brett_day's Full Review: Polk Audio R50 Main / Stereo Speaker
I have slowly but surely built up my home theater system. It started out small and gradually got bigger. At the time of purchase i had a decent setup but i came across a deal that i could not refuse. Fry's had these on sale for just $50 each! An absolute steal, especially now as they are selling for $199 each! They would be replacing my Sony SS-F6000 towers, how do they compare?
Polk has been around for a very long time and are a huge name in the speaker industry. The made the now famous SDA line of speakers. They used to be a very specialized dealer, selling very high end speakers but gradually went more mainstream, some say losing quality because they were focusing on quantity of product instead of quality, I beg to differ though.
The speakers are available in two finishes, black or cherry wood. I decided on the cherry wood, it has such a beautiful deep, glossy finish to it. The come with black speaker grills, which I choose to leave off because I love the color of the wood. The speakers are very heavy, each weighing in at 40lbs, these speakers are built solidly! They are pretty big speakers overall. They stand 36 3/4" tall, 7 3.4" wide and 11 7/8" inches deep! So make sure you have room for them before you buy!
Take off the grills and you will be looking at 2, 6 1/2" woofers and a 1 3/4" tweeter! The speakers are incredibly sleek! Very easy on the eye, they look a million dollars! Around the back you will find the binding posts, which are excellent because it means you can use banana plugs with these speakers, which make it easy to connect these to your receiver. The speakers come with carpet spikes which are not of the highest quality, but they do there job.
The R50's have some very good specs for entry level speakers. Overall frequency response ranges from 40Hz - 24kHz. The lower 3-db is rated at 50Hz and the upper is rated at 20kHz. Nominal impendence is 8 ohms, which is what most home receivers these days are rated for, recommended amplifier power is 20 - 150w per channel.
So how do they sound? Incredible is one word that comes to mind. The Sony SS-F6000 towers that i had sounded good. They had good bass response and very good sound reproduction overall, but in listening to the Polk's I can now hear what I was missing. The clarity of the R50's is outstanding. The R50's are super crisp, and deliver some of the cleanest sound I have heard from budget speakers. Mids are impressive as are the highs! The lows are okay but you will need an external subwoofer! Thinking back to the Sony's I can now tell how muted and muffled the sound was that was coming from them. Neither the R50's nor the Sony's are suited for use in home theater if you do not have a subwoofer to go along with them, as the bass reproduction is okay but not earth shattering. When i initially got them I did not have the matching center channel but the imaging is excellent with the R50's and you could swear there was a center channel sitting right there between them. The overall sound reproduction is excellent, I am incredibly happy with how these sound. I have them powered with an Onkyo 605 and whether I am listening to music or watching my favorite Blu Ray with lossless audio, they never fail to impress.
If you are just getting into home theater or are replacing some older speakers, the Polk R50's are an excellent choice. Beautiful design, impressive specifications and excellent imaging make these Polk speakers and excellent choice for anybody!
Superior home theater and music performance. Slim tower design conserves floor space, occupies less than one square foot. Polk Audio's exclusive Dynam...More at Amazon Marketplace
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