polk monitor 30 home stereo speakers...

PoweredByDodge

Well I said I was going back to 2 channel stereo from my current 5 channel setup.

I'm quite sick of 5 channel. My listening habits and taste do not lend themself to 5 channel well at all.

I had intended to build some towers with like quadruple 6 1/2 inch drivers and some horn tweeters, but we're going to be remodeling the living room (nothing crazy, but repainting, fixing ****, some new furniture, new rugs... etc.) come spring, and part of the plan was to downsize the audio.

so I cleaned up my rack system, it's all neat and **** now...

anyway - right now I've got two bookshelf speakers (6 inch woofer with 1" hard dome tweeter) on mini end tables sitting on opposite ends of the room... looks good (small, simple) -- but they're nice and loud - i have little 333 uF caps on them so they're high passed at 120 hz / 6 db per octave. then i've got the mtx sub with 300 watt plate amp behind the big comfy chair.

it get loud enough to make me happy (amp is 100 x 5 rms, in stereo its 125 x 2 @ 8 ohms... 150 x 2 @ 4 ohms).

so what i wanna do is get two polk bookshelf speakers... something with "umph" but nothin too radical.

the Monitor 30's looked like what I'd be after - I am buying a VCR (ya- i said VCR) off crutchfield, and figured i'd pick some speakers out too...

so the monitor 30 in ebony is on its way - what do you guys think of them? i'd ask in the home forum - but i have no clout in there... and quite honestly, i dont think they'd understand me - i am not lookin to get into home audio the way i'm into car audio... you guys know what i mean when i say that... so any of you have experience with the monitor 30, and if so, can you answer these q's...

1- are they a nice warm sounding speaker that is good at reproducing the highs (most bookshelf i ever had - none of htem polk - were **** at reproducing high's -- seemed all muddy and **** like the mid was way over accentuated and there was like no response from the tweet --- note, i do have a 10 band EQ for fine tuning).

2- should i continue to high pass them at 120 hz with the cap, or do the speakers have built in filters??? i have never owned a quality home speaker, so i have no idea... my experience is limited to Optimus and Pioneer home ****... my current 5 channel setup was all Radio Shack satellites... so that gives u an idea of where the hell I'm coming from.

3- is having them on end tables (which puts them with the tweet firing at my chin when sitting down on the couches / chair) a good height? or am i screwed?

Toxis

spend the extra couple bucks and get the RTi4's. 10 times better speaker. I personally would take RTi6's over Monitor 50 or 60's which are a hell of a lot more money.

VR3

1) Probally not - Probally will be more forward.
2) No
3) Tilt Them Up

PoweredByDodge

damn... lol.

Well I'll give em a shot - and if I'm not happy with 'em they'll go back and I'll get a higher model... I'm not looking to spend more than like 3 bills though... which is one of the reasons I chose the Monitor 30's... damn... I was really hoping to get good reviews on them.

Toxis

RTi4's = $259/pr. Under 3 bills...

aaharvel

The Monitor 30 is a good little speaker at $200 a pair.



The problem with that is the RTi-4 is a great little speaker for only $60 more.

http://stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1004polk/

Jstas

Vinnie, if you don't like the speaker, Crotchfeel has a 30 day promise dealy there. You can call them up, tell them that you don't like the Monitor 30, return the Monitor 30, get a credit applied (includes shipping too I believe), send them back and they will ship you the RTi4's for an extra $60 bucks. It's quite easy actually. So give them a listen first. Save all the boxes and shipping material. They will send a return label with it too incase you need it. Keep them for a week or two and put them through thier paces. If they fit your needs and ideal, great! If not, call up Crotchfeel, tell them you weren't happy with them and that you want to try the RTi4's based on a recommendation from a friend/peer. Let them charge you the extra $60 and they will take care of the rest. All you gotta do is pack them back up, slap the label on and take it to the nearest UPS store (I think they use UPS) and drop it off. You'll get the new ones in a couple of days and all will be kosher again.

Honestly, I think you might like the RTi4's better too. The Monitor series is similarly voiced to the R series. At least IMO they are. They aren't exactly the same and there is a difference but they have similar dynamics. With solid state stuff, they are bright and peaky in thier response. Great for HT because they have an impact and they do voices/vocals well so they work great for dialog. However, with a tube based amp, they mellow out very nicely and the transients at the crossover points are smoother and less noticable. They get much better suited to music when used with tubes as opposed to solid state.

