Lsi's- their best at music or movies ??

begbie

I was wondering where the Lsi's shine with their best performance? In music or movies ?? Which playback keeps making you go WOW?!

I'm figuring music as that was (I believe) Polks starting point on developing the Lsi. Though I'm sure most some of you Lsi owners will say both.

phuz

Generaly speaking I say both.

The place that I've noticed that they shine the most in is contemporary digital media. Wether it be a DVD or a CD of digital music (electronic music, no real instruments/band).

They don't really fall short anywhere though. Good question, and tough to answer.

Shizelbs

I've been wow'ed by both

polkatese

I would say music is where it shines. I listened quite a bit to acoustic instruments and have to say that the sound of piano, brass, and so on are pretty darn accurate. In HT, they are very enjoyable too.

mantis

I'd also say music first and home theater second.

Music is very involving as polkatese pointed somewhat out.Home Theater clarity is just a beautiful benefit.They shine for theater......

Shizelbs

For those of you who think they are better at music, is this due to other things? For instance, I find myself distracted at times by the image of the movie when listening to the audio. Example: I have been using my computer to play DVDs. The sound was normal, but from my computer monitor, the image was incredible. Now I have a real DVD player, and I am watching movies on a POS 15 year old TV. The image is terrible, and lately I have been wondering if the sound is awful too. I think this may be from the image tainting the sound. Any takers on that theory?
Furthermore, at times I wonder if the audio tracks to DVD's are inferior to the audio of just plain old CDs. I mean, thats all CD are for. I would be suprised to hear that Hollywood, at all times, takes more effort into recording effects and voices than professional musicians do. I realize that a lot of musicians do not care about recording quality, but there are a lot of those that do. Furthermore, the people in this forum are the type that listen to the musicians with great recordings. Furthermore yet, I am willing to bet that those that don't own the LSi speakers, and just demo them at stores, break in these great refernce quality recordings when they listen to the LSi. Could this also not be the reason for the slightly favored music performance over movies?
Just a thought. Not trying to start anything here. I've only heard DVD-A on them, so I can't compare, although I still say I have been effectively wow'ed.

polkatese

It is hard to enjoy the music when I have to concetrate on the storyline, unless if it is a Sting's DVD Video. The other point is, about 50% (or more) of audio contents on any given movies are dialogs that mainly coming out from the center channel. So, until we get to the special sound effects, explosions, etc. we don't really focus our attentions to the audio quality (i.e. speakers). On DVD-Video (Sting, Diana Krell, Sade, etc.) the audio quality on these are superb and since these are live concerts, they are even more relevant in using 5.1 to recreate the event. As always, it's IMO..

mantis

Shizelbs,
Let me start by saying this........
The lsi series are incredible no matter what you play on them.They are great speakers for both theater and music.

Music is why I bought them as I wanted better then RT series quality music reproduction.The rt series are good speakers but not great speakers.Lsi series are great speakers.

Theater is very demanding on speakers.Alot of info going on.Alot of poorly designed speakers miss half or more of the soundtrack,just like music.When you have higher quality musical speakers,you also have higher quality theater speakers.

Polk does it right when it comes to theater.They make bi pole/di pole rears,which in my opnion is essential.The center is a carbon copy of the mains and the surroundback channel is perfect for that job(Lsi7's).They are lacking a sub currently,but that should change when the psw808 comes out.We shall see.

scottvamp

Ya what Mantis said and stuff.;)
Let's see giving me a 50/50 shot - hmmmmm i'd say music should sound "good".:p

burienboys

Coming from someonewho knows absolutley nothing about the technical side of CD's vs DVD's audio reproduction, I can say DVD's, in DTS, 5.1 or the like, sound better to me. Having said that, SACD and DVD-a sound amazing on LSi's, especially at higher volume levels, like is there another way to listen? Want emperical proof? Listen to Hotel California, Dark Side of the moon or Diane Krall....in DVD/SACD....fabulous!

It seems only logicial that DVD's would have better sound as they have way more data on them compared to a CD. Don't know how much of that data is audio compared to video, would be interesting to find out.

An important note: not all DVD's are recorded with DTS or Dolby digital sound tracks, check the info on the covers. Many are mono or just stereo.

That's my 2 cents worth.

Rick