Hello, I noticed My inexpensive speakers polk speakers the Torrii MKIII is driving is lacking in detail. I finally figured out how to open the speaker enclosures and ordered up some Obbligato supreme Gold capacitors for the tweeter section of the crossovers, does anyone here have these or similar capacitors in their system, they scored a 10 on humble homemade hifi out of a possible 10.

I like Polks, but I would have started looking for a better set of speakers, unless the caps were cheap. Focus your funds on serious improvements. Save the incremental (baby step) improvements for when you have nothing else to upgrade...

I've been down that path, and wish I had upgraded sooner.

I had the Polk LS70 - which I really liked in general.

The mods I did before I gave up on them:

Ran wire from the amp, directly to the drivers, completely bypassing the jack on the back.

Tall spikes added.

Added 1" Plywood panels to the sides to deaden resonations (ugly, but amazing improvement - oddly enough, looks like a crude version of the Decware MG944 slab sides).

Added "fun tack" to the metal frame of the drivers to deaden ringing in the drivers.

Messed with crossover, but ultimately I just ran the woofers full range, and the tweeters with a single capacitor and nothing else - I had to play with the phase to get it to work, but it was great in the end - though probably not flat frequency response by any stretch - the detail was amazing compared to my memory of stock.

I may have also messed with adding a "stick" wedged between the magnet of the woofers and the back of the cabinet  to stiffen their mount to the cabinet. This would have happened after adding the plywood to the sides of the speakers.

I may have also messed with various amounts of polyfill to micro-adjust the tuning. It doesn't have a huge effect, it was more for fun.

Lastly, I recall at one time I think I may have put something inside the cabinet (besides polyfill) to help absorb reflections inside the box. I don't think this did much as I had so much polyfill in the cabinet that it was starting to come out the port!

That was all 10+ years ago, and I since sold the speakers to a friend who plays the snot out of them to this day. Ultimately, what I made was a half-assed cobbled together version of Steve and Bob's MG944 - the same speaker I just bought off Steve recently and I'm much happer with. So if you can swing it, look at better speakers. The Polks are a fun education, but you can do better.

Awesome!

If you like the Polks, I think the Decware MG944 are amazing.

I'm new here at the Decware site and am glad to have found it. Proud new owner of a CSP3+ first Decware purchase. Just wanted to add something to the topic about Polk LS 70 speakers. I have a pair that rivals most high end speakers but I had to do extensive mods to them. What made me do it was the size and overall appearance and they fit nicely into my room. Would like to do what lonely raven did to the outsides of them with furniture quality wood and maybe granite tops on them they are a solidly build speaker to start with. To start with I picked them up for cheap in very good condition with the exception of one of the woofers. I ended up putting Morel Cat 378 soft dome horn tweeters in them pulled the two mid-ranges and re installed aurum cantes mid-ranges in them. The crossovers installed mill same spec resisters and replaced the cheap capacitors with Dayton +/- 1% tolerance capacitors. Now they sing but do have about a total of $500 in them now. Now I'm a bit afraid to cast them a side for another set of speakers unless I was able to definately hear them. I am new to tubes so the whole experience with the sound change from SS to tubes has been an eye opening experience with this Decware equipment. I hope to move up the Decware food chain eventually.

Lon,
Thanks for welcoming me to the forums! Steve sure does make great stuff really glad I stumbled onto it.




Dion

VMax
Don't give up on the Polk speakers they can be very good when you get them right. I know when I completed the mods on mine it was like taking a blanket off of them. They seem to blend well with the CSP3+ and Jolida 502P power amp. The CSP3 makes the sound what it is though and it is nice. Someday would like to get a Decware amp to go with the CSP3. The mods that I made to the Polks and the best way to explain the sound before doing them was very dark with no brightness to them. The Morel cat 378 tweeters really made a big difference in the highs and the Aurum Cantes midranges shoved the mids out a bit more. I always had SS equipment and all with some form of eq but now with the tubes no eq I've been rolling tubes to cut or boost frequencies so far so good found some nice tubes. Steves choices for the stock tubes in the CSP3 are the best for my ears. I ended up running a Cryo 6n1p in the input and 2 Phillips cryo 6922 in the output. The 6n1p provides the tubey saturation that I love and the 6922 crisp it up a bit and tighten up the bottom end excellent to my ears. Found a pair of RT 12at7 1963 tubes to put in the output of the Jolida replaced the stock EH tubes. They have a bit more mellow sound to them not edgy and as bright. now it is as close to being eq'd as it will be for a while.
      What model Polks do you have?

55 electrolytic capacitors! Cripes!

Please tell me you have some photos? I'd love to see some of this old gear!

It's hard to believe some of this stuff can be considered "vintage". Hell, I used to install Dolby Pro Logic gear and projection TV back in the day!

It helps if you have them hosted online somewhere. Then you get the link, and when you're composing a message, you click the "Insert Image" icon (3rd from left) - which will add the IMG tags to your post. Just paste that link in between the brackets on the IMG] [/IMG tags and you're all set.