Customer Reviews

Polk Audio RM705 5.1 Home Theater System (Set of Six, Black)

5 star:		(64)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I usually look at these reviews to help me with my purchases, so it's only fair that I write one to help someone else. I just purchased this speaker system and I'm blown away. The sound is so clean and crisp and very bright. I have this connected to a Yamaha RX-V661 and the sound is amazing. This is perfect for a medium to large room. If you want a BIG sound without the bulk and the high cost, I highly recommend this. The set up was easy. The brackets provided also comes with a paper template for easy wall mounting. The screws/hardware are also included and looks great. If you're using a high gauge speaker wire, the +/- inputs (holes) on the back of each speaker are a very small and somewhat difficult to connect. Other than that, I'm going to really enjoy this system.

AJG - Cali/L.A.

I looked at buying the RM6750 for a long time but eventually decided on this system. It was a little more expensive but the look and smaller sized speakers made it well worth it. The RM6750 has a fairly bulky center speaker and larger satellite speakers. The RM705 is sleek and modern looking. The sound is awesome, crystal clear and beautiful. I have a fairly large room. I had read some complaints that the subwoofer is not loud enough. Well, how loud do you need it. The bass booms and I ony have it turned up half way. I have nothing but good things to say about this system. Great system for the price. Go out and buy it, you'll be happy.

These speakers are wonderful; I wanted a good speaker system set and I took a look at forums but I'm happy I got these for about 300.

Pros:
-Subs is perfect for me
-Speaker are very beautiful and match with TV
-Sound is amazing; now I can hear the bits and the bangs of my blu-ray movies
-I have no cons so far

Tricks for good sound from these bad boys:
-Turn the sub's cross over all the way up
-Turn the phase nob to 0 degrees
-Turn the receivers cross over to 80hz

When you are done, listen to the system and if there is not enough boom from the sub turn the channel level setting on the receiver for the sub a little bit. Listen to it, turn sub level, listen and so on until you find your taste.

When ordering this Polk HTS, I reminded myself not to expect something unrealistic. At this price point, I think a realistic expectation is that you will get a 5.1 sound system which will adequately fill a small to medium sized room with quite accurate soud rendition, but it will be at least one level below a Boston Acoustics, Klipsch or Bose sound system.

The product arrived on time and in good condition. I hooked it up to a Yamaha HTR-5840 Receiver with the intent of reproducing good quality sound from my Samsung Blue-ray DVD and Samsung HD 4650 TV (I had spent almost as much as the Polk HTS buying monstercable speaker wires and a few optics cables to supplement the quality of sound supply from the TV and blu-ray players). Polk supplies very little in the way of installation manuals / user guides with their product, but I had no trouble getting everything connected using the most current user guide from Yamaha for their receiver.

The sound quality is as expected, and a little better. You will not be instantly transported to the Royal Albert Hall when listening to this system, but the sound from bass (actually pretty good sub-woofer) all the way thrugh mid-range and into the high trebles is fine. With two satellite speakers positioned behind the listeners, the sound for the most current movies (whether live transmission or blu ray) is great and a substantial improvement over the standard sound you can expect even from a high-end TV's standard speakers. Crank the volume up, and there is very little distortion (unless of course you try to max it out).

All in all, for a few hundred bucks you get a very nice sound system that is adequate for every-day movie and TV viewing. Streaming Pandora also presented very well.

after reading the reviews here i bought these speakers. very impressed. pleasant surprise to how small they were. yet they sound very full in every way. great sub provides perfect balance. i heard sound i couldn't hear from the other speakers i replaced. i have a friend that raves about his BOSE. i have watched several films at his house and his system is very pleasant. he spent over a $1000 for his speakers. he watched IMAX super speedway at my house and was blown away. he has the same film but heard wind,gear changes and clearer more natural voices with the POLKS. this just proves that you don't have to spend thousands to get great sound. i also played several types of music to get a good idea of range. i could not find anything that these speakers couldn't handle.
speakers are small and solid. very easy to put anywhere. the sub is large but this is a good. you can hide it behind your tv or couch. on the back of the sub is a volume control and you can fine tune how much bass you want.(it will thump if you want or not) it will also power your left and right speakers if needed. very simple instructions for set up with any 5.1 receiver. lots of flexibility with this system.

I purchased these along with a Pioneer VSX-920K 7.1 receiver, and it was an excellent decision. I've been running them for 5 months now and have been blown away by the audio quality and power. Setup was a breeze, but make sure you use a good quality, heavy speaker wire. I listen to almost every kind of music. Classical, Heavy Metal, Jazz, Meditation, Rock, Blues, Country, etc. It all sounds excellent! Highs are crisp and clean, mid ranges has excellent punch and doesn't sound flat, and the lows and subs are very solid and beefy. I liked them so much (especially at the price) that I'm planning on putting a set of these into another room in our house.

