Turning Dipoles into Bipoles? (1 Viewer)

[Ho_Nguyen]

I know this is not how it is normally done but I purchased a set of dipoles in place of my floorstanding rears due to space limitations. Well I'm not happy with the surround effects I'm getting now from my dipoles and was wondering if I could just rewire one set of the speakers the opposite way to make them bipoles. I was thinking of doing it at the speakers themselves after the crossover. Is there anything that occurs at the crossover that would give me any problems? Also typically which face of the dipoles are normally out of phase from the rest? The face pointing forward or the face pointing rearward? Hopefully someone can give me a little help.

 

[Bob McElfresh]

Short Answer: turn the rear speakers so that one of the drivers face the listening position. Then use a SPL meter to adjust the rear volumes to match the fronts.

Long Answer:

Dipole speakers were designed to fire sound along a wall so the listeners never heard direct sounds. This was to 'hide' the speaker location and in the days of ProLogic video tape, only ambient noises like wind/rain/etc., were programmed for the rear speakers.

(Also, the same exact sound went to both rear speakers).

Another trick to help diffuse/hide the sound was to wire the 2 opposing speakers out-of-phase. But this is a bit of a gimick. It really does little/nothing to help hide the sound source. But it was simple/easy to do.

(Note: having your L/R speakers wired out of phase makes a big difference. But the nature of the sounds going to the L/R speakers is very different from the same sound being fired in 2 directions from 1 speaker. But thats another show.. )

If you want to un-do it just pick one of the drivers on one side of the dipole and cut/flip the 2 wires leading to the drivers.

But IMHO, it's more trouble than it's worth. Just turn one set of drivers to fire directly at the listening position. And just let the other drivers fire against/along a wall. This gives you a psudo bipole speaker. The important point is to use a Sound Meter to adjust the levels because you now have a direct-radiator speaker.

(Speakers fire sound like the beam from a D-cell flashlight: very intense in the center with a sudden drop-off.)

Hope this helps.