 receiver, which weighs almost 51 lbs. And that weight is mostly in the HUGE transformer that more modest receivers do not have. Even with this, I'd prefer to listen to two channel sound with a 200 Watt x 2 power amp in the mix.

But you'll be OK if you have a good sub and route all the real lows to that. Sony receivers have inflated ratings. You're lucky if that AVR puts out 65 watts x 7, and more likely 40 x 7. The Onkyo has been bench tested to 130 watts x 5 and even it, at 51 lbs, falls below its 130 x 7 rating in seven channels (I believe it's only 100/105 x 7 or less, I only run it in 5.1).

M70s are a good, economical speaker that can handle a lot of power. They sound best when fed that power. But they have their limits for two channel sound and most of us don't really use them for that in critical listening situations. But I am a FIRM believer that surround sound is not that hard to pull off and that you get to a level of diminishing returns in surround sound a LOT FASTER than you do for two channel stereo listening.

So yeah. I own them and I think you'd be happy with them, and if your kids trash them you can always get more drivers from Polk?

gardenboy

Thank you for the information. I'm not looking for anything too high end or else my 4 and 6 year olds will destroy them. Just looking for a decent all around speaker for general music listening (mostly classic rock). I have a Sony receiver (140 watt X 7) and will be playing mostly CDs. Maybe something I can move to the garage a few times a year for outdoor party listening. I'm leaning towards the Monitor 70 Series II.....$400/pr. Your thought on that please.

Upstatemax

Curious, why will your 4 and 6 year old children destroy your speakers?

I have children (2 and 4), and they have never been part of my speaker decisions.

Heck, Joey just dropped like $20,000 on a pair of speakers, and he has little cutie running around...