Bipole/Dipole Surround Sound Control
Don’t change your seat, change your sound design instead.
Technology that gives you more freedom
Where you sit in your home theater is of the utmost importance. And the fact is your seating decisions often come before your loudspeaker-placement decisions. Maybe you’ve already got your room set up, with your couch in front of your television, and now you’re bringing in your home theater speaker array.
Of course you can build your system with a set of direct-firing loudspeakers, boxes on stands, with surrounds that are boxes hung on your wall to the sides or behind your listening position. Today, you can even use audiophile built-in loudspeakers all around (with Performance Enclosures in your walls for even more performance edge) so there are no boxes hung on your walls at all. Polk Audio offers a third choice, with innovative technologies that give you even more control over your rear surround channel audio. This professional-grade audio control technology allows you to customize your surround sound according to your existing seating setup!
Sit where you want, FX Series will provide
Look at our FX Series of loudspeakers. Note their unique wedge shape, with speaker drivers firing in opposing directions. Once I explain what the FX Series does, you’ll see the genius of this strange shape.
FX Series speakers are purpose-built surround channel loudspeakers, meant specifically for delivering surround channel information in a discrete digital 5.1 (or higher) system. Their wedge shape and opposing driver system allows them to be placed in more flexible locations without compromising the realism of their surround-soundstage. For added flexibility depending upon your seating requirements, the FX Series also features Bipole/Dipole audio controls.
Diffusion or discretion?
Bipole/Dipole audio controls in the FX Series allow you to control the firing of the speaker drivers, giving you the ability to tailor the surround environment to complement your seating locations.
Choose Dipole when you want to create a more diffuse surround environment, in which you can not easily pinpoint the surround information happening around you. For example, a rainstorm in 5.1 should happen all around you without alerting your ears to the specific locations of the rear speakers. Dipole, when engaged in relation to a seating position like the one shown in the first diagram here, does this very well; enveloping you in realistically indirect sound.
It does this by working the two opposing sets of drivers out-of-phase with each other; while the drivers on one side are pushing, the opposite side is pulling. One caveat of this setting is the resulting “null” (dead) zone of sound in the area along the 90-degree axis of the Dipole speaker. For the Dipole effect to work properly, your speakers need to be positioned “in-line” with your listening position. If you’re sitting outside of the “null” area, the effect is degraded.
Sometimes your seating requirements will change the requirements of your surround sound speakers. Maybe you don’t have a set up that allows you to place your surround speakers exactly in line with your seating position. Maybe your couch is set against the wall opposite your television? In situations like this, the FX Series does double duty. Choose the Bipole setting, and they will produce an enveloping surround sound environment with no “null” zone impediments.
The Bipole setting works both sets of opposing drivers at the same time, in-phase. The result is a greater sound output where the Dipolar speaker’s “null” would be. In theory, a Bipole speaker approaches a 360° soundfield; it squirts sound all around your room. That’s a good thing if you need to set your surround speakers behind your listening position, or anywhere outside of the Dipole “null” area. The Bipole setting also adds some channel discretion to your mix, with a more localized soundscape. Some people prefer the greater localization of Bipolar speakers when they’re used in digital discrete (Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS) systems.More control, more flexibility, more believability
Either way, you no longer have to move your seating arrangement around to make allowances for your speaker installation. Now you can get the benefits of both discrete channel localization, and more diffuse audio realism, in one loudspeaker with just the flip of a switch. And it doesn’t matter where you’re sitting. The FX Series delivers seamless, timbre-matched performance in any home theater, to completely envelop you in more believable realism than ever.
