Room treatment for Dipole

[howburger]

I just put three Hawthorne coaxial dipole OB's into my theater. I have 2 2" OC 703 2 X 4 panels (ATS Acoustics Panels) on each side wall, three along the back wall, and have three left to put on the ceiling. My room is 12' X 20'. I will also be stacking cut triangles of rock wool in the front corners as bass traps. I planned on tube traps, but no room. As far as I've read, the conventional wisdom seems to be that the front wall should be dead and all other walls to at least absorb the 1st, 2nd and 3rd reflections without over deadening so as to keep the music as lively as possible. BTW, I am trying to optimize for music and take what I get for HT. Does this all still apply for dipole LCR speakers? I know that to really do this right, a professional acoustician should probably be involved. I am just curious whether all the standard acoustic rules are thrown out the window when using dipole speakers versus boxed speakers.

Thanx,

Harold

[AJINFLA]

I would start with no treatment and proper placement (3' minimum, 4' better, from wall behind loudspeaker, 2' from side walls), then work from there.
Dipole have completely different radiation patterns from monopoles. Getting late, so here are some good references IMHO (as opposed to me continuing to type)

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/rooms.htm

http://homepage.mac.com/tzagar/

cheers,

AJ

[howburger]

Thanx AJ, I'm totally new to dipoles and unfortunately I invested and installed all my room treatments just prior to getting the dipole bug. I can say that the imaging is amazing and the soundstage is unrealistically huge. They've got a little time before they break in and I will mess around with the room treatments some. It appears that my current absorption placement may not be too out of whack with what seems to work for others, according to the Opensky site. I will remove some at different locations and see how it affects the sound. It appears that with dipoles, diffusion may be better behind the speakers on the front wall as opposed to absorption. Thank you for the links. I've got a paradigm shift to deal with.

Thanx,

Harold

[chasw98]

Harold:
I have built a pair of the Arvo dipoles recently. I am finding that placement and treatment are a large part of getting the best performance from the speakers. In my room, I am also finding that too much treatment is worse than no treatment at all. Be very judicious in your use of treatment. I realize that you said it is already installed but you might think about taking some of it out to see the difference it makes. My room is too dead and I am now trying to liven it up. This also compares to ThomasW's experience with dipoles. He has a fairly lively room where mine is dead and we have gotten very different impressions of the same dipole loudspeaker. Just my .02.

Chuck

[ThomasW]

Play with placement until you get in the ballpark. Then 'map' the room using test gear. The ETF 5.0 website has a demo room example of room mapping.

http://www.etfacoustic.com/demoroom.all.html