Which speaker, polk or infinity

moviefan

Hi,
i`m new in this forum, i want to build my home theater, before i search on the web i bougtht Bose Acoustimass 3 Speaker System beacause my idea was to build my home theater with bose speakers but didn`t know the bose have a very bad reviews, there are a lot of better speaker and cheaper than bose. Definetly i`m not going to buy more bose speakers, maybe polk or infinity but i can`t decide which ones, polk or infinity, which one are better?
Now i don`t know what to do with Bose Acoustimass 3 Speaker System, is it good for sorround system?

Any advice for the speakers

thnx

Holydoc

Welcome to the forums Moviefan. Only problem with asking in a Polk forum whether you should choose Polk or Infinity is that your answer is going to be very one sided.

What kind of a budget do you have? Are you looking for a Home theatre or a music system? How big a room do you have?

dorokusai

Infinity stopped making good speakers ages ago...the answer is easy.

PolkThug

Ebay the Bose. Buy Polk.

michael_w

Dorokusai is fairly dead on with that one. I'd go polk if it was down to those two choices.

That said, if you give us a budget and some other things like what music you listen to, ratio of music to movie listening / watching, what you plan to power these with and maybe any future goals you have (as in do you plan to upgrade later) we can try to guide you in buying something you'll enjoy a lot more than what you have currently.

Glad you're drifting away from bose

Ern Dog

Is it too late to return the Bose system? You know you want Polk speakers, so just figure out how much you can spend and give yourself what you want.

Mike682

Polk

tommyboy

welcome to the forum moviefan

Here is some advice Ive learned so far from this forum and from working at CC for two years.

1. don't buy bose for sound quality:)
2. bigger speakers are usually better (comparing towers with bookshelfs,satelites).
3. Don't ever buy something by looking at specs, buy with your ears.
4. Older speakers/recievers usually have better sound. My opinion, new model speakers only comes out to be made cheaper.
5. You get what you pay for.

You didn't say if you wanted towers or bookshelf, so if your comparing just say the Infinity primus series and the polk monitor series... the monitor series is definitely way to go. Just give us more info on what you want and we'll go from there.

tommyboy

jeffwalter

Moviefan,
I may be unique in that I have owned and currently own both Infinity and Polk speakers. Both companies make good products but it really comes down to what sounds good to you. The nice thing about Polk and Infinity is that they are easily accessible and you should be able to audition both.

With that said I have to say from my recent experience shopping for a new home theater setup that the Polk speakers performed much better than the Infinity's and I preferred the sound of the Polk's in the same price/size category. You may have a different opinion than this once you go out and compare for yourself. The thing that was most noticeable to me was that the Polk's sounded better overall for both movies and 2 channel music. The Infinity's sounded good with movies and surround but I was very disappointed listening to them with 2 channel audio. I would agree with other posters in here that Infinity has slipped dramatically in this area since the late 80's early 90's.

Toxis

I personally love my polks and recommend them all the time. Personally, I would never own a set of new Infinities unless I could eBay them for a profit. I sell both brands at my shop and never recommend Infinity. But to be unbiased, the only real answer here is to have YOU go listen to them and make up your own mind as to which ones sound better. It's not our money, it's not our ears, it's not us listening to them daily.

dorokusai

The Beta, Cascade and Primus series are absolutely horrible from a 2CH perspective....almost any speaker can do HT.

Shizelbs

The main drawback to Infinities is that they are not large enough to serve as an outhouse.

simphiwes

Hi MovieFan, i am fairly new on this forum but have been playing around which audio equipment since forever. You probably bought the bose because you thought is was good stuff becase it cost more than all the other HTin a Box. Comparatively speacking that might have been true to a certain extent and maybe you didnt realy want to fuss in auditioning the other brands because somehow the choice was just logical. I have been in that boat before and i would say, take the advise the guys on here give you. You need to audition the equipment you want to buy, in this case the infinity or polk. pesrsonaly i havent owned the infinity but have listened to them. i dont like trashing any brand cause whats bad to me might be good to you. In my opinion the infinity's are a bit in the bright side, meaning the higher friequencies can sound a little harsh and the lower end is fairly good but if you like that kind of sound then this is the way to go for you. Polks for me are good all round speakers not too harsh but clearer, the midrange is decent and the lower frequencies are decent and they are value for money. A speaker in the infinity range thats good to your ears may cost sometimes double compared to the polk sounding just as good. Basically you dont have to pay so much to get good perfomance speackers from polk but in the end you chose. But do yourself one favour, understand this now and you will have years of enjoyment with your equipment, what you think is right and sounds good to you then thats right cause alway looking for the right equipment to buy is like chasing your tail. hopefully i havent confused you even more.

Willow

Shizelbs wrote:

The main drawback to Infinities is that they are not large enough to serve as an outhouse.

No ...... but a urinal !

Demiurge

Like anything else, go listen to the speakers and let your ears decide what you think. I'd be surprised if you went with Infinity over Polk after comparing the two, but it's your money.

Do you have any shops in your area with setups of both brands?

cstpeter

Of note, Stereophile gave very good reviews to both the Infinity Primus 150 ($178):

http://stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/404infinity/

and the Polk RTi4 ($319):

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

That said, you should trust your ears, not these reviews. Just thought I'd point them out.

dorokusai

Stereophile hasn't given a bad review since they started to include advertisments in their publication....which would be from Day 1.

moviefan

Thnxs for the replies, i will take the advices, i will listen it first.
The room is small so i don`t need a loudspeaker, i don`t have the sizes i will post it later, i like the satellite speakers because i can hide it i love watching movies, i`m a movie fan hehe so i like a speaker to sound good for movies, like action movies feel all the action like on the theater. I was looking this polk speakers Polk Audio RM20 5-Pack (BK) it is good?
About the bose can i put it for surround? i spend $200 i don`t know if i can sell it, if nobody want to buy it because the bad reviews haha, i was thinking to use the bose speaker for surround, and buy polk 2 front speaker and 1 center, worth it?

tommyboy

moviefan wrote:

Thnxs for the replies, i will take the advices, i will listen it first.
The room is small so i don`t need a loudspeaker, i don`t have the sizes i will post it later, i like the satellite speakers because i can hide it i love watching movies, i`m a movie fan hehe so i like a speaker to sound good for movies, like action movies feel all the action like on the theater. I was looking this polk speakers Polk Audio RM20 5-Pack (BK) it is good?
About the bose can i put it for surround? i spend $200 i don`t know if i can sell it, if nobody want to buy it because the bad reviews haha, i was thinking to use the bose speaker for surround, and buy polk 2 front speaker and 1 center, worth it?

Tower speakers (or loudspeakers, call them whatever you want) will sound much better then satelites in very small room as well as very big rooms. The bose you bought came with a bass module that doesn't do anything:) , you are better off getting rid of that am3 and (if you still want to stay with satelites) buy one of the RM series. The polk rm6800 for $700 sounds much better than the bose am10 for $1000.

Just to tell you now though, you would be much happier with bigger speakers like the R series. These are entry level speakers but will still sound much better than almost any satelite system, and you can get them really cheap nowadays. just my 2 cents.

tommyboy

marker

dorokusai wrote:

Stereophile hasn't given a bad review since they started to include advertisments in their publication....which would be from Day 1.

The NHT T6 recently got a Class A rating from them a little less than a year ago, and trust me on this, it most definitely was not because of NHT's nonexistent advertising in Stereophile, or anywhere else for that matter (although that may eventually change now with the new, more financially stable ownership).

*Seby*-Polk-

Polk has better sound than Infinity. More detailed...more clean. The closest competitor of Polk is Klipsch, another great brand of speakers.