Speakers Reviews

I purchased a YST-SW305 about three days ago. I needed a quick replacement for my current theater as I gave my friend the Klipsch KSW 12 I was uitilizing at the time.

I knew from the start that I was not going to get the same level of perfomace from the Yamaha that I was accustomed to with my Klipsch. The design differences are clear indicators that placement for the Yamaha will be critical. I prefer a bottom loaded sub with a rear port. This enables the frequencies from the sub to reflect off of a wall and have time to travel to the listener. Thus, the result is a deep, full low end sound. The Yamaha design is a front loaded sub with front facing ports. If I face it in the corner with the spaekers and ports to the wall, I have wires and an ugly rear pannel looking back at me. Sounds decent, but looks like hell. If I place the sub towards me to clean up the presentation, I loose about half of the potential from the unit. This is the immediate turn off.

Sound is not that bad when located properly. Careful when pushing the 305 to it's peak levels. One will encounter serious cone ripping distortion when you drive this unit too hard. At medium levels of volume, it will produce very clean and accurate bass for even the pickiest of enthusiasts. My reccomendation is to load your room with two of these units.

The bottom line is value. I purchased mine for [ cheap] ... At that price, I found it hard to pass up buying a second one for a fuller effect. I will probably keep these units for about 6 months and make my move back to Klipsch. I give this unit three stars only because of it's design. The bang for the buck is great.

Well the price was great,a slim line box thats easy to hide. I thought that two 8 inch speakers would be better than buying a huge 12 or 15 inch speaker that takes up a lot of space. I was wrong. Even though you have two speakers they are just too small for accurate bass responce at a high volume. thats why it is great for movies just not for music. Over all it is a decant product for what your paying for.

This thing is great. It introduced me to all my neighbors. It sounds really good for movies and for music. The only probmen is it's supposed to automatically sense a signal and turn itself on, but that feature doesn't always work. Usually I just end up leaving it on. You can throw some good parties with this thing.

Sorry, the speakers don't attach well, and the quality of these stands is not what I'm used to with a Bose system.

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to assemble the stands and for how adaptable they are. Any Bose speaker will fit on these stands.

Ingenious, elegant, sturdy, easy-to-assemble, functional. As beautifully designed and well-crafted as their speakers. What else do you need to know?

The flat panel speakers are a bit of a gimmick because they are not true ribbon speakers. However, sound quality is clear and only slightly metallic at higher volume.

The down-facing subwoofer is very powerful for a small thing.

The biggest drawback to this system is that subwoofer and satellite volume is linked. I prefer my old Midiland speaker system which has both a master volume and a subwoofer volume knob. With the CA-3310, in order to control excess boom at high volumes, it is necessary to either adjust tone via equalizer, or jockey between the master volume on the speaker with the Windows-based volume control panel.

I am a student and have a notebook computer.I gave up trying to enjoy listening music with the built-in speakers and started searching for good speakers at an effordable price.I think this speaker system is a good choice at this price.The quality of this product and its sound are more than satisfoctory.Its really more than I have expected..Sound is clear enuogh and the system can handle high volumes that you can expect from a system like this.If you want to save money and want to buy something that worths listening these speakers are the best deal..

My husband went nuts over these! His computer became a stereo. It was like watching a little boy play with his new favorite toy on Christmas morning!

this subwoofer is great if you only want a lot of bass. However when cranked up to even low volumes a strange rattle comes from the inside which is highly annoying.

This subwoofer is very powerful and should be used with the volume on it low if you hook it up to a powerful stereo system. The best use of this subwoofer, I think, is for home theater. Once you set the volume of the sound level you like in the room, you can change the volume and frequency on the subwoofer to customize it for your tastes. IT WILL COMPLETELY FILL A LARGE ROOM WITH THE LOW SOUNDS SO EVERYONE CAN "FEEL" THE MOVIE. I was very happy with it and you do not need to crank it up to get excelent sound out of it. I usually don't turn the volume of the subwoofer above halfway. The "annoying" vibrating sound that you here when it is cranked at high volumes, is the result of the subwoofer cone thumping against the magnet on the back of the subwoofer. When this happens adjust the volume either on the subwoofer or the reciever that is powering the subwoofer, until you can't here the "annoying" sound. You will still here the low frequency bass. THIS IS A GREAT SUBWOOFER.

easy to install,compatible with new or older systems,nice looking,not to big,great pounding sound, no other compares!

I have these speakers for use as the left/right rear and center rear of a surround sound system which includes Wharfdale 8.3 speakers in the front and center roles.
The sound seems to be fine and they are well made. I have two reasons why I can't recommend them tho:

They really aren't powerful enough to fit in a system that includes bigger front speakers. The 8.3s drown them and they aren't monster speakers by any stretch. I have tried all of the settings.suggestions on my excellent Yamaha Amp to redress this without success. Any suggestions JBL? Anyone?

The product specific speaker stands are poorly designed. The stands and poles look cool but the specifically designed cable clips are flimsy and fall off at the slightest provocation. A redesign to use a tubular support which the cable can go inside would be desirable. Be aware than these speakers are not compatable with any other generic speaker stand.

I am sorry to say that after doing all my research into satellite speaker systems and deciding that the jbl scs160si system was the best for me in price and performance, I now have to reconcider because of the lack of wall mount bracket options that seem to be available. I haven't been able to find any for these speakers. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be happy to hear from you.

got a great price for these speakers off of one of amazon.com's merchants, only $300 plus $30 shipping and handling. they work great, sound fabulous and these are the best priced/quality you can get for a stylish 6.1 small speaker package. I'm in heaven... for music, they sound fine, (i don't know what other people are talking about when complaining), and for movies...they are perfect...anyway, isn't that why you'd buy a 6.1 speaker package, for surround sound???..i mean they are called cinema series speakers, that is what they are made for. oh my, and i just got a new yamaha reciever on in addition to these. i am a one hundred percent satisfied customer.

