LSI-9 and Yamaha RX-V2700

Yes, your reciever will drive those Polks fine.

Are these front speakers only for music or also for HT? And what is your budget for these 2 speakers?

HSU Research would be my choice for a sub if these speakers are primarily for music.

I suggest the following:

HSU Research VTF-2 MK 2 sub

A pair of these from Salk Sound

1Time...have you heard the Salks? Can you compare them to what you have heard? I really want to hear a pair.

Negative. Only from what I've read about them in this forum would I ever consider buying them or suggesting them.

Regardless of what anyone says those polks need a power amp to drive them properly since they require at least 150watts per channel to drive them properly,
And those salks will not even come close to the sound quality of the lsi9s...

Oops! louthewiz must have had an alergic reaction... lol

:d :d :d :d :d :d :d :d :d

Interesting observation. Just curious as to what you base your opinion on.

- Jim

Adequetely and properly, NO.

The LSi's are power hungry speakers, and that Yammy is made for 8ohms and not 4ohms. I'd suggest getting a good power amp for those LSi's and using the Yammy as a Pre-pro, you will appreciate the sound difference.

Mike

I cant understand how this can possibly be the case. I am an owner of a complete Salk HTS home theater system and I can tell you I did a tremendous amount of research before I purchased these speakers. I can tell you that the HTS speakers have beautiful solid cabinets, the crossovers are implemented very well, and they utilize world class drivers. If you examine the drivers used in both models, assuming the crossovers are implemented properly, there is no way the LSI-9 can outperform the Salk HTS. The ribbon tweeter of the HTS is far more transparent and extended on top than the dome tweeter of the LSI-9, and the 7" Vifa MidWoofer in the HTS will clearly outperform the 5 1/4" driver in the LSI-9. I am completely dumbfounded by your comment. The only way the LSI-9 could outperform the Salk HTS would be if Polk somehow found a way to circumvent the laws of physics. SAM ZEOLI

Maybe I am a bit one sided with the polks but my ears tell me something else ,I was able to hear them side by side and i felt that the polks brought out the mids better than the
salks , so maybe you own them and like them and I like and own the polks the bottom line is whatever sounds best to the listener is most important.

My family room is 22 x 13 x8 and I have the Polk LSi9, LSiC, and LSiFX (and 2 SVS subs). Originally, I used my Sony ES receiver to power the Polks and while at moderate listening levels, they sounded OK, when I cranked it up for a long period of time (like watching a rock concert or an action movie) the sound became fatiguing. Almost a year ago, I added a Parasound 5250 amp (325//channel, all channels, 4 ohms). Now when I raise the volume, it just gets louder without a decrease in sound quality. I use the Sony receiver as the prepro. So, you might want to consider something more powerful to drive the Polks, escpecially in your size room. Check out SVS subs...they are a good value. JEFF

I love these kinds of posts. In stark contrast to the "listen for yourself" mantra. But what does "outperform" mean? It does not mean "there is no way the Polks can sound better to you", but there are clearly some objective and demonstratable ways to compare speakers. We really get balled up in our underwear here trying to straddle the technical evaluation and personal preference sides of the fence. It should OK to discuss which speaker is built better or tests better, while realizing that all speakers have a unique sound and someone's ears will prefer damn near every one of the sounds (even Bose!).

The way i see it is the LSi9s are better quality than the Salks but they are 4ohm speakers and need a lot of power to drive them, without the power it is possible the
Salks may sound better but bottomline is the 9's are a step higher in quality, not measurably better per say but most likely slightly more accurate when it comes to
music, and the 9's also employ the vifa tweeter found in the more expensive AV123 rockets.
A receiver will not do the 9's justice at all, you need at least 200 watts of separate amplification to make them sing...

Some receivers would power them fine:
B&K
ARCAM
ROTEL
LEXICON

I have read this thread with a some interest and thought a response might be in order.

Before I begin, however, I would like to note that if you like a certain speaker, that is all that counts. Some of my best friends love their Bose systems and I never criticize. If a given speaker makes them happy, then it does what it is supposed to do. So please do not interpret any of the following comments as a slam on any particular speaker. It is intended only to clarify some issues.

There are two areas which need some clarification.