To get an idea, the R series and monitor series were very similar in sound to the EXIII series car speakers. They weren't the same by far but they have the same bright and peaky impact that the EX series had. Only the low end leaves something to be desired, just like the EXIII's to an extent. The RTi4, just like the older RT, RTxxi and RTi series of speakers would be comparable to the old dB series. The drivers are actually similar too. Except I do not believe that the home speakers used the same silk dome dB3000 tweeter and I know the dB crossovers were different. However, the smooth and powerful response of the dB's with the clarity and detail are there in the RTi series. I know you are a fan of the old dB's and to a lesser extent the DX series and I think the RTi series would be better suited to your ear given your previous enjoyment of teh dB/DX series speakers. The only drawback is that I have read reviews where owners found bass response to be boomy or muddy. That can be attributed to the gear they are using to drive the speakers though.

PoweredByDodge

john, many thanks for the detailed response.

i kinda knew i shoulda asked in here before i actually clicked "buy".

i'm going to stick with the solid state amp for now - probably forever honestly - i'd be going with TOTL towers or something of that nature before I'd put up the money for a tube amp. Obviously the quality improvement would be amazing, but - for me - that's not where I'm spending my $$.

couple other things i read line basically say the #1 gripe with the 30's is that they lack a real good bass response. my sub is firing up to about 125 or so... and its thundrous. that being said, i'm going to take your advice... put them through a little "do they make me happy with music type a, b, c, and d... and do they sound the way i want with movies".

i'll do them straight wired, and then try them with 6 db high pass caps at 120 Hz (and adjust the phase on the subwoofer 90 degrees to compensate). see how each suits me. after really working out my truck to split everything up, i've come to notice the **** side effects of having speakers overlap too much.

i completely get your EX3 analogy... although - on a side note - is it just me or did the EX-III actually sound better overall than the new DB's?

Either way, so you back the RTi-4's, eh? If I'm not 100% on these, I'll give the RTi-4's a chance then. it's kind of semi-exciting, finally getting a decent home audio speaker.

MacLeod

Im with everybody else that the RTi4's are a much better speaker and very hard to beat for the money.

Im with you tho on the solid state amp. Tubes are great and all but solid state works just as well for about half the price.

Jstas

I didn't say that tubes were better than solid state. I just said that the Monitor and R series seem to respond better to tubes than solid state. It's not a question of which one is better. There are shining and equally dull examples on both sides of that argument. The best reason I can think of to why tubes sound better with the Monitor and R series is because they are peaky. Tube amps tend to have a more gradual drop off at the dynamic limits than solid state. This helps smooth over the response of a peaky and overly bright speaker because the crossover points and frequency drop offs tend to blend and roll off better because of the tube amp tendency to have a soft clipping over the more abrupt hard clips in solid state gear.. It's just the inherent, poor properties of tube based amps actually masking short comings of the speaker. As far as the inherent, poor properties of the tubes amps, it's not meant in a bad way. Tubes are analog and they have a much smoother response in most cases because of that. However, on paper, it makes them look like total crap in the specs department. Neither one is better than the other. They both have trade-offs. Tubes tend to be smoother and have a fuller sound but are typically low in power. Sand amps tend to be powerful and clean but they lack the "warmth" of a tube amp. When matched up to a speaker, the speaker will either accentuate the good qualities or the bad ones.

A good example would be to take a set of KLH 17's and strap them up to a tube amp. Something as small as 10 watts per channel will work fine. Those speakers will sound spectacular on a tube amp. They virtually come to life so to speak. Put them on solid state though and they get cold and sterile in a sense. There is no life there, just accurate sound. Sometimes, that's not such a great thing. Now, take something along the lines of say an Infinity Beta and strap it up to a tube amp. It has been my experience that they sound flat and lifeless on tubes. I'm not exactly sure why because I don't know that much about them. I just know that they didn't like the tubes that much. It was like the tube amp didn't have enough guts to power them. Now, strap those Betas up to a sand amp and they will reproduce music with gusto! They are powerful and have an impact, even in the smallest version. They just sound better on solid state than they do on tubes. At least in my experience they do.

