Polk LSi Speakers

demaples

I am new at this high end equipment so bear with me. I assume these amps are connected to the pre-outs on the 805? Thanks a bunch in advance.
Dennis

texasol

I'm using a Denon AVR-3805 with Rotel RMB-1075 amp to run a pair of LSI 15's, LSI FX's and an LSI-C and the sound quality is amazing. The SVS PB12-Plus/2 provides more then enough bass to compliment the rest of the speakers. I don't listen to much music through my setup but for home theater it has exceeded my expectations.

I've been thinking about changing receivers to the AVR-4308CI to take advantage of Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD. Can anyone offer any feedback on how Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD sound on the LSI's?

be83663

texasol wrote: »

I'm using a Denon AVR-3805 with Rotel RMB-1075 amp to run a pair of LSI 15's, LSI FX's and an LSI-C and the sound quality is amazing. The SVS PB12-Plus/2 provides more then enough bass to compliment the rest of the speakers. I don't listen to much music through my setup but for home theater it has exceeded my expectations.

I've been thinking about changing receivers to the AVR-4308CI to take advantage of Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD. Can anyone offer any feedback on how Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD sound on the LSI's?

Can you get a Blu-Ray player instead, like SONY S2000ES, that decodes Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD and send via PCM format to your receiver? Or does it sound better if Blu-Ray player sends those audio formats bit-stream to the Receiver for the receiver to decode the formats, in which case you would need a recevier with such decoding functionalities?

demaples

Anybody have a decent 7.1 amp for sale?

dkg999

demaples - we have a wanted to buy forum that you can post your request in. You would be looking for a 7 ch amp, not a 7.1 amp.

cfrizz

Yes, you would use the preouts to connect the amp to your receiver.

demaples wrote: »

I am new at this high end equipment so bear with me. I assume these amps are connected to the pre-outs on the 805? Thanks a bunch in advance.
Dennis

be83663

Dear demaples,

Think twice about buying a separate amp for your receiver. It could be a waste of money to spend $1,000 for a separate amp (unless you spend $2,000-3,000 for a much better new one; personally I prefer to buy a new one) for a few more wpc (think about it; Onkyo 805 is also $1,000) and not make a use of your current receiver's amplifier, just because of what people who never used, not just any receiver but, a certified 4-ohms performance Onkyo 805 are saying! That's just my advice as someone who will use the same receiver as yours now for smaller LSi speakers.

Or as cfrizz had mentioned, you can get Emotiva's new XPA-series 2-ch and 5-ch amps for around $1,600-$2,000, including tax and shipping, for 7.1 system, and get 400 wpc for your LSi25 fronts and 250 wpc for the rest. That would be awesome! But I will continue to use my Onkyo 805 because I do love my Onkyo 805 too much that it caused all the fury in this forum! Good luck in your new endeavors! Thanks.

Gaara

nm I wont feed the troll.

demples, you don't have to spend a lot to get a improvement. Look in the used market and you should be able to snag a nice 5ch or 7ch amp for less then $1k that will offer a large improvement. Right now there is a 5ch B&K for $550 and a 5ch Parasound for $700 that will offer a large improvement over your Onkyo for not to much coin. This is coming from personal experience upgrading from a receiver power to a external amp, I have used B&K, Parasound, Rotel, Earthquake, and others in a all LSi system.

jayman_1975

I think this guy has been misinformed. Just because your ONK is THX certified doesn't mean it's certified to feed the LSI's as much power as they need if you want to crank it up and not damage them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using your Onk with those speakers...nothing. Just don't max it out. Simple. For some time i used an old crappy sharp boombox to power a set of monitor 40's. Did i wreck the speakers? Nope...i didn't turn it up loud enough to. That analogy about the half ton is great...and you came back with a very valid point...yes you have the 1000lb load (4 olm speaks), yes you only have the half ton truck....yes it will work fine...you just wont be doing any off-roading!! or you'll break the **** out of the suspension (tweeters, woofers, amp).

foxyss

Emotiva's are great amps. I have two of them (XPA-5 and LPA-1) and love em'.

Ron Temple

We've beaten this subject to death...let's move on.

cfrizz

Welcome Foxy.

jayman_1975

it's bad enough that he wants our opinions and then argues with it...but now he's trying to steer a newbie in the wrong direction too....wow..and I thought my kids were hard headed and stubborn.

be83663

maximillian wrote: »

I am glad it worked out for you. For what it's worth... I am in LA for work and dropped in at Fry's. They had a couple LSi9's hooked up to an 805 so I wanted to hear them to see how they really sounded. To me they sounded flat. My RTi6's sound better. Since I know that this shouldn't be the case, I believe that 805 is starving them of power. The other possibility is that the demo units were beat up and possibly broken.

So I see that you noticed at least that even Fry's is using Onkyo 805 for the LSi's too, maximillian!

wizzy

tonyb

be83663 wrote: »

So I see that at least you noticed that even Fry's is using Onkyo 805 for the LSi's too, maximillian!

Sure sign of a true audiophile.......

