[riley08]


i have purchased  some polk RTIA1 speakers open box from onecall and i have a onkyo TX8020 50/W channel stereo receiver. will this combo give me adequate results for sound and power. i am putting together a simple 2-channel music setup in my living room. thanks

 

edit..... i didnt know whether to post this here or in receiver section?

 

[FMW]

Sure, it will work fine. It will work a whole lot better if you add a subwoofer. The bookshelf speakers do not reproduce much bass.

 

[riley08]


i have a sub. a velodyne VX10 i think is the model # that i bought a few weeks ago. it works fine. i was just concerned that these speakers would not have enough juice to power them well enough. my other speakers  were some sony bookshelfs and i wanted some better speakers to move up in quality of the sound!

 

[commsysman]

I think you have a fairly good setup there, except that I suspect that the amplifier will not have very good sound quality.


Onkyo amps and receivers sound edgy and bright to me.


For a much better-sounding amplifier consider the Music Hall 15.3 amplifier or the Cambridge 651A.


Power is really not what you want to look at with an amplifier; it is how well it maintains low distortion when driving real speakers (not an 8 ohm resistive load, which is no test at all). Onkyo designs are not very good at this IMO. Real speakers are a load that is 100 times as tough as a resistor; the amp works much harder and distortion goes way up.


Published power ratings are essentially worthless. 50 watts is plenty of power to drive those speakers IF the distortion is kept low; big if.


Unfortunately, unless you happen to have a $40,000 distortion analyzer handy, the only way to tell how low the distortion is is to hook it to your speakers and listen.