As far as cost goes, that's a misnomer. If you bought, for example, an $800 tube amp, you are not going to easily match that quality in a $400 solid state amp. You would need to drop a similar chunk of change. Then again, you can get some spectacular sounding stuff for $400 or less in both tubes and solid state. Never count out used equipment either. You can pick up some excellent gear for pennies compared to the original price.



Vinnie, I'm not sure about the EXIII's. I only ever heard them on a sound board. I heard all 3 EX series on sound boards but I own EX and EXII's so I have a good amount of experience with them. I don't think the EXIII's sounded better than the EX's. Maybe the EXII's. The EX series was my favorite out of the 3. Very lively, very bright but not fatiguing. They were great examples of how good a highly sensitive speaker could be in a car for not a whole lot of money. The II's had better power handling but also had heavier structures. That took some of the gusto away from them that the EX's had. The EXIII's used different materials and got some of it back but just weren't voiced the same. There wasn't anything wrong with them they just sounded dull compared to the original series. Compared to everything else in thier price range though, they were the bees knees! I have very little experience with the new DB series though so I can't really comment. I like the new DB series but I'm not sure it is better or worse than than any of the EX series of speakers, just...different.

Jstas

Hey, another idea. If you have a Tweeter near you, I'm pretty sure they carry the LSi series and the RTi series. At least my local one did at one point. They are usually pretty open about people wanting to do comparison shopping. If you want, get the Monitor 30's, listen to them a bit and get used to them. Give them a chance to break-in too. Then unhook them and take them over to Tweeter with you. Tell the sales guy you are considering an upgrade but would like to hear them compared to the RTi4 and it's competiton. Listen to them, listen to the sales pitch and so on. If you like the RTi4 better, tell the salesman that you are interested but you have to return the Monitor 30's first to get the rest of the money you need to get the RTi4's. Then go home and do the Crotchfeel thing. Honestly too, I wouldn't really waste your time listening to the RTi4's competion at Tweeter. Tweeter doesn't have anything better than the RTi4 in that price range.

VR3

LSi7 can be had on da Bay for around 300 bones.

brettw22

Ya know, you don't have to be afraid to post a Home Audio question in the Home Audio forum........we's good peeps.......

MacLeod

I think its Troy always running around with his pants off that scares people away!

PoweredByDodge

i fear-eth thee!

VR3

Well considering the same exact people in the HA section that would of replied to your post DID... I dont see what you accomplished...

Well actually... I wouldnt have replied to it... so I guess you gained one extra response! ...

(I dont normally reply to questions regarding Polks home speakers...) - I have answered those questions enough to make my head spin...

Oh yeah...

Don't put a high pass filter on your mains. You are moving into a land where the speakers are no longer BAD... or THAT bad. They should have a VERY natural roll off in the bass region and they should NOT distort due to playing to much bass.

You crossing them up that high will only hurt you.

And BTW, this is not a car... 60-80hz crossover in the home. (Sometimes lower) Unlike the car, in the home - the speakers have an actual tuned enclosure for some pretty authorative bass, atleast down to 80hz for bookshelves... and your sub should not be crossed over higher unless you have some really crappy mains or some small sats like Bose cubes.

MacLeod

That is a good point. The best thing about HA is that the speakers arent working in infinite baffle. They have their own, specially designed enclosure to work in so you will get much better low end response over the usual car midrange.

VR3

Exactly...

My speakers have a strong extention to around 25-30hz with adequate power...

So you go from high crossovers in a car to sometimes not even needing a sub in the home. Quite a difference.. but yall get used to it.

PoweredByDodge

i used to have towers in the house - with 12" woofers in them... i still needed a sub. although those towers were LOUD. they're in the garage now - bolted to the wall - rockin it out 24-7 / 365 at all hours of the day and night, keeping me company while i work on the cars.

VR3

Eh... you will have to abandon the thought of big = better as far as towers go.

Most towers now day are slender and incorporate alot of cool technology. I personally like having just midbasses that are tuned very low in my setup.

But you can build towers with 12's for like 120 bucks

MacLeod

Sid's right. My 6.5's in my bookshelves make plenty O bass. Enough to get me evicted if I pushed em.

Now in a bigger house they wouldnt cut it. For music maybe but for movies Id need something bigger. Still a lowly 8 with 150 watts can sound a lot bigger in a HA environment.

VR3

You picked up the RTi6 or you still pushing the shelf system?

MacLeod

All my spare money has gone into my truck system lately and now I need $800 worth of tires. So yeah, Im still running those Sony bookshelf speakers.

