The problem is in trying to be nice and not bash a product or a person's taste. It's one of those "if you don't have anything nice to say..." situations.
But then we end up with a situation where we never made it clear why we disagreed or why we thought one product was of lesser quality or value than another.
It's tough when we're just communcating in text. Things can be very easily misread, or misunderstood, or skipped over by accident. The meaning doesn't always come through clearly. But then again, if we're very blunt and direct, that can be taken the wrong way as well.
Someone asked why we recommended the Boston and Infinity Primus speakers and why we recommended avoiding the Polk speakers. In a word, the reason is "distortion".
With any recording, there is a signal that is sent to the speakers. That signal tells the speakers to produce a certain note (frequency) for a certain length of time at a certain loudness. Any deviation away from exactly what that signal says to play is distortion in one form or another. Maybe the wrong note is played. Maybe additional notes that were not actually in the signal are played (such additional, unintended notes are often the harmonics, and thus, harmonic distortion. Or the cabinet itself might resonate, creating unintended sound from the walls of the speaker's box itself). Maybe the note keeps playing for a little while, even after the signal told it to stop (this relates to "transient response", which are the stops and starts of a note - often called the "attack" and "decay"). Or maybe the note is played too loud or too quiet.
And on top of distortion, there is dispersion - which refers to how evenly the speaker's output is "spread" from side-to-side. Perhaps a speaker's output is very accurate to the signal when you are sitting stright in front of it. But then, as you move to either side of dead straight on, the output changes significantly. There is no strict "right" or "wrong" when it comes to dispersion. But, in general, it's easier to use a speaker that has fairly wide dispersion so that you do not need to sit with your head in a vice! Some people believe the dispersion should be as wide as possible, even going so far as to believe a perfect cylinder or sphere of uniform sound is the best possible situation. The famous NRC research indicated that most people find a fairly wide dispersion to be the best solution, but with some high frequency roll-off as you go very far to either side of the speaker's front.
So why do we not favor the Polk Monitor or TSi speakers? Because they produce many forms of distortion. The frequency response is not linear - meaning that when the signal tells the speakers to play a certain note at a certain loudness, the speaker does not do so. It plays many notes too loud or too quiet. The high frequencies are especially non-linear - meaning that you lose a great amount of detail. There is cabinet noise from the rather cheaply made cabinets. And when you turn up the volume, the speaker responds by compressing - meaning that the movement of the speaker cones does not match what the signal is telling them to do: the movement is restricted at high output levels. In addition to that, the cross-over design is very basic due to keeping the cost as low as possible. As a result, the slopes between drivers are rather shallow, which means that two or more drivers are producing the same sounds over quite a large range of frequencies. This creates problems with cancellations between the drivers that are both producing the same soundwaves. This results in "lobing", which means that as you move from side-to-side, the sound changes rather dramatically.
We prefer the Infinity Primus speakers because they are far more linear. While no speaker is perfectly linear, and while the Primus speakers are still not as linear as some of the best speakers due to keeping the price quite low, they are far more linear than the inexpensive Polk speakers and thus, produce the signal from the recordings much more accurately. They do not have the high frequency attenuation and non-linearity of the Polk speakers, meaning that they much more accurately reproduce the finer details. The cabinets are braced fairly well so that they do not produce much noise of their own. The drivers' movements do not compress as easily, so they are able to play louder without the quality of their sound changing. And the cross-overs are better designed with higher-order slopes so that there is less conflict and interference between two drivers playing the same soundwaves. This results in more even and wider dispersion so that a larger seating area can enjoy the same sound quality from seat to seat.
So, objectively, the Primus speakers are just better speakers. Obviously, that doesn't account for taste. But if a person has not heard more accurate sound, it's awfully hard to speculate as to what that listener would ultimately prefer.
As to my recommendation of subwoofers that might seem expensive - I made those recommendations because spending your money on anything less is genuinely a waste. You would be better off to not buy a subwoofer at all, rather than spend less than $350 on the HSU STF-2 - or preferrably, $500 on the Rythmik FV12. There are cases where it simply requires a certain level of funds and quality to make spending your money worth while. And subwoofers are one such case.
Can you buy a subwoofer for less money? Certainly.
Is it worth your while to do so? No.
All you can get for a lower price in subwoofers is something that is extremely distortion-laden and inaccurate. That doesn't mean there aren't people who've purchased cheap subs and like them. It just means it is another example of never having heard accurate sound and thus, having no frame of reference.
I'm all about using my experience and many purchasing regrets to try and help other folks spend their money ONCE on very good products, rather than do what I did and spend far too much money on multiple systems, all of which were eventually replaced. I'm up to products now that cost in the range of $2000-$3000 PER SPEAKER. I don't do that because I'm rich. I do that because I LOVE home theater and audio and I'm paying for extremely minute improvements at this point. I'm into diminishing returns BIG TIME.
Speakers like the Infinity Primus are, in a way, sickening because they come far closer to the level of quality that I enjoy than they really should have any right to for their very low price point! That's what makes them a stellar value. They are not the "be all, end all". There are improvements to be had for a high price tag, without question. But they do an awful lot "right" for a very low price tag, relatively speaking. That's where my recommendation of them comes from.
For folks like me, it doesn't really matter what someone else chooses to spend his or her money on. I don't really "get" or "lose" anything either way. No one's holding a gun to my head to be here. I'm just here because I love this stuff! But I do hope to save some money for other folks. Why not try to use my experiences and all the money I've spent (and sometimes wasted) over the years to try and make things a little easier for someone else, right?
It doesn't always go as I would hope. And that's fine by me. I'm not "winning" or "losing" anything in this. But I must admit, it does make me happy when I see someone follow some good advice and get a sound system that really delivers high value and high quality, and they're really happy with it, and it lasts them for years and years and years because to get something genuinely "better" would cost oodles and oodels of cash more! It feels good to see someone spend their hard-earned money that way because I know EXACTLY how much money they've saved by avoiding the many, common pitfalls. They got to "skip ahead", which is great! But there's still value in the other side of the experience where people do what I did and simply make their own mistakes, learn from them, and gain the knowledge for themselves. It just costs a lot more in the long run to do things that way
And if I had found and followed the sort of advice that I'm now trying to pass along to others, I would have saved a TON of money. Would I have learned as much? Maybe not. But I'd have a better sound system and more money in my bank account, so it's hard to say it would have been a bad path to have taken
