Shootout Coming Soon!

kevhed72

These 10b s found their way into my room! I wonder which will sound better....

nooshinjohn

Everyone knows they all sound the same in a DBT

msg

Between the 703's and M10's?!?
Curious to hear your impre-shee-oh-nays

John - what's DBT?

motorhead43026

Need to get those M10's off the floor.

heiney9

motorhead43026 wrote: »

Need to get those M10's off the floor.

ASAP!

mhardy6647

Polkstands are indicated.

earlypolkfamilyportrait by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

kevhed72

I will say....although I'm only several hours into these speakers....I am somewhat questioning my choice in speakers. I do need to find the jumpers to the 703s to do a proper comparison with the same speaker wires....but, hmmmm. The 10s seem more "airy" ...more to come.

Nightfall

There's a good reason you see people on this board that can obviously afford expensive new speakers still running the old SDA's

kevhed72

I have always wanted SDA 1Cs.....this may do it.

motorhead43026

I may just swap my SDA's out for my M10's this weekend. Been awhile since I have listened to them.

JPete

I was thinking about switching over to the M10s from the SDAs last night... Might actually do it tonight. 10s were what got me started with Polks, and other audio gear.

erniejade

I had some 10B for a while several years ago. They are a darn good speaker.

D2Lo

The acoustic volume on the 10b's put it in a different class of speaker. We are comparing a floorstand speaker to a bookshelf, apples and oranges guys! Lets get some LSiM 707's in the room!

D2Lo

BTW, I love the way the 10b's sound. Awesome product, the sound is incredibly rich. I've been trying to get my ears on as many SDA products as possible...

littlewoodboats

I agree with dskip here.

My current room hated the SDA 2a's and sounds much better with the Monitor 7's and PSW-125. SDA's in the correct room for them can be a magical combination but when it is not right there are better options.

Didn't Matt Polk say the M7 was his favorite of the monitor like?

kevhed72

Here are some initial impressions, and I will throw in another variable for the cable naysayers. I kept all my listening to my Teac CD 1000 through a Vincent SV 236 Integrated. My listening room is entirely carpeted with 5/8 drywall and the wall cavities are packed with Roxul mineral wool. There is one solid core door in the middle of the back of the rooms, and there are no acoustical treatments. So far the music I sampled through included these:

Let's start with the M10s, since they arenew to me: Generally they were more open, airey, and allowed more space between the instruments. They did a better job at times with filling the room with music, and on some tracks had better imaging. The biggest downfall of these was in some of the upper treble frequencies, especially with orchestral horns and jazz sax; I find John Coultranes sax sometimes unlistenable on the wrong recordings.
Now some thoughts on the tried and true 703s which I have had for some years now. More laid back overall and make the M10s sound bright with some music. The 703s sound much smoother and I can imagine will surpass the M10s by a wider and wider margin as I move up the ladder with other gear. I am also predicting the 703s will pull away ever farther when I add a Schiit, DACMagic, or Arcam DAC into the mix. On the downside, the 703s lacked in imaging and spaciousness with some music. I am also now convinced the 703s need to be closer to the floor than my current 28" stands allow for; for some time now I have questioned the tweeter-at-ear-level rule of thumb. Lastly, the 703s handle horn sections better and the higher frequencies sound smoother.
Overall....is one better? Who knows.....I will keep the M10s as long as my buddy allows me and I would like to build some decent stands for them....and possibly refurb / upgrade them due they are somewhat crusty. Each speaker does different things better, and picking one to keep outright over the other would be a mistake.
Oh, here's the bone for the cable naysayers - I did most of the testing with standard 12awg AQ single wire speaker cables from Audio Advisor. The ICs from CD to integrated were MIT S1s the entire time. When I put the MIT S2s back on the 703s....no contest folks. But don't take my word for it...

tonyb

Why didn't you test both out with the MIT's in there ? Might have helped some on that higher end with the M10's

motorhead43026

Update the tweeters if not already done on the M10's.

erniejade

Agreed swap the tweeters out on the 10's. On the stock 10's I have heard in my past, the peerless tweeters always seemed to sound better vs the silver dome type.