Review on 🔊 Polk Audio Atrium 8 SDI Flagship Outdoor All-Weather Speaker: Black, Single Unit or Stereo Pair - Powerful Bass, Broad Sound Coverage by Blair Foster

Bought two of these for our patio next to the pool. I really want to like these speakers but no matter how I set my EQ the bass is terrible. I've been a Polk fan for over 15 years. Polk has his signature high frequencies and great sound. I wish this was their more recent tweeter update. Polk has such a high SSSSS sound. Until recently, Polk finally fixed the sssss sound with their new tweeters. Ever since the Polk Atrium 8 was released nearly 10 years ago, the sssss sound is still there. Mids are good and on par with any other 6.5" speaker. But the problem is the low bass. With a cheap amp like the popular Yamaha S202 receiver with minimal bass boost, a lot of bass distortion comes out of the rear bass port. It sounds worse when the bass gets higher I use a Behringer EQ and haven't messed with it much as the bass was terrible Yamaha advertises 100 RMS but that's definitely not the case I ended up going with the Cambridge Audio SR20 which is closer to the true 100 RMS per channel. The speakers are rated at 125 RMS so finding the right amp can be tricky. The bass definitely sounds a lot better and the speakers can handle low frequencies even at + Play 12db undistorted The bass is better but it still doesn't sound very good and I don't think I can live with the sound It puts out tight bass I think so is mainly due to the small housing. All that power and a small body just make it sound like a cheap speaker. Boosting the bass on my EQ just tightens the bass. Not the sound I was looking for. For an outdoor setup I'm trying to build something without adding a subwoofer. I conclude that these speakers are good for mid and high frequencies. A subwoofer is required for low frequencies. Is there a floorstanding speaker that produces good-sounding bass, mids and treble? Yes. In the end I settled on the Klipsch aw-650. At the time of purchase, Klipsch cost $100 more. The bass on the Klipsch is different than the Polk day or night. It's an eye opener, or should I say an ear opener. Visit Klipsch for my in-depth review. For the price, the Polk is good, but if you want bass you'll need to add a subwoofer. Outdoor subwoofers are not cheap. If you're going to be stuck with speakers for a long time, I wouldn't recommend the Polk Atrium 8 for an outdoor placement.