Polk TSx550t issues

[Discodeathgrip]

Just purchased a pair of Polk TSx550t towers and have them paired with a Yamaha R-S700. Everything sounds great except on certain songs (esp rock); the upper mid range gets a little grainy and distorted. Gave a very close listen, sounds like it's coming from the tweeters. Tried changing the tone (bass/treble/loudness) but it pretty much does the same thing at any volume level. Is this just a speaker break in thing? Any suggestions regarding this issue would be greatly appreciated.

 

[slipperybidness]

Just purchased a pair of Polk TSx550t towers and have them paired with a Yamaha R-S700. Everything sounds great except on certain songs (esp rock); the upper mid range gets a little grainy and distorted. Gave a very close listen, sounds like it's coming from the tweeters. Tried changing the tone (bass/treble/loudness) but it pretty much does the same thing at any volume level. Is this just a speaker break in thing? Any suggestions regarding this issue would be greatly appreciated.

Have you tried to adjust speaker placement and/or toe-in?

Do you only notice this on particular recordings? Maybe it's just the recording that is the issue?

 

[MrBoat]

Also, a lot of the upper mid range in rock is distorted by design. Take the Van Halen "brown sound" for example.

 

[TLS Guy]

As Mr Boat points out it is very hard to evaluate a speaker on rock music, as you have no idea how the music is supposed to sound. It is processed to death.

Unfortunately mix engineers no longer know their craft and standards are appalling, even among award wining engineers. I can tell you this as I get requests for mastering CDs from musicians who have spent a lot of money in studios. I continually have to send files back for modification again and again as the engineers seem no to be even minimally competent anymore.

However Polk are far from my favored recommendation.

I found this on the Polk forum about your speakers, that you might find interesting. I have to give them credit for coming somewhat clean. However the guts of the issue is in the last post. The questioner does not know what it means. Well it means that this speaker is not a three way, but a 2.5 way. This means that the lower woofer is providing the baffle step compensation and rolling off somewhere between 500 and 600 Hz. All the other speakers are connected together and running up to 2.5 KHz. This is an awful design and I would expect the speaker to sound very muddy indeed and not pleasing to the ear. This is "White Van" speaker design.

They have filled their responses with obfuscation and BS.

The fact they have expunged all crossover points from the spec sheets of all their speakers, shows they are falling further in their decent to the bottom.

 

[Discodeathgrip]

Have you tried to adjust speaker placement and/or toe-in?

Do you only notice this on particular recordings? Maybe it's just the recording that is the issue?

I did try toeing the speakers in a bit. I do get a different sound, but the distortion seems to still be there. It's not present on all recordings, but on a lot of songs with a pronounced mid range. It may very well be just the way the albums were recorded.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

This is how you could fix your issue with polk:
http://www.ascendacoustics.com/pages/products/speakers/cmt340m/cmt340m.html
It may sound an arrogant to you, but I am totally agree with TLSGuy here. Unless you bought their top-o-line LSi series speakers - the rest is crap. Few years ago I went to audio shop and listened to every single polk bookshelf they had in stock (about 6-7 different ones). They all sound a bit harsh, all the way until LSI/9 - but then again - Ascend I linked above beats it squarely at small portion of lsi/9 price.

 

[yepimonfire]

As Mr Boat points out it is very hard to evaluate a speaker on rock music, as you have no idea how the music is supposed to sound. It is processed to death.

Unfortunately mix engineers no longer know their craft and standards are appalling, even among award wining engineers. I can tell you this as I get requests for mastering CDs from musicians who have spent a lot of money in studios. I continually have to send files back for modification again and again as the engineers seem no to be even minimally competent anymore.

However Polk are far from my favored recommendation.

I found this on the Polk forum about your speakers, that you might find interesting. I have to give them credit for coming somewhat clean. However the guts of the issue is in the last post. The questioner does not know what it means. Well it means that this speaker is not a three way, but a 2.5 way. This means that the lower woofer is providing the baffle step compensation and rolling off somewhere between 500 and 600 Hz. All the other speakers are connected together and running up to 2.5 KHz. This is an awful design and I would expect the speaker to sound very muddy indeed and not pleasing to the ear. This is "White Van" speaker design.

They have filled their responses with obfuscation and BS.

The fact they have expunged all crossover points from the spec sheets of all their speakers, shows they are falling further in their decent to the bottom.

A 2.5 way makes sense when all 4 drivers are capable of operating from 2.5khz down. A two way design would introduce comb filtering at the midrange, a 3 way would reduce bass response and sensitivity. As someone who has owned one of their 2.5 way speakers I can say it definitely sounded just fine to me.

Shoot Polk an email about their crossover frequencies, they'll happily respond. They use the same tweeter in most of their designs, and they're crossed over at 2.5khz iirc. Polks speakers are a bit hot in the midrange, but they test very well on things like THD, resonance and decay time. A 2.5 way is a design choice, not an economical choice. Pull one of the xovers from their speakers, they're not cheaply made. The cabinets are braced well, and many of their larger floor standers can dig very deep, as low as 20hz on some models. Ran a pair full range with the LFE routed to the fronts. Watched inception at reference level as a test. 105dB during the avalanch scene with no audible distortion. I am a big fan of them, but only because their price to performance is excellent.