In September of 1971, when Matthew Polk graduated from John Hopkins University with a degree in physics, he was concerned about his ability to find a job. He decided to use his hard science background to pursue a career in marine biology. Unfortunately, he absolutely hated it. In the meantime, his best friend George had been unable to remain steadily employed. Matthew and George decided that they should both try to build a career around something that they enjoyed doing. They decided on audio. The pair got the opportunity to handle the sound for Duke Ellington at the Baltimore Arts Festival. There was only one small problem--they didn't have the right equipment. They called up their previous customers and told them that they had modifications they wanted to make on their systems. Their customers willingly brought their systems back and the partners made the modifications. Although this was an exciting experience, they decided that they wanted to specialize in creating systems for "regular folk," as opposed to professional products. During this time period, Europeans were designing speakers that had a beautiful mid-range, but poor bass and volume. By contrast, the American speakers of the early '70s had lots of bass and high volume, but the mid-range sounded just awful. In an attempt to create speakers that offered the best of both worlds, the partners decided to use small drivers to drive larger passive radiators. Today, Polk speakers are designed for home entertainment systems and car stereos. They offer a range of speakers in various models including floorstanding, bookshelf, center, surround, subwoofers, wall speakers, in wall speakers, and more. Floorstanding speakers are undeniably popular with home video enthusiasts, and Polk emphasizes the ability of their speakers to faithfully reproduce both music and movie sound. With five different series of home audio speakers, Polk audio offers the LSi series for audiophiles, the Monitor series for those who want the best possible value, the R series for those who are just beginning their audio addiction, and plenty of models in between. |