** Update 10/26/2011
Fantastic and painless warranty service. In September the center speaker developed some crackle. I put off for a couple weeks dealing with it because normally dealing with audio or electronics warranty are a nightmare. Not in this case! I contacted them via email, described the problem and my troubleshooting steps, and waited. A couple hours later I received a request regarding where I purchased the speakers. I responded, they sent me an address and instructed me to ship it to their repair facility in CA. I shipped it out on Tuesday morning along with a copy of my Amazon receipt, copies of my email correspondence, and a cover letter. They received it Friday afternoon. Monday morning at 9:30 AM (their time!) I received an email stating they replaced the mid-range driver, and asking where would I like it shipped! They had it and repaired it in less than a business day, and they shipped it out the next morning. I received it 7 days later, and it works as good as new. Polk's quality and customer service has made me a lifetime customer.

For the price its an ok set up. Sub is a bit of a pain as you pretty much have to leave it on as it does not want to kick in on auto. Speaker mounts are flimsy and fixed making the speakers un suitable in rooms with high ceilings. The speakers themselves are pretty good looking and a nice size though they dont have great sound depth, but again for the price its adequate. Hard to say how much more you need to spend to get to the next level.

These speakers sound absolutely amazing I am a little surprised for the price I used to have the Definitive Technology ProCinema 600 System and paid way more for it like in the 800 dollar range I have found it very hard to find good clear speakers that depict crisp instrumentation and vocal a lot of speakers sound kind of muffled and don't really articulate between sound these speakers do just that and the sub is great it does not over power the bass to fill a void of bad sounding speakers the sub does what subs are meant to do and that's fill the low end and give you a fuller sound I have used so many different speaker sets and usually the sub is just obnoxious not clear and rattles your floor its kind of like being next to a car where the bass is rattling the trunk and ground and over powering the music. I would highly recommend these Polk's they made a fan out of me I would use Polk for everything in the future when something is good why change?

It sounds fine I guess but from all the raving in the other 5 star reviews I was expecting cinema quality sound or something, As an amateur non-expert I'll just list what I like and don't like:-

Likes-

- Small. Easy to find places for the speakers in our little bedroom.
- Sounds better than the sound from the TV


Dislikes-

- Subwoofer emits an annoying hum just sitting powered on, yes before any cables are attached so you can't blame the cables or the receiver.
- Should not be advertised as a "5.1 home theater system" Does not come with speaker wires, subwoofer cable or a receiver, it should be advertised as "5.1 speakers"
- The holes on the back of the speakers are so puny and small it was a nightmare trying to fit 14 gauge speaker wire into them. I can't imagine how horrible this would be if you had long wire runs that required 12 gauge or lower.
- One of the spring clips came out, with the spring flying out when I was attempting to insert a speaker wire. I did NOT put excess pressure on it, in fact I was quite gentle and pressed it down reasonably like all the other clips. Could not get it to sit back in without it popping back out. Currently have the speaker wire loosly sitting in the connection because of this. Cheap and Nasty.


You get what you pay for I guess. In hindsight if I knew about the tiny speaker wire hole size I would have shopped around.

I fell in love with some of polk's audio equipment a few years ago, but had yet to give any of their smaller satellite speakers a try. In the past I have always just purchased a single product from them, mostly subwoofers for home theater setups for friends and family. Now that I have my own place I wanted to do a setup of my own but for a modest price. I can say that most of the other reviewers here are very correct when they say that these speakers have excellent mids to highs. In fact the highs came through more clearly than some of the older bose cube systems I have heard. The sound however, can muddle a little when the pitch drops in the lower ranges.
This has yet to be a big issue with me because most of the music I listen to is electronic (BT, Tiesto, DJ Shah), all of which resides mostly in the high range. Anything in the bass line the subwoofer readily picks up. The sub is by no means their best piece of work, but is also more aesthetically pleasing than many of their others. It outputs a nice smooth range that blends so well with the other speakers that you wouldn't know it was on unless you turned it off.
Some other reviewers noticed a buzzing sound when you touched the metal on the back of the sub. I too had this problem until I picked up, moved it to a new location, and re-wired everything. I have no idea why, but I have not had the problem since. It could be the new location, the new outlet, or I could have had something wired incorrectly, but with only one RCA cable I find that hard to believe. I did however swap the RCA cable out, so that may have something to do with it as well.
As far as movies go, these are fantastic. The muddled sound in the lower ranges is simply not noticeable in dialog or action scenes. These speakers also offer some very nice directional sound which, I admit is not great for music unless your sitting where you would watch TV. However, this directional sound really brings some fantastic new experiences to movie watching. All around, I cant think of better speakers for the money than these, nor have I heard of any. These are a great tribute to polks line up. For the music I listen to, these exceed much more expensive setups that I have heard.

For my setup I used a Yamaha HTR-5063BL 7.1 Channel 630 Watt AV Receiver (Each, Black) that has 90 watts per channel, which fell right right in the recommended wattage for the speakers. I also used 14 gauge wire, which may have been a bit much, but at the same time I would not go any smaller than 16 gauge with these.

All around a great setup for those who are looking for quality sound at a reasonable price.