First, the fact that the LSi9's are a 4-ohm speaker has no bearing on the wattage required to drive them. A 4-ohm speaker will draw twice the current of an 8-ohm speaker. If your amp can handle higher current drawn by a 4-ohm load (and most amps produced today can), that is the only consideration where impedance is concerned.

The wattage required to drive a speaker is based solely on its sensitivity. The LSi9's are rated at 88db. This is a moderate sensitivity speaker (not as low as many designs being sold today) and would, accordingly, require a moderately powered amplifier.

Keep in mind that, on average, you are listening at about 5 - 8 watts. It is only the peaks and transients that require the extra head-room, often hitting 200 - 300 watts or more. The more watts you have available, the less clipping there will be with respect to these transients and the cleaner the sound will be. This is true of any amplifier driving any speaker.

If the 88db sensitivity rating is accurate, a GOOD 100-watt solid state amplifier should drive these just fine. (With tubes, you could even cut this in half due to the softer nature of clipping in a tube amplifier.)

Keep in mind is that while many receivers (and amps) are rated at, say, 100 watts per channel, the power supply may not be capable of delivering enough power to achieve this rated output to all channels simultaneously. This is one reason that separate amps with beefy power supplies will generally sound better. They can drive all channels to the rated output at the same time.

This is most likely the reason people have recommended a 200-watt amp be used with these speakers rather than your typical receiver. A good amp can deliver the rated output to all channels simultaneously, while a moderately-priced receiver may not.

If you had a quality amp that could deliver 100-watts per channel, at 88db sensitivity, I am sure it would power these speakers just fine.

The second area I would like to comment on is "quality." The comment was made that the LSi9's were higher quality than our HTS series MTM's. Perhaps there is a measure of quality that I am not aware of, but from my perspective, this is simply inaccurate. Allow me to explain.

There are four areas of "quality" at play where speakers are concerned.

The first is cabinet quality. If the cabinet is well built, it should not contribute anything to the sound of the speaker. It should be devoid of cabinet resonances. I will assume that Polk builds great cabinets, so let's rate it a draw in this area.

The second quality area is driver quality. In this area, the HTS speakers are a clear winner. While the dome tweeter used in the LSi9's is good, it is not in the same performance league as the G2si pure ribbon tweeter in the HTS series speakers.

You will rarely (if ever) see a ribbon tweeter in a design in this price rage because it is simply too costly.

The G2si is flat to within 1 1/2 db out to 25KHz and down only 3db at 40KHz. While you certainly can't hear frequencies this high, it is an indication that the driver is not straining at all in the audible realm.

A low-mass ribbon is capable of resolving minute detail in the overtone structure of instruments to a far greater extent than a traditional dome tweeter. The result is far more detail in the high treble. So instruments tend to sound more real since it is the overtone structure that differentiates one instrument from another when playing the same note.

The easiest way to describe the difference is to say that a good dome tweeter such as the one used in the LSi9's will produce a very nice top end. But a good ribbon, in comparison, will appear to have no top end at all and almost no veiling. The sound just goes on forever. It is like a crystal clear window into the sound.

In terms of the midwoofers, the LSi9's use a 5 1/4" driver whereas the HTS series speakers use the 7" Vifa M18. Without getting into a discussion about the strengths and weaknesses of specific cone materials, motor structures, etc., the Vifa drivers used in the HTS speakers will out-perform the 5 1/4" drivers.

So the driver quality nod would have to go to the HTS speakers.

The third area of quality is crossover design. I have not heard or taken measurements of the LSi9's, so I cannot comment on how well the crossover is executed. But I would assume Polk knows what they are doing and from the comments above, I would assume the crossover is well designed. Based on that assumption, we should rate this a draw.

The fourth an final quality area is crossover component quality. The HTS series speakers use Alphacore foil inductors, Sonicap capacitors and Mills resistors. It simply doesn't get much better than this.

While I have never seen the crossover components used in the LSi9's, I am quite sure they do not measure up to the HTS is this regard.

Why would I say that? It is simply a matter of economics.

Based on what I was able to find on the web, I would guess the target retail price of the LSi9's is about $1000. Since they are sold at retail, the wholesale cost would be about $500 - 600 (no retailer will take on a product without at least a 40% margin).

