Incredible build quality and boxless sound.

Not as deep as you would expect.

This is fine speaker. Firstly it's built very well, unlike like most bookshelves which feel hollow, light and cheap compared to their floor standing brothers. The combined weight of these babies is 70 pounds, most of the weight comes from the raised baffel which not only gives the speaker a distinct look but is also an anti-diffraction source. The baffle/bezel is made of crushed rock and glass.

The tweeter is laid back and slightly warm. I prefer warmth over screechy, tinny tweeters anyday. But it conveys high hats convincingly and reproduces human voices naturally. The dual woofers give the speaker much greater presence than most 2-way, 2-driver systems. The increased cone area allows this speaker to play at ear shattering levels, couple that with high sensitivity and it's easy to see achieving extreme volumes will never be a problem.

The phantom center presence is very strong. Properly installed it becomes near impossible to point out the speakers postion in a blind listening test. It's amazing how boxless sounding they are.

Now there's the only point I have to mention: with two woofers you would think the speaker would play much much lower. This speaker does not lack bass, but the driver array makes you expect more. I assure you this speaker will handle 45hz with authority. Futhermore this is a bookshelf model. You want bass, buy a subwoofer and stop whining. I have two subs so I never expect my main fronts to handle bass duties.

I chose this speaker over the Paradigm LCR350 because they both had a similar laid back but refined quality, but the polks were built a whole lot better. With the RT55 you feel like your getting top flight gear and not just flagship hand me downs.

And shop a around. You can find these for $450 these days which makes them an incredible value.

Similar Products Used:

Paradigm LCR 350. Infinity compositions 1. Infinity RS3

I ordered these from crutchfield. 2 days later pleasure to my ears. C had the best price I could find being the most trusted of the lower prices... Ok, hooked them up to a H/K AVR65 (a good one)receiver, H/K 8350 CD with Digital out ,and along with a CS400. OH MY GOD! Sweet detail city..... Cant wait until my f/x-500's come in late this month... Best combo of quality and budget that belongs in a higher class.
Now, the speakers are LARGE for bookshelf speakers. But if you have the room, they will not dissapoint. Solid low end,clean midrange, and crisp highs...

I thought the Polk RT55's sounded good overall. But compared to my Paradigm Reference 80's they didn't have the detail and smoothness.

I'm a novice in audio land, but my ears know what they like. I started out by purchasing the Polk R40's for $199 per speaker at Circuit City. I wanted more, they simply could not handle the horsepower. I went back to Circuit City to upgrade and the salesperson I know had a pair of Polk RT55's that he personally owned for a few months on the showroom floor. The speakers were in mint condition so I purchased them for $179 each and I also picked up a Polk PSW250 subwoofer and received two Polk R10's for free because of the special they were running. The RT55's are clear and distortion free. The subwoofer provides the base I was looking for and the R10's are wonderful satellite speakers. I have a little more than $600 invested in speakers and have a package that sounds and looks as if I spent a couple of grand! I'm now a happy camper and would recommend the 55's to any enthusiast.

For me, the Polk RT-55's have a clean distinct sound to them that seems to fit all different kinds of musical applications. I find them to able to create enough bass and an equal amount of mids and highs. I do believe that a speaker such as the Polk RT-55 is greatly accompanied by a Polk PSW-150 to get a more robust bass response that most people like. Myself, with a full Polk system, I have no complaints, and for those who do, well, you obviously don't know good sound when you hear it!

Great sounding speakers. I only found out after I purchaced them that they do not like High-Current amplifiers. So now I am dealing with getting both tweeters replaced. Other than that when they played, great! 4 stars due to the tweeters.

I upgraded to a pair of Polk's RT-55 bookshelf speakers, up from an old pair of KLH speakers, after auditioning several bookshelf and floorstanding models from several mid to high-end companies. In the end I went with the RT-55's because of its rugged and progressive build quility and top-notch sound. It thumps out more, and cleaner bass than many floor models and has a wide sweet spot thanks to its large 1 inch tweeter. I had to adjust the crossover on my Velodyne sub due to the speakers impressive lower end, but on the whole the speakers output did a good job of masking my sub's location, something many bookshelf models fail to do in home theater set-ups. The dual 6 1/2 inch woofers are as tough as anything I've ever tested. I drove them at nearly full tilt on my sony str-da30es receiver with no signs of audible stress or wind noise; the plate port on the back of the unit is not just for decoration.
The RT-55 is one of the few bookshelf speakers that can actually claim floor model performance levels without the floor model price. (I paid $480 at J&R Music world.)

Clean, easy, smooth highs and mids with no midrange bloat or brightness

For a bookshelf model, I can't think of any!

These puppies really let the music breathe, allowing the natural sound of the source to come through. Circuit City must be making a killing off these puppies! While shopping for a stereo system for my mother in-law last year, my wife picked these up while there, and i've been wanting a pair ever since. I'm an apartment dweller and the early eighties tower dinasaurs were taking up space and didn't sound so great anymore.

I took a CD-R compilation with me to CC and ran it through everything they had in my price range. These babies played everything I threw at them very well and accurately, leaving a couple of higher-end models and brands in the dust. It was my choice between these and the Infinity towers, but the Infinity speakers were too bright and fatiguing, and while the bass was strong, it was thin.

Great build quality, very crisp, tight sound

none that i can find.

I am very pleased with these speakers. At the time for $600 I thought they were a little spendy. But once i listed to them in the show room, and since getting them home, believe they were worth the money.

The sound is very crisp, clear, and at high and low volumes has little if no distortion, to my ears.

The size is also what interested me, my wife told my no more tower speakers cluttering up her living room, these speakers blend very well.

The only thing i need to add yet is a good subwoofer, the AVR-2800 Denon receiver i bought does not push much bass even with the control at it's highest output. Though I think the speakers can handle more bass with little problem.

These speakers with a new CS-300 Polk Audio center channel,
and some old Bose 301's in the rear have made a very nice sounding system, to start with anyway.

Similar Products Used:

Bose 301's
Phase Tech's

Wonderful expansive soundstage, tons of bass, extended highs, very "unboxy" sound

Heavy coloration in the upper-bass/lower midrange. Boomy upper bass hump.

I was very dissappointed in these speakers. In an effort to pump out truckloads of bass, the lower end of these speakers is unbearably sloppy. Boomy bass which colors male and female vocals ruined the overall sound. Even though they imaged beautifully and the highs were fairly smooth, I couldn't live with the boom. If you want tons of bass, and don't care if it's accurate or not, these are your speakers. But if you have a sub, and natural reproduction is your preference, make sure to compare these speakers with others in the same price range. i A/B'd these with the Mission 703. While the Missions sounded a bit boxier, they blew the Polks away in every other respect except imaging, which was still acceptable. In the end, I went with the Vandersteens (review coming soon).

Similar Products Used:

Mission 703, Mirage FRX7, Paradigm Monitor 7, Tannoy M5, PSB Image 4T, B&W 603, Vandersteen 1C, NHT Super2