Polk Audio R30 Main / Stereo Speaker

After I reviewed the Alpha 20's from 'Infinity', I also remembered a speaker that was also sold at the Future Shop that surprised me in it's quality. Polk Audio brought out the "R" series a few years back, and were already discontinuing the series. Still, they had lots to sell off. Inside our soundproof speaker room, we had a lot of speakers of all sizes and purposes set up to test. The "R" series had some center channels, a couple of bookshelf sized and plenty of floor speakers to try.

The R30, being the smallest of the floorstanding models, are surprisingly the best of the R series. With only one single bass driver placed under the 1 inch silk covered tweeter, it would seem that I'm not telling the truth. Right? How could this one be a better performer than it's larger cousins with more drivers?

My guess on this question was right. The R30 has a smaller cabinet, and that often means that the speaker will produce a better sound. It's front ports are a very good size, and the driver itself fires pretty quick-a tight and rigid driver! Good stuff. The tweeter itself gives more than expected. It spreads out the sound beyond some silly 'sweet spot'. Interesting, coming from a speaker that only cost aprox $400 per pair at one time. A lot of customers were also surprised at the sudden drop in price at our Future Shop location. At one point before Xmas, it was reduced to a mere $299 per pair! Wow! Then, when boxing day arrived, it dropped again, this time to a puny $199! No joke. They were going out the door faster than donuts out of Tim Horton's !

Now overall, it really does handle movies quite nicely. Higher pitches and crisp sounds are well detailed and produced. Larger, lower booming sounds are clean and not sloppy. For music, they are quite accurate on most recordings, but are a little short of great (but 'almost great' is still good!). I tried a fav of mine on the R30's, BR549's self titled album, which is super retro steel guitar and arched top guitar filled rockabilly stuff. The R30's did a darn good job, reproducing snappy beats with vocals and instruments. Still, I gotta say that the better job they do is on movies.

So, with all that said, there is a good speaker out there that is worth it's price, and should make movie watchers thrilled as part of a home theater setup, and music lovers tappin' feet (tap, tap....).