Apr
22
Bipole or Dipolar Speakers
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The question of bipole or dipole speakers is older than home theater itself but there’s really nothing all that difficult or mysterious about the question, just a few different schools of thought on which one to go with. Bipoles are speakers with drivers on two sides of the cabinet versus just one side (the front) with typical front-firing free standing speakers.
Dipoles also have drivers on two “sides” (angles technically) of their cabinets but the two sets of dipole drivers are out of phase from one another whereas bipoles aren’t. Many people describe the sound of dipoles as fuller or more spacious but a dipole in a smaller home theater could have just the opposite effect.
Like any buying decision and especially any buying decision that involves speakers, take the time to go to a displaying dealer, one that can demonstrate the speakers and explain the difference first hand. In my experience bipoles and dipoles need to be heard before any definitive decision between the two can be made.
Apr
11
You may have seen pictures of home theater systems or even know someone running dual subwoofers. I’m often asked if this is the way to go and I have to say in my experience it rarely adds anything to the equation that a better, single subwoofer couldn’t accomplish. Of course as with many things audio visual, there are exceptions.
I suppose extremely large home theaters could, in theory at least, benefit from two, lesser subwoofers versus one single; from the standpoint that the sound could be attenuated somewhat over long distances and after firing through dense seating. Once again however a single subwoofer placed closer to the center of the room could overcome much of this.
If after all that, if you still want to try and use two subwoofers I’d caution against using Y-splitters to split the signal. Y-splitters might work just fine for short cable runs but be careful if you’re using them in conjunction with long cable lengths.
Apr
10
Speaker Grilles - On or Off?
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Yeah I know this might sound like an odd subject but believe it or not speaker grilles do matter. Well, I guess I should elaborate on that. Speaker grilles are designed just like any other part of the speaker and have their own sonic footprint as well. That might sound a little hard to believe and given the fact that many of them are little more than a frame with sheer cloth stretched over them, I can see how it would be easy to think that way.
Grilles most often affect high frequencies, let’s face it they just don’t stop enough airflow to influence low or mid-range frequencies but they certainly have the ability to alter high frequencies. Most manufacturers tune their speakers with the grilles on and this is something to keep in mind before removing or altering them.
I say most manufacturers tune their speakers with the grilles on but that doesn’t mean all, it’s not unheard of to have a pair of speakers that actually sound better with the grilles off than on. This likely means the speaker was designed, built and tuned with the grille off. Hey go ahead and experiment and see if taking the grille off makes an improvement, if not it makes more sense to leave it on for safety considerations.
Mar
3
The Most Important Speaker
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While they’re all important (speakers that is) consider for a second the silent movie. Sure those early silent films had live musical scores and brilliant actors on-screen, who could convey their feelings with just a look, but modern audiences have come to rely on the spoken word for our cues into the cinematic experience. Rely is probably too soft, demand is more like it.
It pains me to see 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound systems with a good sized sub, rears that are adequately balanced front to back, and an anemic center channel up front whose job is to recreate 80% or better of the dialog present in the films soundtrack. I always advise my clients that if they’re forced to trim some fat from their speaker budget, the center channel wouldn’t be the best place to start.
If anything I feel people aren’t spending enough on their center channels, the ol’ if I can’t understand what their saying I’ll just turn it up mentality just won’t cut it. You’d be better off with a puny subwoofer than a lackluster center channel. To sum up, if I were buying surround speakers all over again, I’d probably balance my budget to something along the lines of 55/60% for the left, center, right and the remaining 40/45% for the surround’s and subwoofer.
There’s nothing wrong with a more “even” (traditional) split but once you’ve heard all the explosions, car crashes and karate chops, you’ll probably want to actually hear what the actors have to say.
Feb
29
Rear Surround Speakers: Floorstanding or In-Wall?
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I’m often asked, “Are in-wall speakers really good enough to use as rear surrounds?” I get this question most often from folks who’ve invested quite a bit of money for their front channels and are a bit dubious that in-walls (this applies to in-ceilings as well) can perform in the same league as their floor-standers. Make no mistake, in-walls have come a long way in recent years. It’s likely that some of them may even sound better than your current front channels.
In the past, in-walls were made with flimsy plastic frames, low quality crossovers, paper driver cones, and were best suited for background-noise. These days it’s possible to find in-walls with metal baskets, injection-molded frames, crossovers that rival those found in some traditional speakers, polypropylene drivers and are best suited to blowing your socks off.
A couple of in-wall speakers in the ‘knock your socks off’ class would be the Klipsch KL-7800-THX in-walls with 8-inch aluminum woofer and one-inch titanium-dome tweeter, or Energy’s’ Veritas V2.2WM 3-way, custom series, in-wall speakers with aluminum dome mid-range and tweeters with 6.5” woofer.
From there and moving even higher up in the high-end food chain, would be something like PSB’s CW800E (pictured left) in-wall speakers priced at a budget busting $2,749.00 each. Obviously these are some extreme examples of in-walls that can hold their own against tradition speaker types, but there are plenty of others to choose from at all price points. As always we recommend listing to any speaker before you buy it.
Feb
23
The Low Down on Subwoofers
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Sorry for the cheesy post title, it really was the first thing that popped into my head. Recently I was asked “Well, what does the subwoofer do?” It was a perfectly innocuous question but I was caught off guard, every now and then a good jolt of (not everyone lives and breathes this stuff) reality is just what the doctor ordered. So with that and in a very small nutshell this is what a subwoofer does.
A subwoofer is meant to compliment your existing front channel speakers in either a 2-channel (stereo) or home theater (multi-channel configuration) setting. The subwoofers purpose is to reproduce bass information at frequencies lower than your front channels speakers are capable of reproducing.
In other words, your front speakers may perform like champs from 18kHz to 45Hz but may run out of steam completely below 40hz (low bass). This is where the subwoofer comes in and takes over for the front channels. The benefit is twofold, the front channels are able to focus on what they do best namely treble, midrange and the upper to mid bass range, and the subwoofer is left to do what it does best, low bass.
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