Wiim Amp with Polk XT15 & Polk PSW10

Howdy, me again :D
Considering my current kit - Polk PSW10 10" active sub, and Polk XT15's paired up with the WiiM Amp

If there's anything to consider as a upgrade, where and what would that be - I'm leaning towards the Polk XT15's being replaced first, but maybe the Sub? I don't think the Amp will need replacing anytime soon.

The reason I'm thinking about a slight speaker replacement/swap. My wife would like a WiiM in the entertainment area with bookshelf speakers as well, for casual listening when she's busy in the general area.

Thought about getting a slight bump in quality speakers to replace my Polk XT15's, and give that to her. But what's a feasible upgrade, considering the Polk's size. Looking around and watching reviews, the next tier seems to be around 250-400$, but you lovely smart people would probably know a bit more if it's a better return on investment to replace the sub or speakers first.
 
Can get the XT20’s for 50$ more than the polk XT15, and the following, monitor audio bronze 50 for the same price as the XT20, used bronze 100 for the same price (5 months old) but these look massive
 
After experiencing the large initial improvements in sound quality I fully understand that continuous gear upgrades can seem very appealing, but IMHO you are already in diminishing returns territory since you optimized your system with placement and EQ, so I'd suggest to seriously temper your expectations if you are looking to upgrade any further.
While some loudspeakers would surely sound different, that doesn't necessarily also mean better. There's a real danger you might end up feeling that you are paying a lot more without getting proportionally higher enjoyment from your music.

So the first thing I'd propose is to live with your current system for a while before you consider any changes - you may just realize you're happy with it as is. That being said, it is also fine to upgrade if you feel you need to for any reason (or even without a reason at all). :)

Your subwoofer is probably fine if you don't need extension below 30Hz or extremely high playback levels. I occasionally find <30Hz content in media and it can be quite pleasing to have a system that can reproduce it, but most rock and metal has nothing below 30Hz. Also, very low frequencies travel through walls easily - that might be worth considering, especially if you live in an apartment building.

Your loudspeakers (XT15) with some EQ are IMHO the best choice in their price class. Given that your setup is ultra-nearfield/desktop I don't really see any benefit going with the larger XT20, because it is unlikely you would be overdriving the XT15 in practice.

If you want help choosing subwoofers I'd suggest to look at the amazing comparison sheet created by an ASR member sweetchaos in this thread.
It contains a huge number of subwoofers and results of CEA-2010-A (and in some cases CTA-2010-B) compliant measurements where they exist. You can filter and sort on budget and performance to find a list of potential candidates. Personally, I'd only look at models where reliable measurement data is available.

For choosing loudspeakers you can start with spinorama.org, where you can filter and sort many loudspeaker models based on budget and anechoic performance.
Please note that while the "tonality score" is a really useful tool for narrowing down the number of candidates, it has approx. 1-2 points of uncertainty so it should not be taken as gospel. While in general the higher the score the better the loudspeaker is; a loudspeaker with e.g. tonality score of 4 might be just as good (or better) than one that scores e.g. 5 on tonality (or not). Being able to read and understand CEA2034 (i.e. "Spinorama") measurement graphs (+ a few additional measurements) would be required to better understand the differences between loudspeakers. Some basic guidance is provided here, including links for deeper learning.

Lastly, even very well-measuring loudspeakers can sound a little bit different to each other due to small differences in their sound dispersion characteristics. In this case you may prefer one or the other, or you may decide both are equally fine for you. Note that in time your hearing will adapt to most sound signatures so it is debatable how much time is worth spending on it once audible differences become objectively small. :)
Not to even mention that small audible differences are usually swamped by a plethora of perceptual and cognitive biases, room effects and differences in loudspeaker placement in practice...

Anyway, hope you found some of this helpful!
 
Last edited:
dominikz said:
After experiencing the large initial improvements in sound quality I fully understand that continuous gear upgrades can seem very appealing, but IMHO you are already in diminishing returns territory since you optimized your system with placement and EQ, so I'd suggest to seriously temper your expectations if you are looking to upgrade any further.
While some loudspeakers would surely sound different, that doesn't necessarily also mean better. There's a real danger you might end up feeling that you are paying a lot more without getting proportionally higher enjoyment from your music.

So the first thing I'd propose is to live with your current system for a while before you consider any changes - you may just realize you're happy with it as is. That being said, it is also fine to upgrade if you feel you need to for any reason (or even without a reason at all). :)

Your subwoofer is probably fine if you don't need extension below 30Hz or extremely high playback levels. I occasionally find <30Hz content in media and it can be quite pleasing to have a system that can reproduce it, but most rock and metal has nothing below 30Hz. Also, very low frequencies travel through walls easily - that might be worth considering, especially if you live in an apartment building.

