Having just received my QS4s, I felt the need to chip in on this.
Dipole: the drivers are out of phase with each other intentionally. Engineers claim one of two reasons for setup this way:
1) causing phase cancellation at the heading angle - ie: if the QS series' were dipolar, this would happen where the nameplate faces you. Since some people (BigJohn, Ray3
) have complained sometimes I don't make sense, I'll break it down. In other words, where one driver is 'pushing' and the other has its polarity reversed so it's 'pulling', where the sound waves cross, very little sound is heard. The reasoning is that you would aim the dead spot towards the listening position and not hear anything directly. The idea isn't new by any means, when I was in high school, a few of us were into the science behind speakers - I'd built a pair of 2-way 6.5" bookshelves and a centre - I'm surrently using the centre in my HT, another buddy built towers (floorstanders to those younger than 18
), a centre and dipole surrounds (similar to the QS series in the shape, but they were deeper to get the required enclosure size for his drivers, remember, this was 1990 when you needed a driver per octave
) and I'm sure 15 years later that if I saw him on the street today, he'd tell me that "he's nearly got them set up perfectly".
2) the other reasoning was to play the phase game in the old DolbySurround/ProLogic days of mono surround to "spatialize" the signal. Much like Ozzy's vocals, things sound bigger, closer, farther away, or heavier depending on the phase (and doppler effect) and delay added to them. (and if you can't hit a note, throw a flange on for good measure)
Bipole: Bipole speakers are multiple drivers wired in phase. Ian's quadpole QS series are technically bipole wired, but he's introduced a new word to describe that there are four planes of sound on his design (versus two on traditional bipoles where the tweeters and woofers would be on the same face). Since you don't have to try to account for every angle of sound refraction and reflection with the 4 in-phase drivers when mounting, added to Axiom's drivers' off-axis response, mounting them is a matter of "just put them somewhere and they'll sound good"
As for the author, I think he's right that dipoles are past their time, they were a band-aid solution for mono surround, and I'm sure if you specifically built a room around your surrounds, you could do incredible things with them. But he's pushing people towards direct radiators, which, in my opinion (and opinions are like buttholes, everyone's got one!) are the weaker choice for home theatre applications. For me, it was like a highway drive... eyes focused a mile down the road, snapping quickly to focus on a bug carcass on the window, fighting to focus on the road again... I heard the surrounds, I could close my eyes and point to them, I had to fight to listen to the dialogue.
Bren R.
