[karlsaudio]

Well, after getting my Polk Monitor 40s and listening to them for awile, I am now getting what some of you have said about them being "bright" or "harsh" Listening to everything from rock to jazz to classical, I find myself having to turn down the treble a little bit each time. Trying to get that bite out of them. Is the fact that they reach up to 24kHz the reason?

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate them. I just think I am going to put these in the living room and get something else for my main listening area and HT.


Karl

 

[afrogt]

If your listening area has bare walls, hardwood flooring, etc that will contribute to the brightness. You can do some acoustical treatments to combat some of this but the Polks are only $110-$150 so maybe you will want to sell or replace them.


Cornhulio should be chiming in any minute now to write about the Polk's brightness.


The Energy RC-10 would be much mellower and balanced sounding speaker.

 

[buzzy_]



Quote:
Originally Posted by afrogt /forum/post/18235769


If your listening area has bare walls, hardwood flooring, etc that will contribute to the brightness.

IMO the vast majority of the people who post in this forum with comments about their speakers are really hearing the effects of their room or placement.

 

[batpig]

very true, but different speakers DO have inherent "tonal" qualities that differ among brands/models.... again, not disagreeing with you in basic premise though

the bottom line is that the Polks are entry-level speakers. Quality high freq performance is not cheap, pretty much any entry-level speaker when "cranked up" is either going to sound harsh, or will deal with that by having a rolled-off/recessed treble. It costs money to be able to crank up a speaker loud and have the treble sound smooth and refined and non-fatiguing, although as you (correctly) point out the room acoustics are also a HUGE contributing factor.

 

[Lhasa-lover]



Quote:
Originally Posted by batpig /forum/post/18235808


...Quality high freq performance is not cheap, pretty much any entry-level speaker when "cranked up" is either going to sound harsh, or will deal with that by having a rolled-off/recessed treble. It costs money to be able to crank up a speaker loud and have the treble sound smooth and refined and non-fatiguing...

Never heard it said better. Frankly this issue surfaces with quite a few speakers other than entry level ones. I've gone through well over a dozen brands/models at all levels of price and constantly run into this issue. Very hard to solve.

 

[cornhulio]

I agree with everything said here. As you know I bought a Polk CSI3 center assuming it would sound similar in brightness to my vintage polk SDA's. Man was I wrong. Sounded fine for HT which is mostly dialog, action related sounds and occasional background music. Put in a music dvd and was very disappointed with the brightness so it had to go. A bright young AVSer

recommended enlarging the hole and putting a tweeter from my vintage SDAs in it which eliminated the brightness. Warm and smooth now with a Yamaha HTR-5960 making it sound similar to a tube rig.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attac...hmentid=152794

 

[osofast240sx]



Quote:
Originally Posted by karlsaudio /forum/post/18235428


get something else for my main listening area and HT.


Karl

paradigms or b&w's

 

[RonaldoCombs]



Quote:
Originally Posted by karlsaudio /forum/post/18235428


...get something else for my main listening area and HT.


Karl

Like thick rug, acoustic panels, curtains?


Ron

 

[karlsaudio]

I'll tell you, the room they are in now, although not perfect, is MUCH more accousticly friendly than the wood wall, tile floor room where I have to put my home theater. We are talking carpeted floor, Curtains on two large windows and a couple of fabric sofas. The 8 foot ceiling has that popcorn on it.

Yes, they were only $149 a pair so, no big loss. I am still going to keep them like I said.

I found a beautiful pair of barely used Infinity SL50s for less than the pair of Polks I bought. When I have a much larger budget, I will look at the B&Ws or Focals again. Maybe next year?


I have a pair of SL20s that would be a great match as surrounds for the SL50s. A center might be a real problem however.

 

[karlsaudio]

I will keep playing with these M40s to see if I can find a band aid for them in the mean time.

 

[BowerR64]

When i was into headphones i collected a few pair and i remember there was a set of IEMs i think sure IE2 or somthing like that. They had good bass but were a tad harsh. A fix was to put some foam from the packaging into the tube to sort of muffle the harshness.


Why couldnt you do somthing like this with the polks? Like cut a small circle from an old shirt or maybe tissue and put it on the inside of the speaker grill then put the grill on. Put the tissue directly infront of the tweeter to sort of tame back the brightness

Might sound liek a silly solution but you could kinda tune it for your ear.

 

[karlsaudio]

I will give that a whirl. i will let you know how that turns out.

 

[cam91z]

I noticed alot of people say the polks are bright. I bought the rti a1's, because of this site and they don't seem that bright to me. Maybe its because im use to the MB quartz in my car.

 

[karlsaudio]

MB quartz? I have not heard the RTi line but, I have heard the same thing. I have some black construction paper I am going to put on the back side of the grill on my 40s. Will let you know in a bit how that works.

 

[karlsaudio]

OK, here is what I did. I pulled the speakers away from the wall so the back of them was a foot from the wall. I set them to "large" and turned off the sub. I put in a Allen Parsons Project CD and had a listen at -10 on the volume. Still a little harsh. I noticed that if I listened +-5 degrees off vertical axis, the harshness went away. I put a 1 inch wide strip of construction paper horizontaly on the back side of the grill right in front of the tweeter. Perfect! One thing I noticed as well is that the speakers "disappeared" and the music seemed to come from the "middle". The speakers are six feet apart and the best listening distance was at about nine feet away. The tweeters are three feet off the floor. I know each room is different but, this made me like the Monitor 40s much more again.

 

[cornhulio]

Just replace the tweeters with some vintage audiophile tweeters, $20-$30 each used: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/attac...hmentid=152794

 

[cam91z]

MB Quartz is a german company, do alot of car audio. They did home stuff too, not sure if they do anymore. Mainly use titanium tweeters. They get loud, especially listening to metal and hard rock..

 

[karlsaudio]

Eh, im not going to mess with them to that degree. I don't want to put more money into them. I will just save my money for the next pair.