Your loudspeakers (XT15) with some EQ are IMHO the best choice in their price class. Given that your setup is ultra-nearfield/desktop I don't really see any benefit going with the larger XT20, because it is unlikely you would be overdriving the XT15 in practice.

If you want help choosing subwoofers I'd suggest to look at the amazing comparison sheet created by an ASR member sweetchaos in this thread.
It contains a huge number of subwoofers and results of CEA-2010-A (and in some cases CTA-2010-B) compliant measurements where they exist. You can filter and sort on budget and performance to find a list of potential candidates. Personally, I'd only look at models where reliable measurement data is available.

For choosing loudspeakers you can start with spinorama.org, where you can filter and sort many loudspeaker models based on budget and anechoic performance.
Please note that while the "tonality score" is a really useful tool for narrowing down the number of candidates, it has approx. 1-2 points of uncertainty so it should not be taken as gospel. While in general the higher the score the better the loudspeaker is; a loudspeaker with e.g. tonality score of 4 might be just as good (or better) than one that scores e.g. 5 on tonality (or not). Being able to read and understand CEA2034 (i.e. "Spinorama") measurement graphs (+ a few additional measurements) would be required to better understand the differences between loudspeakers. Some basic guidance is provided here, including links for deeper learning.

Lastly, even very well-measuring loudspeakers can sound a little bit different to each other due to small differences in their sound dispersion characteristics. In this case you may prefer one or the other, or you may decide both are equally fine for you. Note that in time your hearing will adapt to most sound signatures so it is debatable how much time is worth spending on it once audible differences become objectively small. :)
Not to even mention that small audible differences are usually swamped by a plethora of perceptual and cognitive biases, room effects and differences in loudspeaker placement in practice...

Anyway, hope you found some of this helpful!
Click to expand...
Thank you, as usual ;) @dominikz - Your insight is always decent and supportive.
I'm not in a rush to go out and buy the next best thing. The wife would like a set for her area, but in due time once I find a wiim amp on special or used for a good price.

Just thought the Monitor Audio Bronze 100's, for the price and even used, were appealing, but damn they're quite big, i'd have to re-arrange my setup and considering bringing them down to the table on mounts pointing them slightly upwards towards me. Nonetheless, still rearrangement needed.

Again, not in a rush right now, just scoping if the Monitor Audio Bronze series would be a 'better' loudspeaker compared to the Polk XT range.
 
Vicious said:
Thank you, as usual ;) @dominikz - Your insight is always decent and supportive.
Click to expand...
No problem, I'm glad if you find my comments helpful!

Sorry, I couldn't find full anechoic measurements of the Monitor Audio Bronze series so I can't say if they’d be better or not.

I can say however that I'd personally only consider loudspeaker models for which a full suite of measurements is available.
 
dominikz said:
No problem, I'm glad if you find my comments helpful!

Sorry, I couldn't find full anechoic measurements of the Monitor Audio Bronze series so I can't say if they’d be better or not.

I can say however that I'd personally only consider loudspeaker models for which a full suite of measurements is available.
Click to expand...
Of course, I always open to suggestions and guidance, and you have always been there to support.

By measurements you’re referring to this site that was shared before ? https://www.spinorama.org/
 
Pragmatist said:
Measurements are like statistics. I don't trust any of it I didn't fake myself. 😉
Click to expand...
While I do agree in part, on the other hand - what else do we have? Personal anectoces and subjective reviews are definitely much less useful.

Good thing with measurements is that you can compare ones taken by multiple independent sources and see how well they align. Luckily for us, much of the time they align incredibly well. :)
 
slartibartfast said:
Shame there are no spinoramas for older speakers. Mine are around 20 years old.
Click to expand...
A lot of models sadly haven't been measured yet, true. :confused: People in the US can ship their speakers to Erin or Amir to be measured with the Klippel NFS, but that is not very feasible for those located in other parts of the world. Still, the database is constantly growing, so there's always hope. :)

By the way, with some effort you can create a quasi-anechoic spinorama of your own at home, which can compare really well to those created from measurements done with the Klippel NFS or in an anechoic chamber. The main drawback of the quasi-anechoic spinorama will be loss of resolution in mid frequencies (typically from approx. 300Hz to approx. 1kHz) and no directivity information for low frequencies (below approx. 300Hz).
An amazing guide how to do this was prepared by ASR member napilopez and documented in this thread.
Here's one example of a quasi-anechoic spinorama measurement of my own, including comparison with measurements of the same loudspeaker model from several other sources.
 