Polk has overhead, payroll, marketing costs and profit to consider. So if they are selling a speaker at $600 wholesale, they obviously can't put in $500 worth of parts. In fact, the industry standard is about 10 - 15% of the retail selling price can be allocated to parts (or the economies simply don't work out).

As a side note, we do not sell at retail. If we did, we would have to roughly double the price of our speakers to provide for the dealer mark-up. By selling direct, we are able to increase our parts budget to around 50%, rather than 10 - 15%.

So, with a total budget for parts of around $150, there is simply not enough money to purchase Alphacore, Sonicaps or Mills. The cost of parts for a pair of HTS crossovers is around $250 alone - not counting the increased cost of the G2si ribbons or the Vifa M18's.

So without even looking at the actual crossover parts used, it only makes sense that the HTS crossover parts would be of higher quality.

So, to sum it up, cabinets and crossover design quality were a draw and driver and crossover parts quality were clearly in the HTS's favor. The bottom line is that, unless there is a definition of quality that I am not seeing, the HTS speakers are clearly higher in quality.

I should also add that there are three crossover options available with the HTS series speakers. These crossovers were specifically designed for 1) in-wall use; 2) on-the-wall or up-against-the-wall use; and, 3) free-standing use. By optimizing the crossovers for these three applications, we have optimized the sound in each case. I know of only one other speaker company offering optimized crossovers for a give speaker design - another measure of quality in my opinion.

To repeat what I said above, in the end, if you are happy with what you are hearing, that is the only criteria that is important. Based on the comments above, the LSi9's are obviously a very good speaker. But a speaker can be no better than the sum of its parts. I would love to do a blind A/B comparison of these two speakers sometime and am very confident that the HTS series speakers would fair quite well.

louthewiz -

Are you absolutely certain it was the HTS speakers you heard side by side with the LSi9's? If so, I would be very curious as to where this comparison took place. Most of our business is in the ultra-high-end Veracity speaker line (over 80%). Since we don't actively promote them anywhere, there simply aren't that many HTS systems out there at present.

- Jim

Please, let's get into discussion...

Explain to me how the 7"Vifa M18 drivers outperform the LSi 5 1/4" drivers? I'm quit curious how you come to this conclusion?

Mike

Mike -

This is a VERY complicated topic and I can't get into a full-blown discussion here. But I will give you one simple example of how these drivers differ.

You will notice that both speakers have an identical F3 (the point where the bass response falls off 3db on the low end). But the way they reach that point differs.

The 5 1/4" drivers used in the LSi9's require ports in order to extend the bass response to the speaker's F3 point. This is because the drivers themselves cannot play that low in a sealed enclosure.

Since the speakers will be used in some situations where rear porting may not be feasible, the ports were placed on the front of the speaker. While this is often done, it is far from ideal. In fact, you will rarely see it done with extremely high-quality speakers. The reason is simple.

If you think about it, what sound is coming out of the ports? It is the sound generated by the rear side of the speaker cone. As it is created, this sound is exactly 180-degrees out-of-phase with the sound coming from the front of the driver. If you were somehow able to combine both the sound generated on the front and rear of the driver, they would completely cancel each other out.

The sound generated by the rear side of the cone bounces around in the interior of the cabinet and eventually exits the port. Some frequencies take a more direct route than others based on their wavelengths and the internal dimensions of the cabinet.

At certain frequencies, the sound exiting the port will be in phase with the sound coming from the front of the drivers and will reinfoce it. Other frequencies will be 180-degrees out of phase and cancel it out. Most will be somewhere in between.

Even if the driver exhibited perfectly flat response (which no driver does) to begin with, it would no longer be flat once the sound eminating from the front of the driver combines with the sound exiting the ports. The result will be dips and peaks in the summed frequency response.

Keep in mind that the main reason front ports were required is because the driver used could not generate the required bass extension without them. If the ports had been on the rear of the cabinet, it would have been far less problematic. But that would have limited the speaker's use in certain applications and, thus, limited its marketing potential. In most (if not all) cases, the decision to use front ports is a marketing decision, not a speaker design decision.

