Weseixas wrote: "I'm sure you are not comparing your bi-polar speaker polar plot to that of a Di-pole with it's figure 8 pattern ?.... I highly doubt the 2 will sound the same, the sonic characteristics are so completely different..."
Duke replies: Indeed I am making precisely that comparison.
My bipolars radiate into a constant 90 degree pattern, both front and back, over most of the spectrum. Few dipoles maintain their initial figure-8 once we get up into the midrange and treble region; their radiation patterns usually change significantly with frequency (SoundLabs being a notable exception).
As we go down in frequency my pattern widens somewhat, but this is of less consequence down where the room dominates anyway. In the bass region I even manage to emulate much of the in-room smoothness of a good dipole system, and
here's a recent article in a webzine that describes how I do so.
A few years ago I had a longtime (decades long) SoundLab owner tell me that one of my bipolars came the closest to sounding like his speakers of anything he had ever heard, including monopoles, other dipoles, other bipoles, omnis, or anything eles. In fact he actually placed an order for a pair of my speakers, but later cancelled it after changing the setup of his SoundLabs to be more like how I set up my bipolars - apparently that made a significant improvement in his room. Since my intention was to emulate the radiation pattern characteristics of the SoundLabs (something I did with Roger West's full knowledge), the outcome there was still encouraging to me. I don't mind coming in a close second to SoundLab.
Since you didn't reply to my inquiry about where you heard my speakers, now I'm thinking that maybe you didn't. Is that correct?
Duke
