Polk Audio AM5205-B|4 Audio TSi300 Floorstanding Speaker (Single, Black)

I got these a couple of weeks ago and was first off pretty impressed with the quality for the money they are beautifully made with a real nice look and solid enough not to call them a piece of crap. Needed a pair of speakers for my home office for a nice 2 channel system. I figured towers were the way to go because I didn't want to deal with speaker stands also didn't want anything super expensive. With that being said I knew Polk aways had something nice in the cheaper price range so I settled on the TSi 300's. The only concern I had was the 5 1/4 woofers and the fact that the tweeter was in a lower position between the two woofers. In other words enough bass and if the highs were decent enough. So I set them up and am happy to report that they definitely deliver. At first I thought that the highs needed a little boost, sounded a little dull. I squatted down to get a better listen and when I did that...BOOM...there were my highs. Like I said above being the position of the tweeters were lower in the tower they were not at the perfect listening level so what I did was put a piece of wood under the front two feet tipping them back and toed them in, now they are amazing great sound plenty of bass and can handle the power no problem, very clean sounding and solid. As far as being accurate I think that's up to personal taste that's why I gave them 4 stars in this area but I'm very happy with them...Great job Polk!My system consists of a P/HP 850 Parasound preamp, Tandburg 3006 poweramp at 150 watts/channel, Nikko N-790 Tuner, Kenwood DP-N97 cartridge cd player, and a Philips DVD951 dvd player. This was equipment I had kicking around and works quite well together along with these speakers.Update: Still loving these speakers so far. I like how thet take up little space and sound better and better each time I listen to them. As far as bass in my medium sized office they do a great job larger rooms might need a sub. I'm here to tell ya though if you need a decent speaker that look good and sound good for very little money these fit the bill just fine.

Original Review Jan 2009:This is my first ever speaker set for my living room. I don't have a room for a dedicated home theater. I have two of these and a CS10 center channel. They have good midrange. The deep voices sound nice. These are the cheapest towers you can get IMO, and they beat any satellite speaker system out there. Those tiny cubes cannot produce the midrange to lowrange frequencies at all. Watching bluray is fun. I need to play some TrueHD/DTS-HD MA tracks and see how they sound. If you are looking for entry level these are good. I auditioned Klipsch and I like the sound of Polks better because they are neutral. Klipsch speakers have horn-loaded tweeters which emphasize the high frequencies and hurt your ears after 30 mins of listening. Polks don't have that. If you have previously owned tower speakers and are looking for something better than you currently have you should look at higher priced towers. These are entry level and good for beginners.EDIT Jan 2011:I'm updating this review after 2 years. These speakers still sound nice. Unfortunately I don't have listening experience with other loudspeakers (Definitive Tech, Paradigm, etc), so I can't compare them to these. For those who are looking at the Bose speakers, please stay away from them. Bose sound the worst. The Bose Satellite speakers are crap and the Bose bookshelf speakers are horrible as well. Back to these Polks, even though I have an open living room they are nice and loud. My living room is open to the dining room, kitchen, and the front entrance which is about 30ft high. So even though we have a large open area, these speakers (with my Denon AVR) are more than enough to give you a full sound.MY SETUP:I am running a 3.1 setup (FL: Polk TSi300, FR: Polk TSi300, C: Polk CS10). In a few months I will get the Polk TSi100 bookshelf speakers and that will complete my 5.1 setup. I'm running the Denon AVR-789 receiver, which is nice as well. Without the rear speakers I can't get the full experience watching a movie so I need to get some rears.

Purchased these speakers about a year ago, and I couldn't be happier with the bang for the buck. They were a little bit stiff at first, but after breaking them in for a few months the sound imaging is solid. Primary use is music, with a few movies here and there. I don't have a surround setup, so these speakers carry the full load. Even without dedicated center and surround channels, they do the job quite nicely.These are set up in my living room, which is about 20 x 10, carpeted, with 12 foot ceilings. Imaging doesn't seem to be a problem, I get full colorful sound at all volume levels, even with all the upholstered surfaces. FM radio even sounds pretty amazing with these, with completely clear stereo channel segregation and a nice warm tone.Of course results will vary, but if you pump enough power to them, these speakers will not disappoint. Make sure to calibrate them to your specific room. My Pioneer receiver has a self-calibration mode with a wired microphone to set things up, after I did that the sound quality increased by a decent amount.The reason I'm only giving these speakers 4 stars is that the bass response leaves something to be desired. But considering that the cones are only something like 6 inches, it's about what I expected. However, with a subwoofer hooked up, these things jam.Bottom line, a great sounding speaker for the buck. Add a dedicated subwoofer to fill in the bottom end and you'll be more than happy with your purchase.

I'm happy I chose the Polk Tsi300 over the alternatives, I'm no audiophile but these towers sound great. I'm upgrading from a pair of Panasonic bookshelf speakers, and what an upgrade they are! I paired them with a Monoprice Premium Select 8-inch subwoofer, which in my opinion is necessary as most woofers under 6.5 inches cannot produce extreme low frequencies. These 5.25-inch woofers still produce good bass depending on the type of music i.e. jazz, reggae. Overall, these speakers are balanced and well detailed, and I'm ecstatic about this purchase.

I guess this is a case of you get what you pay for. But in reality, my 60 dollar pc speaker set sounds wayy better than this. I bought 2 of these to make a pair. They will suffice for movies. But for real music look elsewhere. The resonance is heavy with these speakers. It literally sounds like music playing from inside of a box. I should've known better than this is made of 2 subs and 1 tweeter. Mids are weak and voices sound nasal. The tweeters give it detail but the highs sound really rolled off. There's almost no air. Perhaps I'll buy another brand and use these as satellite speakers.Edit: I've changed my rating to 5 stars after a bit of screwing around. The 'boxy/tube' sound went away after I tore off the cheap plastic front covers. Those things were blocking alot of the sound and making it sound like music playing from inside a box or a tube. Also it doesn't look too bad with the cover off. And then I forgot these things were able to be bi-amped, and thus I proceeded to bi-amp them with my Yamaha RX-V577. WOW these speakers suddenly came to life! Music no longer sounded nasal, and the tone for voices and instruments sounded alot more natural/better, as well as cleaner. For the price, these are the best floor speakers around, with a good reciever that can bi-amp. It still lacks some air/feels a bit dark, but you can't have it all. If you did, then you'd be looking at $500+ speakers. Gotta cancel my replacement floor standing speakers!