Voice matched?

[Nate79]

Hi, this is my first post, nice to meet all of you.

I recently upgraded my 6.1 surround setup to polk speakers from crappy speakers. I originally had a yamaha ht in a box with a 5740 reciever. HT-450 I believe. The speakers where plastic enclousers, paper woofers, and very low quality. I am still using the same reciever though.

My setup is Monitor 40 for front L/R, Cs1 center channel, and r15 surround L/R/B. 10" powered sub sealed box (not polk). I have all the speakers set to small, bass out to subwoofer. Front speakers are about 5' from where I sit. Surrounds are 6-7'.

I use a digital connection from the pc (spdif) / DVI to watch dvd's, and also listen to music thru my pc. Sound card is setup to send digital out only. I also have a Xbox with a optical cable also. Its sounds very clean, and very discrete. Very crisp.

I was just wondering if I made the right choice with the rear surround speakers? The surrounds sound on tune with the fronts, seem to be matched very nicely. Music "melts" very smooth, and all 6 speakers seem to give out the same type of "sound" .

I was wondering if its worth it to return these r15's and purchase the monitor 30's? Again, I am extremely pleased with the setup.

The difference in price is significant, since I have to purchase in pairs. The r15's cost me 40$ each (outpost.com special), and the monitor 30's are about 100$ each. $400 opposed to 160$. I checked the polk site, and both monitor 30's and r15 use the same sized woofer.

Also, its set up in a Small room, and about 95% of the time, I am at about 20% volume, about -40 on the volume knob

I am kinda new to this, so please excuse me if I sound vague, but my brother mentioned to me to make sure the speakers I buy are voice matched?

Thanks

[Dennis Gardner]

Welcome to CP!

I wouldn't bother with trading up unless you listen to lots of multi channel music that would make the difference in size/sound noticeable. Very few of us here on the fourm run identical speakers all around. Even those that use surround specific (dipole/bipole) type speakers run them being slightly mismatched. The RT15s do use a little different tweeter than the Monitor series, but they are similar.

Enjoy it if you like the sound, and don't worry,

DG

[Nate79]

Thanks, so as long as the speakers are made by polk, I should be ok

Nate

[Dennis Gardner]

Generally the R, Rt and Monitor lines are 2nd & 3rd cousin type relatives. No speaker other than an identical model is a perfect match, even the horizontal center speakers sound different due to the design than the bookshelf or tower models from the same line.

The most noticeable difference in todays Polk line is the Lsi/RCi line. It has a completely different tone due to drastically different tweeter designs.

If you must find out how different they are, buy a returnable Monitor set.