I dunno, guys. Everything the OP here has written sounds an awful lot like someone who just wants "permission" to buy the Polk LSi bookshelf speakers with a big "thumbs up".
If you want them, you're attracted to them for some reason, and you're just going to come up with reasons to second guess every piece of advice offered, then all we're really doing here is trying to reason with someone who has already made his mind up, but just doesn't realize it yet
I very much get the feeling that no matter what is said here, the OP is going to end up with those Polk LSi speakers. Folks just don't come to a forum asking about a specific product unless they've pretty much already settled on buying them. If the OP were asking what he should buy for a beginner's mixing/editing system with around $700 to spend on a pair of studio monitors, that would be different. But he's not. He's saying right off the bat that he really wants these Polk LSi speakers for some reason, he's already come across and read all the reasons why Polk is not often the best choice, he's already come up with his own reasons for ignoring or refuting that advice, so this just seems much more of a "reassure me and make me feel good about what I've already decided" type of situation.
And that's ok. We all get our start somewhere. And we all have our preferences. We've all made purchases that we regret later, or don't necessarily regret, but simply come to realize that if we had it to do over again, we'd likely buy something else instead. And we've all become enamoured with a product that didn't necessarily perform the best or represent the best choice or value, but for whatever reason, we just really wanted it, or got it stuck in our head somehow that it was what we wanted at the time!
If it were my money, if I were setting up a nicely treated studio, and I wanted to use passive monitors, I'd go straight for some Ascend CBM-170SE speakers with an HSU STF-2 subwoofer. If I were to use powered monitors, which I probably would for a mixing/editing setup, I'd go for some Focal Professional monitors if I could afford them. If not, I'd probably just go inexpensive and opt for the Behringer 2030A or the 2031A if I wanted more bass or had a larger room to fill. And if I had a completely untreated room to work in, and no budget or ability to get some room treatments in there, I'd go for the Emotiva Pro monitors to get that folded ribbon tweeter with its super forgiving off axis response to take as many room reflections out of the equation as possible.
The Polk LSi speakers would never make my list for studio work. The ring radiator tweeter is nice enough: super linear and very narrow dispersion that suits nearfield, single listening position setups just fine. But the midrange in those LSi speakers is WAY too va-va-vivid and inaccurate for studio work, IMO. Fun to listen to, but it will totally mess up your mixes if you try to translate work done on the LSi to other speakers. You'd wind up with very recessed, hollow sounding mixes on other setups until you learned to adjust your mixing technique to compensate for the LSi's mid-range. And you'll never integrate the mid-bass correctly with the LSi as your reference. There's no smooth transition from that LSi mid-range to the mid-bass, so you'd just be shooting blind every time, and literally guessing as to whether you were mixing in the 80-300Hz range with appropriate levels. And there's no learning to compensate for that. You've got a whole octave from 80Hz to 160Hz, and another entire octave from 160Hz to 320Hz where both drivers are working. And when they integrate as poorly as the Polk LSi speakers do, learning how to compensate for the interference between drivers in that range is impossible because literally each semi-tone in that octave has a different response. And unless you have absolute perfect pitch, it's just impossible to learn to adjust for each semi-tone individually over that entire mid-bass range of frequencies, not to mention utterly impossible when you're dealing with complex music with several instruments and/or voices in that range simultaneously.
But hey, you want those Polk LSi speakers for whatever reason, and you've already come up with reasons to ignore the advice you've read to stay away from them. So the easiest thing to do is to just go ahead and buy them. I'll give you permission
And you can even come back and say how we're all crazy, and how you think they sound great, and how you can make out so much detail in their treble, and how you're so glad that you trusted your instincts and just went ahead and bought the Polks! I'm ready for that, because that LSi tweeter IS good, and the LSi speakers are a lot of fun to listen to!
But once you start noticing that your mixes don't translate the way you expect them to to any other speakers, you'll go through the phase where you tell yourself, "well that's just because other people's speakers suck!" And then you'll decide that it would still be better overall if your mixes at least sounded clear and understandable on other people's speakers, so you'll start to compensate for the mid-range. And that will work well enough until it starts to bother you that the mid-bass sounds wildly different from speaker system to speaker system, and you'll want to figure out how to nail that down and compensate for it, but it will just never happen for you. And after all that, you'll start to think, "well, maybe I could try using some different monitors other than the Polk LSi."
