Bipole/Dipoles for sides and rear? (1 Viewer)

[MikeDel]

Did a search, but couldn't find a specific answer.

Need an opinion or two. I recently upgraded my entire setup with the following:

Sony 60" LCD TV
Onkyo 801 Receiver 7.1
Polk CSI3 center
Polk RTI6 fronts
Polk FXI3 Bi/Di surrounds
Polk FXI3 Bi/Di rears
Vel 15" Sub

Moving to a new house where the setup will be in a family room about 16 X 24. The main seating area will be on back wall. Will be using the setup primarily for HT, very little music.

I;m just wondering if I made a mistake by buying 4 bi/di for the side and rear walls. I keep on seeing diagrams where front firing are on the side and Bi/di's are placed in the rear.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks, Mike Del

 

[JohnSmith]

Try setting the sides to dipoles, and the rears to bipoles.
Or bipole to both.

You've got the ability to switch both sides/rears from bipoles to dipoles. Have fun experimenting

There is no set way of speakers design- all setup's are different and require different approaches.

 

[SethH]

I've never tried 4 bi/di-poles, so I can't speak from experience, but I've always that it would spread things out almost too much. Now, I've always thought the direct-fire would go to the rear, but in your case you'd need the direct-fire on the sides since you're right against the back wall for seating. You might try to get out some old speakers, or borrow a friend's bookshelf speakers to see if you like the effect better.

 

[Frank Zimkas]

Direct radiating speakers for rear channels.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

I have 4 Omnipolar speakers for the surrounds and rears. In the past I've actually also tried bipolars (which are very similar to omnipolars), dipoles, and direct radiators.

My seating location is 12 ft from the from the front of the room and 5 ft from the back of the room. I find that I really like the balance of direct imaging plus diffuseness from them. Since you can select, I would suggest John's approach first, dipoles for the surrounds, and bipoles for the back. But also try bipoles for all. (But listen specifically for whether the surrounds are now too distracting, i.e., too localizable. If they are too close, dipole mode might sound better.)

Before I went the all-ominipolar approach, I also worried about the sound being "too spread around the room." Not the case (at least with my setup and my room). Remember, all an omnipolar/bipolar speaker is, is a direct radiator also with drivers on the back (in phase). You still get excellent imaging, but you get the added benefit of the rear drivers to create a larger sweet spot.

The biggest problem with direct radiators for me, was that they were way too distracting as surrounds. (Great for multichannel music, not so great for movie soundtracks.) So then I went with omnipolars, and since I wanted all 4 to be indentical for timbre matching, I went with 4 of them.