Polk Audio Monitor 60 Series Ii Floorstanding Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Polk Monitor 40 Serial II bookshelf "MTM" speaker. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $200 on Amazon for a pair including Prime shipping.

The Monitor 40 looks pretty decent for such a upkeep speaker:

Subsequently decades of surviving in brutal consumer market for speakers, Polk knows what it is doing here. And that involves super lightweight design and shoddy construction that allowed the front baffle completely dissever itself from the enclosure in shipping!

They take a rabbet all around which provides for large surface surface area for the gum and air tight construction. Why did they resort to these wedges that gave out due to weak fibers in the MDF? A couple of screws would have helped keep it there besides.

At to the lowest degree in that location is some foam inside:

They put money toward bi-wiring terminals that no one uses simply likely checks a box for marketing:

Measurements that yous are about to see were performed using the Klippel Virtually-field Scanner (NFS). This is a robotic measurement system that analyzes the speaker all around and is able (using advanced mathematics and dual scan) to subtract room reflections (then where I measure it doesn't matter). It also measures the speaker at close altitude ("near-field") which sharply reduces the affect of room noise. Both of these factors enable testing in ordinary rooms however results that can be more than accurate than an anechoic chamber. In a nutshell, the measurements show the actual sound coming out of the speaker independent of the room.

I performed over 1000 measurement which resulted in error rate of less than 1% or then.

Temperature was 68 degrees F.

Measurements are compliant with latest speaker research into what can predict the speaker preference and is standardized in CEA/CTA-2034 ANSI specifications. Likewise listening tests are performed per inquiry that shows mono listening is much more revealing of differences between speakers than stereo or multichannel.

Reference centrality was the tweeter center.

Polk Monitor 40 Series II Measurements
Acoustic measurements can be grouped in a way that can be perceptually analyzed to decide how good a speaker is and how it can be used in a room. This and then chosen spinorama shows us just about everything we need to know about the speaker with respect to tonality and some flaws:

Lots of issues hither starting with tweeter frequency not existence flat and elevated. The woofers are getting more than directional before tweeter takes over and presents a wider dispersion. Near-field measurement shows the many flaws:

Nosotros conspicuously see the issues with the tweeter but also the port letting out a resonance right at the crossover. The woofers are allowed to play up to 5 kHz making me wonder if the filter for it has too little gradient.

Early window response has no choice only to be messy:

Summing these produces an estimated response in your room that is likely to be quite brilliant:

Bass response is depression which helps go on distortion in cheque specially given the dual woofers:

Horizontal beam width is not pretty equally nosotros could already guess from the spin graph:

I call up this is the beginning MTM configuration speaker nosotros accept tested so its classic dispersion is nice to encounter:

Edit: forgot the impedance and phase:

Polk Monitor 40 Series Ii Listening Tests
Oh wow, this speaker is bright! High frequency notes literally jump out of the speaker and run across you lot half way! I must say, I tin come across the appeal of that in a showroom and with casual listeners. Bad pick to throw at me though as I am super sensitive to loftier frequency accentuation (spent and so much fourth dimension training to hear distortion in them). And then I had to pull out the parametric EQ tool in Roon right away:

This is a quick and dirty correction to make the sound endurable. It was still bright but likely if you lot add a sub, it would balance information technology out.

Ability handling was excellent considering at that place is essentially no sub-bass reproduction so my killer tracks of this kind did not exercise much to Monitor 40.

Conclusions
The Polk Monitor xl Series Two is a nifty example of what y'all have to practise to bring the cost downwardly to crazy depression yet keep the showroom entreatment high. is this the nearly cleaved thing Polk could design? No, that would require a lot of distortion likewise which I did non find. Still, without equalization and lots of playing around with that I don't see this existence a useful speaker to live with, monetary savings exist damned. Eat less outdoors, save the money, and buy something improve please!

I can not recommend the Polk Monitor forty Series 2.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Had a miserable day yesterday. Why is it that all plumbing work is hell? We spent a fortune to take a yard guy dig trenches in our orchard for sprinklers. We were non here to lookout man the guy and he used the thinnest PVC tubes he could to save money -- much similar Polk above. Worse yet, didn't know much most plumbing and created many sources of h2o leaks. This is the 2nd fourth dimension I have had to dig a ditch 3 feet down in thick mud and dirt. I could barely betrayal the failure bespeak and have to dig more than to make infinite to fix it. And so more muddy miserable days are awaiting me until I get this thing fixed....

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