Vicious said:
Thank you, as usual ;) @dominikz - Your insight is always decent and supportive.
I'm not in a rush to go out and buy the next best thing. The wife would like a set for her area, but in due time once I find a wiim amp on special or used for a good price.

Just thought the Monitor Audio Bronze 100's, for the price and even used, were appealing, but damn they're quite big, i'd have to re-arrange my setup and considering bringing them down to the table on mounts pointing them slightly upwards towards me. Nonetheless, still rearrangement needed.

Again, not in a rush right now, just scoping if the Monitor Audio Bronze series would be a 'better' loudspeaker compared to the Polk XT range.
Click to expand...
By the way, for the other system - have you considered something like the WiiM Mini + active loudspeakers?
That could be quite a cost-effective system, but whether or not it is feasible would depend on which sources you'd like to use.

Some people may say that the WiiM Mini has a "bad" DAC; and while it is true it doesn't perform particularly well, it is absolutely good enough not to create audible issues. I use the Mini as a secondary source in my desktop system without any issue.
 
dominikz said:
By the way, for the other system - have you considered something like the WiiM Mini + active loudspeakers?
That could be quite a cost-effective system, but whether or not it is feasible would depend on which sources you'd like to use.

Some people may say that the WiiM Mini has a "bad" DAC; and while it is true it doesn't perform particularly well, it is absolutely good enough not to create audible issues. I use the Mini as a secondary source in my desktop system without any issue.
Click to expand...
Honestly, haven’t considered a active set with the WiiM mini

I’ll actually have to weigh the options and cost involved, heck, get a feel for what the wife actually wants, is it the look, was it the sound experience, then I’ll take it from there
 
Right, the wife wants my set.

My budget allows me on the following in the local market; but I can't find much to compare them to, so other peoples opinion might need to guide me a bit for further reviews and considerations

I can get, in budget;
Monitor Audio Bronze 50's
Monitor Audio Bronze 100's (But damn they're bulky and big boys)
Polk XT20's
Klipsch R50m
Q Accoustic 3010i's
Polk ES15
 
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IMHO Wharfedale Diamond 12.1 are worth adding to your list. They perform really well for the price (link to YT review and link to another review), but note that they are deeper than the XT15 you have now.

Actually, the low depth of the XT15 makes them IMHO a really nice (passive) option for desktop systems such as yours! A lot of passive speakers seem to be quite a bit deeper so may be intrusive in a desktop environment.

Regarding your other candidates, most of them weren't measured so it is difficult to say how the might perform.
In most cases another speaker from the series was measured so perhaps that could give some clue (even if not conclusive):
  • Monitor Audio Bronze 50 and 100 - I can only find measurements for the Silver series and those look solid, but that may have no relation to Bronze series performance.
  • Polk XT20 (link to review) - Similar to the XT15 you have just bigger; for an ultra-nearfield desktop setup such as yours I don't see a benefit of going with a bigger speaker. Similarly bright too.
  • Klipsch R50m - I can only find measurements for the R-41m (link) and that one didn't perform particularly well. Bright and a lot of resonances.
  • Q Acoustics 3010i - I can only find measurements for the 3020i (link) and that one seems to perform OK-ish. Some resonances.
  • Polk ES15 - I can only find measurements for the ES20 (link) and that one seems to perform pretty well. Main issue is a resonance from the port, but overall a reasonably balanced response.
 
Wiimer said:
I owned a Polk ES15 for about a week. I sold it as soon as I heard Ariana Grande's voice sounding thicker... 😅

# It's just a matter of subjectivity and taste.
Click to expand...
Indeed.

At least the ES20 have a broad response dip around 2kHz, and widening directivity between 3-7kHz. This will surely affect how they sound out of the box. They do have reasonably good directivity so it should be possible to tune them to taste with PEQ.

Again, ES15 might be similar or different - impossible to tell without full anechoic measurements!
 
dominikz said:
Indeed.

At least the ES20 have a broad response dip around 2kHz, and widening directivity between 3-7kHz. This will surely affect how they sound out of the box. They do have reasonably good directivity so it should be possible to tune them to taste with PEQ.

Again, ES15 might be similar or different - impossible to tell without full anechoic measurements!
Click to expand...
If anything, ES15 may be closer to S15 than ES20, but I don't know..

www.audiosciencereview.com

Polk Audio Signature S15 Speaker Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Polk Audio Signature S15 bookshelf speaker. It was kindly sent to me by a member for the review and costs US $229 per pair. If I did not tell you the price, you would think the S15 retails for $1000 given its very nice and "high-end" looks...
www.audiosciencereview.com www.audiosciencereview.com
 
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