If "Fry's" is doing it,it must be ok.....you know Fry's,that high end audio store:rolleyes:

You really need to educate yourself before opening your mouth.You only confirm the obvious.

cfrizz

that's why I put the troll on ignore Jay. But since everyone else in this thread is saying the exact opposite, Demaples is getting the right opinion on this issue & is going in the right direction.

jayman_1975 wrote: »

it's bad enough that he wants our opinions and then argues with it...but now he's trying to steer a newbie in the wrong direction too....wow..and I thought my kids were hard headed and stubborn.

demaples

Thank you all, I appreciate all the info. I'll be keeping the volume low till I find exactly what I'm looking for in a 7 channel amp. It appears I can upgrade for around $2000 or less. It's rather funny since I started with what I thought was a decent Sony 5.1 home theater in a box and a vintage but decent Kenwood 2 channel system and wanted to combine the 2 for the sake of space. After spending close to $4000 I'm still on the hunt for better sound. Guess I'm hooked. My girlfriend says I'm crazy and obsessed. Thanks again.

maximillian

tonyb wrote: »

Sure sign of a true audiophile.......

If "Fry's" is doing it,it must be ok.....you know Fry's,that high end audio store:rolleyes:

Besides that he took my comment out of context. I went to Fry's to try to listen to the 9's and see how awesome they sound. They sounded like crap. Again, my RTi6's sounded so much better. Since this should not be the case it could only be because the 805 was starving them of their potential. I took the grills off and the speakers looked fine. It could be that the tweeters were blown due to driving them with an underpowered receiver, but I didn't really look into it too much.

ohskigod

be83663 wrote: »

Dear demaples,

Think twice about buying a separate amp for your receiver. It could be a waste of money to spend $1,000 for a separate amp (unless you spend $2,000-3,000 for a much better new one; personally I prefer to buy a new one) for a few more wpc (think about it; Onkyo 805 is also $1,000)

saying the amp section of the Onk being on par with seperate amplification based on the same price is wrong on so many levels, I dont even know where to begin.

Max, get juice on those LSi's, you will get return on investment. if the Onk is rated 4 ohms, its certainly not a defcon 1 emergency by any means (still be a little cautious), but certainly upgrade amplification LONG before you think of getting new speaks.

sounds like you got the jist already, I'm just another proud LSi owner reafirming what others said

be83663

Come on guys, don't talk like you guys are true audiophiles! At best you would be a Polk Master, right? Some people here want to pretend like an audiophile, and some people like myself are just trying to setup a decent system while trying not to imitate a true audiophile. So I don't feel and neither should anyone of you feel embarrassed at imitating a setup as shown at Fry's! A true audiophile should have a knowledge and an ability to explain that knowledge to others too; but you know that most people here lack both or at least the latter! I am not directing this to all experienced audiophiles here; but you know whom I am talking about if it is you!

And dear demaples, what's more important than setting a Home Theatre System out of your impulse is your relationship; don't let your temptation to spend more money in any way affect your relationship negatively! Even an Onkyo-lover like myself (my blood test on my today's annual physical exam confirmed that I have Onkyo in my blood) was tempted for awhile to buy an amp or two after hearing all these talks from these guys for the past few days, but I managed to restrain myself from spending more money!!! You wouldn't want to make buying electronic gadgets a priority over a relationship with your significant others and over buying your own house, when you are still living in an apartment, for example!!! There should be a bigger goal in men's life! By the way, it is amazing that maximillian noticed what kind of receiver brand and model was used to demonstrate LSi9's at Fry's. The series Onkyo 805 must have left a big impression on his mind that he still remembers that the receiver he had witnessed was actually an 805. He must have asked an associate there what the model was, because for some reason Onkyo 805 does not have a model number on the display on its unit; you can't know whether it is 805 or not; he might have thought that every black-colored Onkyo is TX-SR805.

So here is an exchange of my e-mail with Brian, the one who wrote an extensive review regarding the now infamous Onkyo 805; and I want to thank Ron Temple for giving me this link:

My Original Question was:

Hi, Mr. Brian Florian.

I just found a way to contact you now via your e-mail address; but I had tried to send you the same message to one of your blogs just a few minutes before sending you this e-mail.

Anyway, I read an article about Onkyo 805 Receiver that you wrote in September of last year. http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_14_3/onkyo-tx-sr805-receiver-9-2006-part-5.html

I have Onkyo 805 and am considering connecting it to 4-ohms Polk Audio LSi series speakers.

According to your article, the receiver produces 151 watts/channel at 4-ohms load at the receiver's 4-ohms setting with 1% THD for two channels. Most people I talked to at Polk Audio forums said that my receiver would not be good enough for handling 4-ohms speakers. Could you give me an insight as to whether I can hook up the receiver to 4-ohms speakers and if the THD would be too great to damage the speakers over a long term if I use the receiver in 7.1 mode for watching a movie? Do I have to worry about damaging the speakers or the receiver over a long term if I turn the volume up too high, like some people are suggesting would happen? And lastly, would it be totally unadvisable to set the receiver at its default setting of 6-ohms with 4-ohms speakers connected to the receiver, in order to get 270 watts/channel; would it totally damage the receiver and speakers if I did that?

I would greatly appreciate your insightful response because this has been bothering me for a while. Thank you! Sincerely, Ken.