When we set out to design the HTS series speakers, we too wanted a speaker that could be used in virtually any application (which was also why we designed three crossover options). So the first part of the design process was to locate a driver that could generate the desired bass response in a smaller sealed enclosure. This pointed us toward a 7" driver and, while it was more costly, the M18 seemed to be a perfect candidate. While not as detailed as the Seas Excel W18's use in our Veracity models, it can deliver deeper bass in a small sealed enclosure.

By selecting a driver well-suited to the task at hand, we were able to deliver the same F3, but totally avoid problems related to front porting.

While this is only one of many, many criteria used to evaluate drivers, it should provide at least a glimpse into the complexity of this aspect of speaker design. You can add cone materials, motor structure, frequency response, distortion and a long list of T/S parameters to the mix.

There have been a few very good books written on the topic. If you are truly interested, I would suggest getting your hands on one or more of them. They won't be easy to digest, but when you do, you will be well on your way to being able to evaluate speaker drivers.

I hope this helps.

- Jim

No offense, while I am not a Polk dealer (though years ago I was), I feel the need to throw the "Assumptive BS" Flag . You don't know how economy of scale effects Polks costs, nor do you know how much profit they are comfortable taking , nor do we know how much you expect. There are way too many economic and buisness variables to do any kind of analysis of respective value other that with one's own ears.

No offense taken. You are certainly right that I have no knowledge as to their particular economic business model.

But even if they do spend more on parts than the industry average and have extremely good economies of scale (which I'm certain they do), you still have higher overhead, higher human resources costs, marketing costs and dealer mark-up (which is substantial) to consider. These costs would certainly eliminate any advantage economies of scale and lower margins would bring to the table.

Of course, if someone were to remove a driver and check the crossover parts, it would certainly be a very easy way to obtain a definitive answer as to crossover parts quality.

As for letting one's ears be the judge, a blind A/B shoot-out would definitely be worth setting up.

- Jim

Not neccesarily in Mexico and China
AND
there is more to a speaker than the parts....the design is also worthy of consideration.

You are right about the design consideration. In fact, that is the most critical part of the equation. Even the best parts will not guarantee a quality finished speaker. On the other hand, if the design is well-executed, higher quality parts will result in a higher quality speaker.

For example, a higher quality midwoofer will generally have lower distortion and less veiling. No amount of design expertise can change those performance attributes. So if all else is equal, the resulting speaker will have lower distortion and less veiling.

But my comments were not related to the sound quality of the LSi9's. I have never heard them and have no opinion where that is concerned. An earlier poster thought that the parts in the LSi9 were higher in quality than the parts in our HTS series MTM. I was simply trying to point out that in a speaker selling at wholesale for around $600, this was simply not possible. If you take the time to compare the actual parts, you will see what I mean.

And by the way, while most of the speaker cabinets we build are custom-crafted for each individual owner to his or her individual finish specifications and built by hand with US labor, when we designed the HTS series speakers we wanted to keep the costs as low as possible. It just so happens we sourced the HTS cabinets out of China. So your point is well taken.

- Jim

OEM, or do you operate your own factory there?

OEM. We are currnetly looking at sourcing from a plant in Cali, Columbia. Transportation costs are lower and time in transit is shorter.

By the way, I see you are in PA. Are you near Pittsburg?

- Jim

The biggest difference between the Lsi and the Salk is you can actually purchase a pair of Polks without having to wait half a year.. Speakers actually sitting in your house are always going to sound better than ones waiting to be assembled

Did you ponder that response for 18 months?

and keep this thread alive for another year..and speaking of speakers, why talk about speakers that you never had a chance to listen to? I can talk about how BMW is compared to M. Benz while I've never driven one...

Mr. Salk,
It must be aggravating and a waste of your time to be drawn into
this type of my speaker is better than yours talk but understandable as the
quality of your product was challenged and you felt the
need to defend it.Anyone who does a minimal of research
on the design and components used in your speakers can
discover that they are a good value and along with your past
reputation with many satisfied owners there is a great probability
that your product will be as good if not better in a given price
range.I don't often post here but read a lot on this forum but
my response was motivated first by my interest in your speakers along with owning polk lsi's and secondly in hope that you might read this and give
an update on the ST's with the ribbon tweeter(I assume it is the same
as the one used in the HTS) and the songsub.