Why I like Polk Audio Speakers

I started out in audio very young, probably around 5-6th grade I started playing with my dad's Hi-Fi and was facinated how the tiny signals from a record player could become room filling music.  Since then I've gone through a lot of stereo equipment and speakers and I finally came to the conclusion that I wanted Polk Audio speakers.  The question now, is why?

Polk Audio has been around since 1972 and their mission was to build speakers and only speakers.  They've built some of the best speakers money can buy and back a decade ago, they set out to build the ultimate in home theater surround sound and came up with a monsterous and equally impressive system that would put any system to shame.  It included 35 active drivers alone, not including subwoofers.

Why not choose speakers like Bose, Infinity, Sony, Kenwood, etc?  Bose makes a good speaker, but I always thought they were over priced and over hyped.  If you want something small that produces decent sound, go with Bose.  The others were in the market to sell their other equipment trying to catch vertical markets and not concentrating on one certain thing, from car stereos to amplifiers to shelf systems.

Since I have a limited budget, I started out trying to get the best I could get with them.  Ebay was a great start and I managed to score a pair of RT2000p main speakers, a CS400 center speaker and just recently LS-FX surrounds.  These were obviously too big for my bedroom but having speakers that are too big for a room is definitely better than too small for a room.  When moving into my house, I finally got a chance to stretch the legs of these speakers and it sounded awesome.  Granted the 2000's take up a lot of space, but rightfully so.  They have a silk domed tweeter, a 6.5" midrange, two 8" subwoofers, an amplifier and weigh in around 85 lbs each.

The sound stage is awesome and surround sound effects are dramatic.  Watching Saving Private Ryan really puts you in the middle of the action.  Just with Dolby 5.1, you can hear the bullets whizzing past you and ricocheting off the objects close by.  I'd recommend using the dipole/bipole feature of the surround speakers.  They can make a big difference, particularly if you have them set wrong (dipole when you want bipole and vice versa).

Fixing the speakers is pretty simple.  When I purchased the RT2000p's, one of the subwoofer speakers was blown and the base power ports were broken in shipping.  Replacing the parts took all of about 30 minutes and only required removal of 12 screws.  They're still going strong after 7 years.

A question I've come across lately: What's the difference between the RT series and LS series?  The LS series is flatter in response, doesn't play as loud but has a wider sound stage and more detail.  Most, if not all, are 4 ohm speakers so they do much better with a high current amplifier.  The LS series was the bigger brother to the RT series in many ways, however, the RT series is much more affordable.