No need for 1,000 words here. For the price, $149.00, You
can't go wrong. These are pre-professinal grade D.J. speakers
that kick out 400 WATTS!! Get this last one while you can. At
this price........

The title summarizes my sentiment. We installed two of these in a fraternity house which welcomed their arrival. Fit our requirements just right....

the speaker gives good sound and a lot of qualty for what it is worth. kids can buy and won't be disipointed for what they got.

All availible double-blind testing indicates that differences between copper wire of the same gauge over the same distance is completely inaudible.

Monster Cable is no better than any other cable of the same gauge in terms of audibility, except in terms of Monster's marketing budget.
16 gauge stranded copper is more than enough for nearly any power draw over nearly any reasonable length of cable to any speaker.
Anyone who claims otherwise has never attempted to A/B speaker wire under double blind conditions.

Spend your budget on speakers and amplification and use the change in your couch to buy 16 gauge lamp cord at a hardware store. Anything more is a monumental waste of money.

Thus spake Julian Hirsch, and it is the truth.

I added the Monster THX Speaker wire, along with THX connectors, out of curiosity to see of there would be any difference, at all, in sound quality. Much to my surprise there was a very noticable improvement in clarity and crispness on the highs when compared to the standard speaker wire I was using. I'm using an Onkyo TX-DS595 Receiver and Infinity HTS-20 speakers. This was an easy inexpensive and worthwhile improvement to my home theater.

I own an Onkyo TXSR500 home theater system and Bose speakers. I never had received a satisfactory sound effect from my Surround speakers. After chaging the speaker wires to Monster Cable THX wires, the result was really noticeable. I realized that the speaker wires sold as part of home theater packges were very low quality. Now I get a very good sound effect for movies as well as music. Highly recommended.

Thought Polk would actually get a center channel right this time, so I took a chance and bought the CSi40. Muffled sound with sparse mid-to-high end sound reproduction. Terribly disappointed, especially since I wasted $... for the darn thing. Go with a Klipsch center for the type sound reproduction a center channel is supposed to provide.

I own two Polk RT800I tower main speakers, two Polk F/X1000 surrounds, Polk CSi30 rear center, CSi40 front center, and a polk PSW-650 subwoofer. All of this is bolted to a Kenwood VR-6070 THX rated 100 watt per channel 6.1 receiver and a Mitsubishi HD 73" widescreen gold rear projection TV. I have but two words: POLK RULES! I no longer go to the local mall theater because my system sounds better. I just wait until the movies go dvd and play them on my Samsung HD931 dvi rated dvd player. With dvi there is no digital to analog conversion. It uses a 24 pin cable for digital to digital video transfer with no signal loss. It's better than Proscan. It is the most advanced video process on the market. I also use optical cable to ship wide band audio directly from the dvd player to the Kenwood eliminating signal loss through the T.V.
But getting back to the Polk CSi40 - it's a hard driving dual 6.50" woofer plus a 1" liquid cooled silk dome tweeter system that will walk the dog. Get one, you'll like it.
You can buy professional studio speakers with better specs but the costs are in the thousands. I've owned, JBL (James B Lancing), Marantz, Boston Acoustics, Bose, etc, but I always come back to Polk. Trust me, I know what I'm talkin' about.
Fred

The biggest mistake of rookie, fast to shoot critics of speakers is not breaking in the speaker. A great speaker must be "broken" in for up to 100-200 hours at a low volume to show its worth. Just put on the radio at 10% volume before you take off for a weekend. When you come back you will be very impressed.

Sorry about the lesson but i had opinions like the previous critic before an industry vetran showed me the ropes. Now my polks SING. Polk has literally destroyed my other "reference" series speakers, just give them some time.

best,

jaz

When i purchased this model of sub, i expected it to be the perfect completion of my long in the building system. It replaced an itty bitty aiwa sub. I was rather disapointed when I found the new sub preformed hardly better than my old. Overall it was a good sub, nd handled higher volumes with decent response, but I paid significantly lower, and still feel it was overpriced

I have this sub for about 4 months now. For the price, it's a great, clean sounding sub. The sealed enclosure makes it tighter than most other 12" sub out there. It also makes for more flexible placement. With proper adjustment of output/crossover/phase this sub will match well with your satellites. Overall, its great for both music and hometheatre. If you want a dedicated hometheater sub, look for a ported design; but be warned, most ported subs sound terrible with music.

This one is pure thunder baby! Crisp, deep response at all levels. DVDs explode with life!! CDs.... unbelievable... If you're looking for a strong, solid sub, this is it..!

The first thing that strikes you about this speaker is the price!

The WH-2 system (center plus dipole surrounds) is meant for someone who already has 2 good speakers for mains and just wants a basic upgrade for home theater.

If you're not an audiophile or a major audio enthusiast, this speaker should do just fine. Dialog reproduction - its main job is reasonable. Though not not crystal clear (it is a sub [$$$] speaker, you know), is good enough for the non-fussy...

However, if you're the type who listens critically, I would recommend you look at the Wharfedale Diamond 8 Center.

I did some research and I found out that Wharfedale has one of the best bang-for-the-buck quotients out there.

For the money, you can not buy a better center channel speaker. Sure, it's not going to run with the top of the line models, but you can't expect it to. However, I have put it up against some significantly more expensive speakers and it blew them away.

I don't regret this purchase.

I didn't really like this speaker until I listened to Big Wars. The sounds of Big Wars were unbelieveable. If you like this speaker, you'll love Big Wars.