But it'll be a fun journey getting there. And you'll learn a ton. And then you'll get some accurate monitors and you'll have to unlearn all of your listening habits, and re-learn how to mix using accurate sound! But once you go through that adjustment, you'll find that your mixes translate wonderfully, your dialogue and voices sound clear and intelligible on almost any set of speakers, and your mid-bass, while still at the mercy of the system playing it back, won't sound wildly different from system to system, and you'll be able to work it in the studio to get it to sound the way you want, rather than just guessing at it and hoping for the best every time.
So, best of luck. You can save yourself a lot of time, and a reasonable chunk of money by getting some accurate monitors right off the bat instead. But you won't learn as much. And you won't have the satisfaction of having bought the speakers that you are clearly enamoured with at this moment, and are looking for any reason to love and buy! Well, there's a great reason to buy them: they'll give you a fantastic firsthand education as to why nobody here recommends them for studio work! There's no substitute for learning your life lessons on your own terms, and having your own epiphanies and hard earned experiences to draw and build upon. No one can tell you in words what it's really like to work on a mix for days or even weeks. To fine tune it and agonize over it, only to have it sound wildly and unexpectedly different when you hear it played back in your friend's car, or on the radio, or in a friend's home, or even just your own stereo upstairs! To go back into your studio and re-work that mix until your brain is fried and your eyes feel like they're bleeding, and to get to a point where you feel like you've succeeded, until you work on your next mix, apply the lessons and compensation that you learned the last time, and then STILL end up with wildly different and unexpected sounds when you hear this new mix in your friend's car again!
If you skip a large portion of that frustration by starting with accurate monitors that translate well right off the bat, you'll never appreciate what those accurate monitors are really worth! You'll never really understand for yourself the value of the tools that you use to make your mixes. And make no mistake, studio monitor speakers are tools - very precise and important ones. But who is the better mixer? The guy who had the best tools handed to him right off the bat, but never knew anything different, and never had to rack his brain figuring out why his mixes weren't translating the way he expected them to? Or the guy who started with crappy tools, but learned every trick in the book to get the most out of them, and how to compensate, and find work-arounds, and trick his mixing table or software to get his mix to where he wanted it?
Well, I'd say there's enough challenge in mixing and translation that starting with good tools still leaves you with enough other hurdles that you can still learn plenty of lessons on your own! But there's definitely something to be said for the guys who started out with far crappier gear than the LSi speakers, and really nailed down a practical understanding of what every tiny, possible adjustment does because of it.
So it depends on your personality. If you're the studious type who is going to labor over every mix regardless, and try every variable, and mess with your mixes even after they sound fantastic, then don't hobble yourself with inaccurate speakers just for the sake of it. If you're that type of person, start with the best gear that you can, because you're going to find every trick and lesson anyway if that's just your nature. But if you're someone who tends to only change when he's forced to, you're actually better off with the less than accurate gear at the beginning. You need the frustration, the headaches, and the slaps in the face that those rusty tools will provide. They'll force you to learn, and to look for solutions that accurate tools will deprive you of searching for.
Making a snap judgement of your personality based on what you've written? I'd say you're someone who likes to think he's the studious, self-learner type, but you're actually the second
I think you probably work best, and get your best results when you're struggling against someone else. When someone is telling you to do things one way, so you insist on doing it your own way. And even when your way turns out to be crap, you still keep at it, until you eventually find success, which is probably how you were told to do it in the first place, but you had to get to that method on your own, and now you're that much better for all of it!
So, strange as it might sound, I say go for the Polk LSi! They're actually probably what you need in the long run. They'll make you a better mixer in the end. And I suspect you're going to buy them regardless, anyway. So we're basically back to where we started, and I probably could have just avoided typing all of this and wound up with the same result. But this post isn't really for the OP. It's for everyone else. And for me to show off how either shockingly right I am, or insanely wrong, and wonderfully arrogant either way
