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you may find direct radiating speakers too easy to localize while dipoles would spread the sound out enough that they would "disappear" into the room better. Most height channels should be far enough from listeners that direct-radiating speakers will usually be the best choice, but a situation like a basement system where the finished ceiling is 7 feet or even a little less.
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In "short" rooms that have limited depth and little space behind 1 row of seats, dipole speakers for rear surrounds can be useful for, again, delivering the correct "amount" of sound into the room without that sound being loud because it is so close to the listener. This can be useful in the side surround position in narrow rooms. But in rooms where you have a listening seat that is 5 feet or less to any given speaker, a dipole speaker can deliver the correct "amount" of sound, but it will not be too loud for the nearest seat as it would be with a direct radiating speaker. In a room large enough to get 6 feet or more of distance from any speaker to the closest seat, I would suggest using direct radiating speakers. There is a situation in home theater where you can find dipole speakers useful. In this configuration, the surrounds get re-wired to serve as left and right top rear overhead speakers, while Atmos-enabled speaker modules can be added to the system’s main left and right speakers to deliver the front overhead effects. In-ceiling speakers that were originally installed for use as conventional surrounds can also be repurposed for a 5.1.4 hybrid Dolby Atmos-enabled/overhead speaker setup (as shown in the photo). First, you should follow Dolby’s guidelines by losing any side-mounted dipole surround speakers in the system and replacing them with properly positioned direct-radiating models. Those very same Dolby speaker and setup rules also now apply to Atmos-ready systems, though there’s now the additional factor of overhead effects speakers (which should also be direct-radiating).Ĭan you adapt an existing 5.1 speaker system for the new immersive formats such as Atmos and DTS:X? Absolutely - but with a few modifications. Installation recommendations also changed from high up on the sidewalls directly in line with the viewing seat to behind the viewing area, angled inward and on the same horizontal plane as the front left/right speakers. (The surround channel was additionally low-pass filtered to achieve the latter goal.)įollowing the arrival of digital 5.1 surround formats with discrete surround channel information, Dolby started to recommend the use of direct-radiating surround speakers instead of dipoles. THX required the use of dipole surrounds for THX-certified speaker systems, with the main claimed benefit being more even distribution of the mono rear effects channel in a typical home viewing environment, along with reduced localization.
#Dolby 5.1 speaker system drivers#
Are dipoles still the optimal surround speaker choice now that technology has transitioned to object-based audio formats like Dolby Atmos? Assuming that no more speakers can be added to a system due to space limitations or cost, can an existing 5.1 speaker system (with dipole or conventional in-ceiling surround speakers) work effectively with the new sound formats? - Steve Benoff, Beaumont, CAĪ The dipole surround, a speaker design featuring dual matched sets of drivers facing front and back and wired out of phase, dates back to the old Dolby Pro Logic days when processors extracted a mono rear surround channel from encoded soundtracks on analog formats like VHS tape and Laserdisc. Convey a robust sound ensemble to the consolation of your individual house.Got a tech question for Sound & Vision? Email us at Way back when surround sound at home was the new big thing, installing dipole surround speakers at either side of the main listening position was recommended.
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