Got a question about dipolar speakers, specifically planar designs and this Jamo (1 Viewer)

[LanceJ]

Since most planars (electrostatic & electromagnetic varieties) are open designs i.e. dipolar, I would think no matter how large they are made, they still won't generate much low bass because the front and back waves will cancel each other out.

I was poking around Jamo's site yesterday and when I found this, wanted to get others' opinions:

Jamo R 909

This speaker uses two conventional 15" low frequency drivers for the bass. But I'm not sure why they would produce more bass than an electrostatic design. It sure has a beautiful shape though.

Anyone have ideas on this issue?

Also, this model doesn't have a rear-facing tweeter so (I guess) it's really only a "three-quarters" dipole design....or maybe its engineers felt it wasn't needed? BTW: Infinity had similar types of dipolar speakers, including this model (that excellent site's homepage) which was one of the first near-hi-end speakers I had listened to, and which reproduced music in a nearly "being there" manner.

 

[LanceJ]

In the download section there is a white paper for this speaker, 8 megs worth. Yikes! Edit: the white paper (it's large mostly because it contains four different languages) seems to say that a special crossover network helps rebalance(?) the woofers' levels with the rest of the drivers so the overall result you actually end up hearing is balanced, even though most of the low bass *is* still being canceled out. Despite what they say I'll bet because of this method of operation, this speaker needs a lot of power to sound right.