Is this the set?
http://www.amazon.com/Polk-Aud...r-System/dp/B000WGJX5A
There are a few reasons why things might have sounded so different. A few that come to my mind right away
- Room size / effect...
The room a system is in can have a HUGE effect on what the system sounds like. For example, if you were to put your little sub in a college dorm room, it might to pretty well. Put it in a 12'x15' room with openings to other areas and it's going to sound extremely weak.
The same thing happens with speaker distances. The intensity of sound coming from your speakers reduces as a square of distance. If their room was smaller, the system would have to work a lot less to get high SPL easily.
- Sub placement
You're running dual subs - this can be great or a curse depending on how you set it up. If you set it up well, they should reinforce once another and even out the response. If it's not set up well, you might end up having them canceling out the output of the other sub. Placement in general also has a lot to do with subwoofer performance (tips in the sticky thread)
- Volume of playback
I don't know if you were listening louder over at the other place than you usually do. Louder sounds better. I'm not sure if you're implying by your description that when you turn your system up that it can't go as loud or if it just doesn't sound as good when it does.
- Calibration of system
There are a lot of variables here... their subwoofer gain could be up a lot higher than yours and they might have an equalizer setting on their onkyo set to exaggerate upper frequencies that might make things sound more clear? The newer Onkyo receivers have audyssey room equalization built in that would help clear things up and even out speaker response.
Those are all setting type things rather than the equipment itself necessarily.
You seem to be focusing on wattage a lot as to why things sounded different. This could come into play assuming that you were pushing both systems really high and those ratings were accurate, but that's probably not a huge factor here. The HK's wattage rating is more reliable that the Onkyo's and they likely have very similar actual output. Even if they are totally accurate, the difference in max sound output from 50watts to 75watts is a very small 2dB assuming the rest stays constant.
A bigger factor for speaker output doing what you want it to do (loud and clean) is speaker size. Small satellite/sub systems like this have a hard time pushing the amount of air that you need them to in order to fill a room with sound. If you want a really powerful cinematic movie experience, your front three speakers need to sensitive enough and have enough surface area to push enough air with your amplifier power to give you the sound you want. The Polk systems you guys both appear to have are systems that might work well in small rooms if you have to make size compromizes of the speakers. In a medium to larger room, you'll want larger speakers for better sound.
(If it wasn't clear above, I think the output of your system's speakers has more to do with the speakers themselves than the HK)
As for the subwoofer, this is probably a case of just having not enough sub to fill your space. The sub that came with your system (and likely the spare other sub) just won't play low enough to get the deep rumbling that you can get with a "real" sub. Without knowing exactly what sub they had, it's hard to say what you're up against, but honestly that's probably a weak sub as well. If you want an intense bass experience, you're going to need to buy a sub that matches the needs of your listening room. For medium sized rooms, this could probably be accomplished with a ~$400 sub (something from Elemental Designs, SVS, HSU, etc.)
If your main concern is subwoofer output, this is likely where you want to spend money if calibration and setup of your existing subs still doesn't solve the issue.
Facebook
Twitter