Review on Polk Audio Monitor Floorstanding Speaker by Audrey Caldwell

I wanted to downsize my speakers. After listening to some borrowed Polk speakers, I liked the sound of the Polk. So I started looking around and settled on these 40 monitors. I wanted to have a pair of woofers in each speaker that would do a good job of reproducing the middle bass (I also have a MartinLogan 8" subwoofer to boost the low end deal with). Now I have two pairs and I am running them with a vintage quad speaker (4 channel) receiver that is about 16 watts per channel. It may not seem like a lot, but it's quite enough (btw, most people listen to music with receiver power around 1 watt. Yes, that's right). The sensitivity (or efficiency) of these speakers is 89 dB. This means that these speakers produce a volume of 89dB at 1W at 1m. 89 dB is pretty loud. When listening to music, I rarely reach 80 dB. These four monitors are 40, I have eight 5.25 inch woofers providing medium bass and four tweeters for highs. To me, these speakers sounded great right out of the box. Some listeners report an improvement in sound when the speakers are "broken in". If so, then they only get better and better over time. I just listened briefly to the two front speakers. The soundstage is quite wide. Detail is good with no sharpness. I haven't experienced any listening fatigue. These speakers impress as bookshelf speakers. Woofers can produce really decent bass even without a subwoofer. A subwoofer certainly helps extend the bass downwards, but these speakers definitely impress with their bass performance. Many other bookshelf speakers have a built-in woofer. A pair of 5.25" woofers in each speaker gives them a little more "charm" in my opinion. Collie, which gives a whole new meaning to the word bring. Sometimes an accidentally thrown ball can hit the speaker, but well-made grilles prevent damage. Speakers about 2 inches so the tweeter is aligned close to my ear level when I'm seated. Doing this with any speaker can often improve your listening experience. For the price, these speakers deliver good sound quality. Of course, there are no limits when it comes to sound, but for $125 to $150 a pair compared to similar (and likely higher) products, these Polks deserve your attention. The processing quality is very good. You are attractive. I have a pair of each. cherry and black speakers These speakers can also be two-wire or two-channel. If you don't know what it is, just google it. In short, it's a method of separating high and low frequencies. Some people report that the sound quality is slightly better. In my case, I don't have bi-amp or bi-wiring speakers. But that might be the feature some are looking for. These speakers deserve attention. UPDATE: I wanted to take my Polk Monitor 40s up a notch, so I compared them to a pair of ELAC B6s, which have received very positive reviews. My receiver is a brand new old stock Sansui QRX-5500 that I bought about 2 months ago. This gives me the opportunity to listen in 2- and 4-channel mode. I mainly stream music via paid Pandora One subscriptions at 192kbps and Spotify Connect at 320kbps. I use a 12" Polk PSW505 subwoofer. However, for the A/B test below, I left the subwoofer off so only the bookshelves played. My living room is also my listening room. ", no carpet, lots of hard walls and window, soft sofa and armchair and no special audio processing on my part. For about 9 months I've had several Polk Audio Monitor 40's that served as both front network and surround back with good results, at least for me I got some ELAC B6 bookshelf speakers last week and the unit for A/B -Tests set up using the Niles SPS-4 speaker selection system which I'm doing A/B - since Thursday between Polks and ELAC. After reading about ELAC, I expected a noticeable improvement in sound quality compared to Polk. But that didn't happen to my ears. Since Thursday I've probably been listening for 20 hours or more and Polks stayed there very well compared to ELAC I'm moving on, I'm 62 years old, I have a moderate to severe hearing loss that is made worse by the use of hearing aids, my Losses are mostly in the highs, Polk has better, cleaner, more pronounced highs, h Essen in the ELAC. Of course my ears hear it that way. The high-pitched sound of the Polk is neither harsh nor excessively bright, but is much more noticeable than that of the ELAC. It's like the high frequencies in ELAC are muffled a bit. I've checked and rechecked that the speaker wires are properly connected. A NOTICE. I've read about speaker driver "hacking" and the SCIENTIFIC point of view is that speaker "hacking" is a myth. So I reject any suggestion that ELAC will get better over time. (Let's not get into too much detail in this post, okay?) However, the ELACs outperform the Polk in the bass ranges, especially the sub-bass. Here, too, the A/B test was carried out without a subwoofer. However, the Polk cabs are about 10% larger than the ELAC cabs. However, the ELAC has deeper bass than the Polk. If the ELAC highs are good enough for you and you don't use a subwoofer, you might prefer the ELAC Polk. But once the subwoofer comes out, the Polks will sound better than the ELACs to me. This is likely because the subwoofer picks up the lower bass range that the Polks lack, and the Polks' highs are superior to the ELAC. again, in my opinion. Cosmetically, both sets of speakers look great. My polks have a cherry red finish. ELACs come with matte vinyl and look great. He's not trying to be wooden. but it looks quite modern and seems attractive to me. The speaker connections are 5-pin on both sets. although I still prefer the spring clip options for easy mating and unmating. Currently, ELAC is about twice as expensive as Polk. Open-box and scratch-and-dent deals can save you some money. I was hoping ELAC would be my choice. but that won't happen. I'm sticking with Polks for now. I might upgrade to the Polk TSi200 as they are the successor to the Monitor 40 and have a slightly larger body. This is my take on comparing these two sets of speakers. I wouldn't even call this post a "review" of these two sets of speakers. It's just a comparison of someone whose hearing is impaired and that "someone" is not an audiophile. I just like listening to good music through decent speakers that don't cost a fortune. As always, your mileage may vary. Thank you for reading.