Loudspeakers for Multichallel

Perhaps this has been discussed, but using Search I didn't find much. Loudspeakers come with different dispersion patterns: directional horns, dipoles, bipoles, omnidirectional, etc. In your experience, what pattern do you like for quad and why?
Audio mag, March 1973 stated "Quad needs Directional Speakers" (similar to the toe-in concept for stereo) to widen the listening sweet spot. That same year I talked to the guys at CES and they said no, no, you want a diffuse sound pattern for the rear ambience speakers. I think some people like very directional speakers for a center channel, to attempt to 'lock-in' the center vocalist to the center but this may limit the listening sweet spot area. Anyone tried omni speakers for quad, good, bad, why?

So clearly, I am quite confused. Let me know your experiences with different loudspeaker patterns.

Thanks,
Gary

As a general rule for movies you want to disperse the sound from the rear speakers (dipole, bipole) and for music you want 4 (or 5) identical speakers.

YES YES
Remember when you listen to music
there may be a bass in the rear
or drums
So if the rear speakers are small so is the bass

So I presume most of us use ordinary box speakers, perhaps cone mid and dome tweeter typically. If so, do you toe all 4/5 matching speakers toward the center of the room or have you found another orientation that you like much better? Rear speakers to the side, or to the far back with the listener equally distant from all speakers?

I have a very vintage Quad setup using mostly Pioneer equipment. My speakers are a bit of a hodge-podge (they're old Sears Professional Series with the nice lattice grills). The tweeters in the speakers (2 per) are some of the best I've ever seen and feature a huge magnet! The woofers I've upgraded with modern pieces with polyurethane (I think) cones. They give a very crisp bass note though I do sort of miss the deep boomy bass the vintage woofers gave. But they are all matched now and that's what's important. Regardless, the way the speakers are built, they give a nice, wide dispersion pattern. I've got a square listening space, so I have my speakers toed-in at about 45 degrees in all corners, but I do have the rears set wider apart just the way the room is built. I don't get much of a sweet spot as (to my ears, anyway) I can hear what each speaker plays regardless of where I'm sitting.

If you look up my pictures of my system
you will see that I have the front as Stereo
the rears are wide apart and about 1 foot higher
and I sit about 2 thirds back from the front

look up

(Show us your gear)

at the bottom of 1st page (RUSTYANDI

rustyandi said:

YES YES
Remember when you listen to music
there may be a bass in the rear
or drums
So if the rear speakers are small so is the bass

Click to expand...

unless you use a sub and bass-management.

I think the ideal is 4 or 5 matching direct-radiating speakers, all arrayed in a circle 60, 120, 240 and 300 degrees (and if using center, at 90 degrees) w/ the speakers pointing at the sweet spot. That is the ideal for music, whereas as mentioned, dipole surrounds are the ideal for movies, positioned closer to 180 and 360 degrees. A sub is needed for the ideal unless you have all full-range speakers. Most of us have to make some compromises; obviously, if you want both music and movies, there has to be some compromise.

The most critical aspects are voice-matching the fronts. The center speaker generally presents the biggest problem, due to placement issues (often needs to be horizontal in a video set-up so it doesn't block the screen) and difficulty having an exact match w/ the L/R mains. A music only system can easily bypass those issues. In a movie/music set-up, I think bipoles are a good compromise for surrounds, since they have some aspects of direct-radiators and some aspects of dipoles (i.e. more direct sound than dipoles, but more diffuse than monopoles).

Choose your priorities and pick your poison. Unless you go for an all-music system, you won't have the ideal (and even then, spatial logistics may prevent the ideal), but you can still have awesome sound, even w/o the ideal.

ProgRules said:

I think the ideal is 4 or 5 matching direct-radiating speakers, all arrayed in a circle 60, 120, 240 and 300 degrees (and if using center, at 90 degrees) w/ the speakers pointing at the sweet spot. That is the ideal for music, whereas as mentioned, dipole surrounds are the ideal for movies, positioned closer to 180 and 360 degrees. A sub is needed for the ideal unless you have all full-range speakers. Most of us have to make some compromises; obviously, if you want both music and movies, there has to be some compromise.

Click to expand...

For those of us who need to visualize this: