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.