In my condo, the right surround speaker needs to drop from the ceiling in the center of the room. Because there is no wall behind the speaker, would it be a bad idea to use a QS8 and go with a direct firing surround speaker instead?

Where will the right surround be in relation to your listening area?

The QS8s (and the QS4s) are extremely forgiving as far as placement is concerned. As long as the front of the speaker is pointing in the general direction of your head, you'll be fine.

Well, I read an article the other day that said dipoles work by canceling sound traveling directly at the listeners, and the sound heard is reflected off the walls. As there is no wall to reflect sound, I'm concerned that a dipole's performance would be significantly affected.

In relationship to the listener, the speaker will be in the ideal location, just without a wall behind it.

There are no walls behind my side QS8's and rear QS4's and they sound great, much better than when I was using direct radiating speakers.

Tyns, the QS series are not dipoles, they function like a regular speaker, a wall behind them is not necessary.

jakewash is correct. dipoles have their side-facing drivers wires out-of-phase. The Axiom QS speakers all fire in-phase, so no cancellation occurs. Even dipoles don't necessarily need a wall behind them, though.

I have 4 Qs8's and the left one is the only one that has a wall behind it, the rears and right surround are open to the rest of the room, works just fine.

Also, the Q's are not dipoles.

Oh, and in case no one has mentioned it, the QS series aren't dipoles.

So, yeah, the QS series aren't dipoles.

Before we give this guy advice, shouldn't we consider whether or not the QS Series are Dipoles?

As Mark says, I think it might be important to make the determination about the dipole-ness of the QS series.

Sometimes, the dipole quotient is superior in some models...

I'm more worried about the dipole ratio, myself.

If y'all don't shut it, I'll force you to integrate your dipoles.