And his reply was:

You can damage just about any setup by playing it too loud. The question always is, how loud is too loud. That I can’t answer from here.

Consider what I said in the review though: With 4ohm speakers and the 4ohm setting, onset of clipping is at about 150Watts. If you had 8ohm speakers and the corresponding >6ohm setting, onset of clipping would be at only 170Watts. That is NOT a world of difference.

So 4/8ohms speakers is not the question, but rather is the 805 powerful enough for you, period?

BY FAR speaker efficiency is the most important factor here. For example, my 3.5ohm speakers are about 6dB more efficient than an 8ohm set I’m reviewing right now. That means that for a given level, I need TWICE the power for the 8ohm speakers as I do with my 4ohm ones!

The bottom line is that with any receiver, you just have to be careful, especially with inefficient speakers.

Brian

I hope this would help you too demaples (but if you can afford an extra money for an amp, then I think Emotiva Audio MPS2 7-channel looks awesome for your system!) and all those ignorants and immature grown-up-wanna-be stuck-ups in here!!! To make my main point again, did anyone of you already know this? But did you not know how to explain these to me at the beginning? This was actually what I had always wanted to know from the beginning. I know that my Onkyo 805 is not better than or even as good as a separate amp though. And I live in an apartment and don't want to deal with the police dispatched by my neighbors often, so that is another reason that Onkyo 805 would work for me; and I can't spend extra money now! Thank you!

tonyb

The High Fidelity "Fry's" forum is across the street and over a few blocks.Jeez.....

jayman_1975

I guess when everyone here said that the LSI's need good clean power it's because it's generally known by people that own them that they are inneficient. Heck..i even know that and i don't even own them yet. I do however know the real world effects of differences in speaker efficiencies vs the power required to push said speakers. And i'm not an audiophile.

Your comment on Maximillian having went out of his way to find out what reciever was pushing the LSI's at Fry's.....well...that's what we do...we inquire...why...cause we think about audio...talk about audio..and when we hear speakers we make a point of at least finding out what the heck was powering them. Because the way they sound depends hugely on what they're connected to. And it seemed that it stuck out in his mind because that ONK was doing a pretty **** job at that.

venomclan

Do you mean to tell me that my Onkyo THX Certified AVR, which went into protect mode often, then completely fryed, was better than all my other gear to date, I am using it as a door stop in the garage, let me go hook it back up. Thanks for setting me straight.
Venom

maximillian

be83663 wrote: »

By the way, it is amazing that maximillian noticed what kind of receiver brand and model was used to demonstrate LSi9's at Fry's. The series Onkyo 805 must have left a big impression on his mind that he still remembers that the receiver he had witnessed was actually an 805.

Actually, what left the impression was:
1) How crappy the LSi9's sounded.
2) The big sales label on the unit which said what model it was.

Again, I was really looking forward to hearing audiophile grade speakers since the nearest Polk dealer from my home is 3 hours away. When I heard them I had a big WTF? Of course I would at least look to see what was driving them. The LSi9's sounded worse than my RTi6's and maybe even my R50's. Do you honestly believe that this is the case or do you think that just maybe there is another factor, like the AVR that is driving them? Again, I didn't really detect any damage to the speakers so I really think it was the AVR. Based on MANY opinions on this and other forums I think that the evidence points to the AVR.

Finally, I am relatively new to this hobby. I am at least humble enough to admit this and thus listen to the wonderful advice of all the people on this and other audio forums.

Face

If you thought LSi9's sounded worse than RTi's, something was seriously wrong with that setup.

Gaara

I first heard the LSi9s being powered by a mid line Marantz receiver and was blown away by how they sounded. It got better when I tried them with a Parasound amp, but even with the Marantz they were much better then anything I had heard, and I listened to the RTi line all day (I was a audio salesman).

cfrizz

:eek::eek::eek: OMG talk about the worst case scenario!!!:eek::eek::eek:

venomclan wrote: »

Do you mean to tell me that my Onkyo THX Certified AVR, which went into protect mode often, then completely fryed, was better than all my other gear to date, I am using it as a door stop in the garage, let me go hook it back up. Thanks for setting me straight.
Venom

be83663

venomclan wrote: »

Do you mean to tell me that my Onkyo THX Certified AVR, which went into protect mode often, then completely fryed, was better than all my other gear to date, I am using it as a door stop in the garage, let me go hook it back up. Thanks for setting me straight.
Venom

I am glad that you are an Onkyo lover too that you had bought one too!

be83663

After many thoughts inspired and chanllenged by people in this forum, I have decided to upgrade my receiver from Onkyo TX-SR805 to Onkyo TX-NR905 for $1,600. It has a toroidal transformer and independent transformers for audio and video processing for independent power supplies. I am sure it will be better for handling 4-ohms speakers like LSi's than TX-SR805. There is a receiver from Rotel, a 7-channel receiver RSX-1067, for $2,199 also that also has a toroidal transformer and produces 100 watts/ch, 0.05% THD, 8-ohms, all seven channels driven. But I thought Onkyo TX-NR905 was better than Rotel RSX-1067. Thank you.