Polk RT55i Project Idea

[ThatM1key]

I've a pair of Polk RT55i's, I'm gonna be honest these speakers are pretty worn. So worn, that I had to b*tch to the seller because of one of the woofers was actually blown. Luckily the seller offered me enough money for a identical. Yes the seller said the both speakers worked fully.

I was originally bought these speakers as rears in my dolby atmos setup. Eventually I replaced with my Polk RTi6's because I fell out of love with the Polk RT55i's.
I hooked up these RT55i's to my Sansui and man, I had to crank the bass up, Unlike my Elac's, were I usually have to crank the bass down. Also the highs sounded like a toddler messed with a equalizer's sliders.

My project idea is to:
Stripe the pealing vinyl & Paint the whole cabinets white.
Convert the cabinets to sealed instead of ported.
Replace bottom woofers with passive radiators.
Transfer entire Polk RT35 guts to the cabinets. (I really like the sound of my Polk RT35's)

What's the question I'm mainly asking: Is this a good idea?

 

[ThatM1key]

I would edit this thread but I cant, anyways.
So I wanted to get an OEM Polk T50 Passive radiator for this project. I was quoted $40 + shipping for 1. For reference You can get a full tower Polk T50 for $100 new or a used one for even less. Parts express sells 1 "Dayton Audio DS175-PR 6-1/2" Passive radiator for $18 + shipping. For right now, I'm putting this project on hold.

 

[Putter]

I've a pair of Polk RT55i's, I'm gonna be honest these speakers are pretty worn. So worn, that I had to b*tch to the seller because of one of the woofers was actually blown. Luckily the seller offered me enough money for a identical. Yes the seller said the both speakers worked fully.

I was originally bought these speakers as rears in my dolby atmos setup. Eventually I replaced with my Polk RTi6's because I fell out of love with the Polk RT55i's.
I hooked up these RT55i's to my Sansui and man, I had to crank the bass up, Unlike my Elac's, were I usually have to crank the bass down. Also the highs sounded like a toddler messed with a equalizer's sliders.

My project idea is to:
Stripe the pealing vinyl & Paint the whole cabinets white.
Convert the cabinets to sealed instead of ported.
Replace bottom woofers with passive radiators.
Transfer entire Polk RT35 guts to the cabinets. (I really like the sound of my Polk RT35's)

What's the question I'm mainly asking: Is this a good idea?

My guess is you'll get one note bass.

Let's start with your comment that you'll convert the RT55's to sealed from ported. Actually adding a passive radiator actually is still a form of a ported speaker with the passive radiator standing in for the port. In your case, it's minus the Thiele-Small calculations originally used for the ported RT6i's. This brings up the second problem which is the recommendation is the passive should be a minimum of 1.5 to 2 times the size of the powered woofer. The reason is that the passive operating the same frequency range (if its the same size) as the powered woofer since it's actually indirectly powered by the woofer. Increasing its size or doubling the number of passive as in the Polk T50 will lower the frequency range to where it supplements rather than essentially doubling the response.

Other potential options would be getting a pair of T50's and transferring the guts which may not be cost effective, or just getting a subwoofer.

 

[Beershaun]

Do you have a way to measure the results so you can tweak and tune? If not I'd say no. Mainly because you won't have any precision way of measuring how the speaker.is performing. I think you'd want to measure impedance, phase, and in room frequency response performance in order to give yourself some idea of how it performs.