Bipole Surround placement... corners or in more?

StopherJJ1980

Man Im askin a lot of questions today Hope Im not gettin too annoying. OK so my FXi3's should be here any day now. My HT is set up in my living room. My surrounds are going to go on the back wall a few feet above my head because that is just the most convenient place to wall mount them.

Should I put these speakers directly in the corners or move them in a foot or two towards the middle and give them a little more 'room' to bounce sound around a bit? Or does it not matter where the reflection points are?

wingnut4772

I have seen 5.1 placement with the surrounds directly to the sides of the sweet spot with the null of the dipole lined up with the ear and have I seen diagrams recommended for 5.1 with the surrounds behind the listener in the corners angled toward the sweet spot. I am not sure how that would work with dipoles though. Get a couple of ladders out and try both. See which you prefer for your room. I heve them to the sides but I have a 7.1 set up. If you have no choice but to put them on the back wall...my guess would be corners but you have to experiment.

Larry Chanin

wingnut4772 wrote:

I have seen 5.1 placement with the surrounds directly to the sides of the sweet spot with the null of the dipole lined up with the ear and have I seen diagrams recommended for 5.1 with the surrounds behind the listener in the corners angled toward the sweet spot. I am not sure how that would work with dipoles though. Get a couple of ladders out and try both. See which you prefer for your room. I heve them to the sides but I have a 7.1 set up. If you have no choice but to put them on the back wall...my guess would be corners but you have to experiment.

Hi Darla,

Based on the title of Stopher's posting and Polk's advice regarding their Bipole-Dipole speakers, it would appear that Stopher intends to set his FXi3's to bipole mode.

I've got my surround back LC265i's speakers in the corners, but they have a special distance switch that adjusts the crossover to flatten response and tune out “boominess” caused by being closer that two feet to the walls. My guess is that since his speakers don't have this adjustment, he would want to get a few feet off the wall.

Larry

wingnut4772

Oh I see that now ....

StopherJJ1980

Yeah theyll be wall mounted bipole-mode in back... Thanks for the input.

Frank Z

http://www.polkaudio.com/education/hthandbook.php

aaharvel

try playing something back in surround sound that you're familiar with (for me it's the Ark scene at the end of Raiders). Sit in your normal listening position and listen to each surround speaker individually both in dipole and bipole mode. (Turn off the Stereo pair and center when doing this)

Dipole doesn't necessarily sound better on side walls and bipole doesn't necessarily sound better from behind. My room layout is a fubared corner setup and i have the both rear surrounds set to bipole: the side left surround set to bipole & the side right set to DIpole. You never know...

SKsolutions

I'd not have thought of that Andrew. How does it sound? I would think I'd get confused trying to map the phase relativity, but if it works that would be a rather niffty solution to some room limitations. Do you have a drawing or map of your placement?