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In the Forum: Horn-Loaded Speakers
In the Thread: Horn speaker with dipole bass?

Post Subject: Dipole bass -- unsatisfactory in the long run.Posted by noviygera on: 8/23/2010

Vasyachkin, if this is still relevant:

I've tried dipole bass and dipole mids with horns mid/highs in my system. If anything, dipole works the WORST for the bass and here's why:
It does not load the room with bass pressure (or bass sound). That's the simple explanation. I've had two 18" woofers running up to 150Hz in H-cabs in a medium size room and even though there is decent output -- it's like listening in headphones. You can get a 30Hz tone sound but there is absolutely no physical pressure in creating the bass "feel" because the pressure is immediately canceled out by the out of phase signal from the back of the driver. So you get detailed, clean, but lifeless bass. This will get on your nerves after a while. Took about two year for me.

Here's my take on dipole bass
Pros: even bass coverage in room, lean, deep, detailed bass.
Cons: lifeless, does not match the sound pressure of horn loaded drivers

What you should try if dipole seems appealing to you is "infinite baffle" subs. This works a lot better in my opinion, even if using the same exact drivers. I tried it, by taking the same 18" drivers I used for dipole by mounting them in the wall, using the other room as the box. This worked much better for bass than dipole. Now I feel the bass, not just hear it.

P.S. dipole worked much better in the range of 150 to 1000Hz. That is the only good use of dipole.

Herman

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