gkr7007 wrote: "...I gravitate toward planars and other very fast response speakers."
Planars are subjectively "fast" because they have smoother in-room response than monopoles (even though the actual low-frequency transient response of their diaphragms is often quite poor, certainly not "fast" at all). This smoother in-room response of dipoles arises from the 180 degree phase difference between the backwave and frontwave, which effectively launch in opposite directions. When the frontwave and backwave meet up again, after several bounces off of room surfaces, their phase response is significantly more randomized than would be the case for a monopole speaker’s room bounces. And the sum of highly random-phase bass energy is much smoother than the sum of largely in-phase bass energy. "Decorrelation" is the proper word... decorrelation = smoothness, and is highly desirable in the bass region, and is something big rooms do better than small rooms. Decorrelation is also the advantage that a distributed multisub system offers over a single big sub... same basic mechanism as planars, but set in motion by different means.
As the wavelengths get very long relative to the room dimensions, planars tend towards cancellation because half of their in-room energy is out of phase with the other half, so planars don’t make very good subwoofers unless they are very big and can move a lot of air, and are in a big room.
In general, two intelligently-positioned monopole subs approximate the in-room bass smoothness of a single dipole main speaker. So it takes four intelligently-positioned monopole subs to approximate the in-room smoothness of two dipole mains speakers.
Duke
