Positioning rear bipole/dipoles.

[gil]

As most of you know, I'm considering replacing my rear tower speakers with something mounted on the walls. I have a wide seating area and need to cover two sofas in an L arrangement.

How does one position bipole and dipoles for rear speakers. Must you face the drivers away from the listeners and is it necessary to have the sound emenating from them reflect off of a wall?

Also, any opinions as to whether a bipole or hybrid bipole/dipole will offer any improvement over just a direct radiator(ie B&W 302, etc).

Gil

[Buzz Goddard]

The point of a diffuse surround speaker design is to allow you to have a speaker fairly close to you (say under 15 feet) that you still can't localize. It emulates an array of speakers.
By positioning it with the null pointed towards the listening position, one achieves this.
There's a fair amount of lattitude in placement, just try and set them so that neither of the speaker surfaces are pointing at a listening position.




Buzz Goddard
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[Andrew Pratt]

Well what buzz suggests is the norm however I found that with the Energy RVSS because they have one set of speakers at an angle to the other set I prefered to have mine about 4 feet behind me with one set of drivers firing at the listening postition and the other firing away to the rear wall. This placement gave me an interesting mix direct sound and difuse sound at the same time. Before you hide cables or screw in the mounts try playing around with various placements and see what works for your room.

[John Holmes]

Yeah, like Buzz and Andrew said!

They both are right. I ended up with them setup the standard way (with the null to the listening position) and it yields great results. However, I do not have a second row of seats like you.

When I was testing various spots for them, I used moving boxes for a temp stand. My surrounds are quite large (22"H 14"W 10"D between 38-48 pounds, I can't remember which) so I wanted to be sure they were in the right spot when I mounted them.




"I came here, to chew bubble gum and kickass. And I'm all out of bubble gum!!!" My DVD's

[Lexman]

IMO, if your not going to use the di-poles as intended, you would be better off going with a direct radiating speaker.

Personally, I think if you have 2 rows of seating, and 5.1, I would position the di-poles directly between the 2 rows at the sides. With 1 row of seating, put the speakers to the sides, with the null facing the primary listening position. Of course, if you sit in 1 row always, and want your position optimized, then place them according to your position, and the second row just gets what it gets.

I really think THX certified di-poles should be placed according to THX specifications, and that's the sides.

Lex

[Buzz Goddard]

I'd have you strongly consider having both sides and rears, even if your electronics don't support it (yet!). It really is the only way to do both film and music surround right...




Buzz Goddard
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