VR3

Man... wait till you get a pair of real Monitors...

Monitors can push out some lows dude... even in moderately large rooms...

Jstas

Vr3MxStyler2k3 wrote:

Don't put a high pass filter on your mains. You are moving into a land where the speakers are no longer BAD... or THAT bad.

Wow. That's an obtuse statement. What exactly are your trying to say? I'll ignore teh rest of the prickish post but I will point out that your exact suck-**** attitude is why Vinnie did not post this in the home audio forums. It's not the exception to encounter attitudes like that.

VR3

Im saying you shouldnt but a filter in line with your mains. There is not a reason to do it. Simple as that.

I have heard plenty of speakers however that do need it (from cheaper speakers) which Vinnie himself said he had used before.

And I quote -

i have never owned a quality home speaker, so i have no idea... my experience is limited to Optimus and Pioneer home ****... my current 5 channel setup was all Radio Shack satellites... so that gives u an idea of where the hell I'm coming from.

I'm glad that my "suck-**** attitude" is why Vinnie didnt post on the HA side because what I said is about half of what he would of received for talking about putting a high pass filter in-line with his mains and you know it.

And if the other portion of my "**** post" is the high xover call out - then so be it, thats also true. There is no reason to run a sub that high in the home unless you absolutely have to.

And if you are talking about my other post where I said I dont respond to questions about Polk home speakers - well I dont... and if your talking about the sarcastic remark before that...then...well ya know - thicker skin, all that.

I don't think Vinnie was offended, why should you be... besides to continue your crusafe of being the forum bully? Exactly...

Putting a high pass filter in line with a pair of mains, which Vinnie seems to want to use for some music use - would have another piece inline that probally wouldnt be needed and would take away from the signal at hand. Not to mention, WHY would you want to do it when the speakers dont need it... and why would you suggest someone do that when you also know they dont need to do it. I don't understand...

And I quote -

i have never owned a quality home speaker, so i have no idea... my experience is limited to Optimus and Pioneer home ****... my current 5 channel setup was all Radio Shack satellites... so that gives u an idea of where the hell I'm coming from.

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that if he bought the RTi4 or LSi7 you would have advocated him putting a high pass filter on them? Hmm... right...

And I Quote -

i have never owned a quality home speaker, so i have no idea... my experience is limited to Optimus and Pioneer home ****... my current 5 channel setup was all Radio Shack satellites... so that gives u an idea of where the hell I'm coming from.

If Polk wanted a 120hz hi-pass filter on their speakers they would have put it there.

And assuming when you state obtuse statement your saying stupid/dumb - usually when you would have to put a high-pass filter on a pair of speakers its because they are distorting due to playing to much on the lower end, which is fairly common in cheaper speakers (as you should know). Polk does NOT make a pair of speakers THAT bad. If they do, SHAME ON THEM.

And I quote -

i have never owned a quality home speaker, so i have no idea... my experience is limited to Optimus and Pioneer home ****... my current 5 channel setup was all Radio Shack satellites... so that gives u an idea of where the hell I'm coming from.

*enough rambling, stirring the pot, all that*

Signed,
"****"

Toxis

wow, I hardly even surf this forum like a lot here and Jstas is already getting on my nerves. Someone CLEARLY needs to get laid...

hellohello

oh.. no... here we go

Jstas

Wow, what a stupid kid.

But first, Toxis, you're a mental midget. Go play in traffic or something.

Sid, Trey, ****, whatever, you said "You are moving into a land where the speakers are no longer BAD... or THAT bad." which is what I was getting at. My cut and paste was a little too over-zealous. I don't care about Vinnie's hig-pass situation. If he has a set of speakers that are not good enough for his desires then he may very well need to have a high-pass crossover on them and run a sub that dreadfully high. See, the difference between me and you is that I know Vinnie well enough to know that he does know something about what he is doing. Would I do it? No, I'd just find another set of speakers that suit me. Can we all do that? No. So if money was tight and I could solve my problem by running an average sub at a higher crossover point to save the full-range speakers for a whole 10 bucks then, I probably would. Is it right? No, not necessarily. Does it solve the problem? Yes but only temporarily because you will be over-working your subwoofer.

