Hi Fi Choice review on Lsi15

[begbie]

Hi Fi Choice magazine performed a group test on 5 speaker manufacturers and Polk was one of them.

Now there is no direct link to the review but here are a few excerpts from the test.

First the competitors

1. Castle Conway 3
2. Dali Royal Tower
3. Epos M15
4. Infinity Kappa 600
5. Monitor Audio Silver s8
6. Polk Lsi15

"The Lsi15 has some engaging attributes, sounding notable clean and free from boxy effects, while the high positioning of mid and treble drivers gives the image useful extra height and adds to the illusion of large musical scale."

"However, perhaps because there's quite a wide physical separation between the low-set bass and the high set mid/treble, the two don't quite seem to glue together with total coherance. Rather it's more like the character found in sat/sub systems."

"The dynamic range is very wide, and the speaker goes impressively loud w/o complaint. But the midband suffers some coloration, showing a nasal and pinched quality on spoken word especially. Furthermore, while the top end is undoubtedly clean and clear, it does perhaps draw just a little too much attention to itself. Promising though this speaker is, the problems of coherance that tend to affect three- way designs are just a little too obvious here."

The score card given was a slightly better then average rating against the competition. The Castle Conways were picked as the best buy with Dali and Monitor Audio given honourable mentions.

The best looking speaker in my opinion were the Infinity Kappas (sorry Polk) but were rated with very "AVERAGE" sound and seemed to suffer the three way design as Polk did.

Obviously there will be some Lsi defenders out there but that's all that it is- a review. Some good things said , some not so good but still a thumbs up !

[Shizelbs]

How much do those competing speakers cost though?

[Shizelbs]

POLKSTER!

[begbie]

The Lsi15's were the most expensive of the bunch with infinity's the second most expensive. Prices were in British pounds .

[ralph perez]

Lets not forget where the magazine is written"UK"
that should tell you something.

[begbie]

Originally posted by ralph perez
Lets not forget where the magazine is written"UK"
that should tell you something.

I had a feeling someone would bring that point up. I'm not a follower of the magazine and I'm sure they like their British speakers better. Yet, not all the speakers were from the UK as they clearly stated the origin of each manufacturer before their review.

The review was clearly not a negative one, but a case of positve and negative ones. It was just refreshing to hear a different perspective.

Don't get me wrong. I'm saving every penny for a set of Lsi's !! :D

[STUFFMD]

From what I have heard of the LSI's I have found them to be nasaly and pinched as well......I picked up a Lsi C to see if I would like the sound...I will say though that it(the nasaly or hollow sound) has disappeared dramatically as the speaker has "broken in) To be fair the most watts I have heard them on was 125 but it was high current. I agree with the review, but the other side in with speakers of higher price ranges they are still hard to beat.
I am wondering if the reviewers took this break in period into account.. I found the Lsi's to take a lot longer to break in than the RT's.
My 2 cents, StuffMD