# Polk Audio Speakers :: Music playback awesome, move playback not so awesome .. Why ?



## ahmadka (Nov 27, 2010)

Hey all ... So guys I'm making a home theater in the basement of my new home (some of you probably have seen my other threads), and I had a question regarding audio which I faced today ..

So I went to a company today that deals in Polk Audio Home Theater speakers, and I stayed with their main sales guy for about 4-5 hours. During this time I tested a wide variety of his Polk Audio speakers with a specific playlist I had devised for checking different types of audio.

I was pretty satisfied with the quality of the speakers when I played music audio (iTunes purchased songs from the iPhone, played using a 3.5mm cable), but when gave me a demo of DVD movies and Blu-rays, I was not impressed frankly. He played movies like Fast Five, Iron Man, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and in all of them I noticed that the sound was shallow, or maybe shrilled .. Like the audio coming out from a good line of computer speakers ?!.. I mean I have a basic $300 Sony HTiB in my bedroom, and I thought the sound coming from his top range Polk Audio speakers sounded the same as those from my HTiB !?

The Polk Audio speaker configurations he demoed were the following:

1) TSX-550 (for Front L & R) + CS20 (Center) + 2x DSW-660 (2x Subwoofers)
2) RTI-A7 (for Front L & R) + CSi A4 (Center) + 2x DSW-660 (2x Subwoofers)
3) RTI-A9 (for Front L & R) + CSi A6 (Center) + 2x DSW-660 (2x Subwoofers)
4) LSi (number unknown) (for Front L & R) + CSi A6 (Center) + 2x DSW-660 (2x Subwoofers)

Sound from music was much better though .. Some tracks were *incredible* ... really !

What's the reason for this ? Why did they all suck in movies ?


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## nova (Apr 30, 2006)

That does seem pretty strange. Usually if the speakers sounds great with music they will sound great with movies. My guess is when he switched from music to movies something was not right in the settings.


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## ahmadka (Nov 27, 2010)

Room did not have any kind of treatment whatsoever ! It also had TONS of audio stuff in it. Maybe like 10-12 floor standing speakers, 7-8 subwoofers (heavy type!), 20-25 smaller speakers, like 10-15 receivers/amps/etc .. Lots of equipment lying everywhere ..

It was something like this maybe, but significantly neater looking ..










Everything apart from the subs and floor standing speakers was mostly placed on lots of small shelves on the walls all around ..

The sales rep also said that no equipment had any kind of calibration whatsoever, and everything was as it is out of the box ..

But why was the sound much better for the audio ?

*And is it wise to say that they are bad speakers for movies ? Or is it more like that they're just not tuned correctly ?* I ask this, because if its just a tuning issue, I can easily consider buying them, and then I can tune them later in my own home ..

However if its a genuine issue with Polk Audio speakers, then I'll reluctantly probably avoid them ..


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## chashint (Jan 12, 2011)

I do not see any of the Polk speakers you mentioned in that picture.


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## ahmadka (Nov 27, 2010)

chashint said:


> I do not see any of the Polk speakers you mentioned in that picture.


haha  .. No, the picture just generally depicts the layout of the room in which I had my demos .. This is a picture I took myself .. Its just a stock picture I found on the internet for this thread ..

The room in which I had my demo had a lot of speakers and other audio equipment, just like in the picture, but the layout was cleaner than that in the picture.


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## nova (Apr 30, 2006)

My guess is still something in the receiver. Maybe it was set to one of the goofy DSP modes instead of Dolby?


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## gdstupak (Jul 13, 2010)

MOVIE TEST MATERIAL vs. MUSIC TEST MATERIAL: was the movie audio more energetic than the music audio? Maybe the exciting movie audio pushed the equipment to their limits. Was the music audio energetic enough to push the equipment to their limits, or was the music audio more laid-back than the movie audio?

RECEIVER DSP: were different DSP modes being used between music evaluation and movie evaluation? Obviously, DSP has a huge impact on how speakers sound.

MAIN SPEAKERS vs. SURROUND SPEAKERS: were only the 2 main speakers being used during music playback, then were different speakers added for surround sound movies? Maybe the 2 main speakers sound great with music and movies, but then adding less able surround speakers made the whole system sound less able.


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