See, if you had read any of Vinnie's post or actually comprehended anything he has said in any of them ever, if you actually read any, you'd know. You'd know that Vinnie is the first to jump when someone is telling everyone that they are running a subwoofer crossover at over 80 Hz. According to your logic though, one would need to do that in a car because cars are some kind of anomaly where light and sound somehow travel differently. No, sorry, Vinnie didn't do that out of desire, he did it out of necessity most likely. The guy has built his own crossovers and has had a small side business in the past repairing amplifiers. He's also built his own enclosures. I think he deserves a bit more respect than the pile of crap you just gave him over a set of capacitors. I don't care how much you know or how great you are because you decided you contributed enough to the forum by answering the endless Polk Audio questions. I wonder why there are so many Polk Audio questions on a Polk Audio forum? That attitude sucks. Yeah, sure, everybody gets tired of answering the same questions over and over. Does that mean that a single person has to do it every single time? No. It is nice when other people pick up the flag and lead the way too. Do you have to answer them all? No. You don't have to tell everyone you don't either. I don't answer them all but there are plenty of other people to pick up the ball and when I don't have a desire to do so. I'm not going to sit here though and tell everyone how great I am because I don't help.

Now, "the forum bully"? Hmm, lets see, you are ragging on another member, you have teh obvious attitude that you are above everyone else and you are going to make issues out of it. No, I'm not being a bully, I'm telling you that your attitude sucks. If my attitude has to suck because of it then fine. I can live with myself because I'd rather be a **** to another **** and know that I stood up for what I felt was right than to sit idly by and let someone bag on someone else for silly ****. If Vinnie started expounding upon how great it was and silly the rest of us were for not doing it then I'd get on Vinnie's **** about it and back up your statements. That wasn't the case though. All he did was explain a situation and you basically told him he was stupid, questioned his abilities, told him that he should feel priviledged because you don't have the time for silly Polk Audio questions and then derided the entire car audio industry by patronizing Vinnie with your statements implying that car audio speakers are bad and that the only reason any crossovers are used in car audio is to compensate for poor drivers. If you had been at the Polk HQ tour, you would have seen quite a few car audio drivers well beyond your expectations. Especially when these lowly speakers were being compared to B&W 801's.

So no, I'm not being a bully. I'm just calling you on your crap.

I never said I was offended. I asked you what you meant by the statement above, which you still haven't answered teh question and then I called you on your poor attitude. I'm not offended, I just think you are way outta line.

PoweredByDodge

.... and look what I started....

back on topic though guys... John, as another way of looking at this - I always felt that it was easier to prove someone or something wrong or right by laying out the facts at hand, discarding opinion, and then letting the observer come to agree with your opinion by seeing the same facts that made you have that opinion in the first place...

so my natural question, which comes from the actual desire to know this, since it'll be dealing with it when they speakers show up...

VR - when you say that home speakers have a natural roll off... I'm only half understanding you. Natural to me normally means gradual, and in very small increments (for example, 6 db/octave would be more "natural" than 24 db/octave). But I don't think that's what you meant... Say the frequency response of the Monitor 30 or even the RTi-4 bottoms out at 55 Hz (just random number, I believe that is close of those speakers)... are they going to drop like a brick wall at 55 or so? Or is 55 is -3db point, the -12 db point?? or is 55 where they're at virtually no response (say 24 or 36 db)?

I ask because I'm trying to figure out how much overlap you would want between the front speakers and the sub. If the general idea is to get a pretty flat response curve, and we'll assume that the shelf speakers are flat - and we'll assume the sub is flat - then where do we "blend" them so as that we don't get more than negligable overlap?

i realize that going to high (say with a high pass cap on the speakers at 100 hz or something - and running the sub up to 100) would result in ruining the imaging - it wouldn't kill it - but compared to what it would be if that bass was coming from where it was supposed to be coming from, it would be ****.

the other thing to consider is the power handling of the speakers at something like 55 Hz... will they handle 100 watts rms at that level, or will it make them move uncontrollably?

it's a lot of questions, i know, but there has to be some logic / reasonable pattern by which a home speaker is mated to a home sub... something better than "set your sub for 60 or 80 or whatever and let your speakers go down to virtual zero" ...

Toxis

Jstas wrote:

Wow, what a stupid kid.

But first, Toxis, you're a mental midget. Go play in traffic or something.

So you're saying my brain is stunted in growth? Interesting concept... but try again. Your sarcasm needs a LOT of work. It's just not funny.