Radical toe in once more


Hi all. I have bi-directional floorstanders, two way speakers with identical treble and woofer on the front and the back. Half of the sound goes to the front drivers, half to the back.

The toe-in of this type of speaker is very influenced by how the back sound wave and the reverberant sound behaves. These speakers often sound good with radical toe-in due to better room acoustics with a longer back wave towards the corners.

This is a huge topic, and my question is more restricted: what happens with the front firing sound?

Is there an "inherent" problem with radical toe in, when the main sound from the front drivers cross in front of the listener, instead of the more conventional setup where the crossing point is behind the listener - and if so, what?

Is this (potential) minus factor in fact low, if the listener is just a foot or so back of the crossing point?

 

Ag insider logo xs@2xo_holter

Get a buddy to swivel the speakers while you are in your listening position.  Simple!

@o_holter 

I may have missed this but what brand and model are these loudspeakers. The way the speakers are wire has a huge affect on how they operate. Are the drivers in phase (both front and rear drivers moving out at the same time) or 180 degrees out of phase (front drivers move out, rear drivers move in)?? In other words are they Bipoles or are they Dipoles. Planar loudspeakers like ESLs are dipoles, the front and back of the speaker are 180 degrees out of phase. Using dedicated front and rear drivers gives one the opportunity to wire them either way with extremely different results. Once I know how they are set up I might be able to make some suggestions.  

@newbee 

There is always a "right way" to set up well designed loudspeakers in good rooms with maybe 2 or 3 options. There is no good way to set up poor loudspeakers in either good or bad rooms.

@o_holter 

If you are not sure how they are wired take an AAA battery and while holding the negative speaker lead against the negative pole of the battery tap the positive lead against the positive pole of the battery for a split second. If both woofers move out they are in phase and Bipolar. If one moves in and the other out then they are out of phase and dipolar. 

Hi @avanti1960

Thank you. I have done some of this procedure before, and I have also investigated through measurements (REW, Cara etc). Basically I am back to using my ears. For now I think I am fairly close to ideal, but in the future I may try your ’back to basics / conventional’ method.