Sale on Polk CSi25

ivansfo

Just a heads up for those of you near a Fry's Electronics. Just saw their ad in the San Jose Mercury showing this center channel on sale for $59. Great center to match your Polk R30 or R50s. Sale ends 10/27/05

http://www.shoplocal.com/mercurynews/Default.aspx?action=addetail&adretailerid=3584&adstoreid=21396&adlistingid=489672

Hope this is okay to post deals here.


Ivan

Ron Temple

Saw that this morning. Hey Ivan, how you doing. Ever get rid of the 8s & 4s?

ivansfo

Hi Ron,

Yep, sold all the RTi speakers on Ebay. At the end, I even made about 40 bucks after all seller fees. I'm just happy I didn't lose much money on this failed upgrade.

The most recent upgrade for me was the rear surrounds from R15 to R20s. Definitely an improvement in the fullness of the sound. You should consider this if you have room. Now I'm just watching as many movies as I can and enjoying the system. I can't think of anything else to upgrade without spending a chunk of change.

I visited a friends home who's just getting into HT last week. He bought a 5.1 system of Axioms, Yamaha V2500, and a Velodyne sub. Though I know he still got much tweaking to do, my Polk R series system (costing a fraction of his) sounds better

Ivan

Ron Temple

Always pleased to talk to people who agree with me (not many do)

gakboone

Which RTi's did you not like and why? I will be up-grading from my t90e Euro's to RTi 8's. Please let me know.

Ron Temple

Do a search for ivansfo's thread/posts from May or June this year. It's all there.

ivansfo

Before I say why I didn't like the RTi, here's what I had running.

Onkyo 701 Receiver
Polk R50s
Polk R15s
Polk CSi30
SVS PB10

My TV and front speakers are recessed into an opening of a wall. Kind of like a pocket in the wall where you would put a refriderator.
This sounded pretty good to me and I was pretty pleased for the money spent. I should mention I use this system to watch DVD movies about 90% of the time.


Then I got the upgrade itch and started admiring the RTi series. With good deals to be found on Ebay, I starting building the new system. After a few months of shopping, I pieced together a RTi system consisting of:

Polk RTi8s
Polk Rti4s
Polk CSi3
Polk CSi5

Then I hooked it all up and calibrated it with my Radio Shack SPL meter. After running all my favorite movies through it, I found the sound to be hollow and lacking "presence" or "fullness". For special effects, the highs were great but those tweeters cause fatigue for my ears after an hour or so of watching movies. In order to get good movie dialog, I had to turn up the volume more. But with the volume up, those tweeters are just too loud during action scenes. No matter how I tuned the system, I could just not get the sound right.

I even got the wife involved who prefer the looks of the RTi line. She came to the same conclusion that the R series sounded better. Her words were that the old speakers sounded "more movie theater like".


With so many fans of the RTi line out there, I think they are decent speakers but just not ideal for my setup. I believe the system would have sounded better if:

1) I had a more powerful receiver. From what I read here, everyone who's happy with their RTis have more powerful amps.
2) The location of RTi8s were not ideal. The RTi8 has the power port located in the rear. So with this speaker burried in a recessed opening like I had , I think much midrange and bass was lost. This is not an issue on the Polk R50 because the port is located in the front.

And lastly, my personal taste is for speakers with a warm and and laid back sound. For those of you who were into car audio about 15 years ago, the best tweeters to me were the Nakamichi SP10s. I found the Polk Audio Pro and the popular MB Quarts were just too bright.

Good luck.

Ivan