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Radical toe in once more

Hi all. I have bi-directional floorstanders, two way speakers with identical treble and woofer on the front and the back. Half of the sound goes to the front drivers, half to the back.

The toe-in of this type of speaker is very influenced by how the back sound wave and the reverberant sound behaves. These speakers often sound good with radical toe-in due to better room acoustics with a longer back wave towards the corners.

This is a huge topic, and my question is more restricted: what happens with the front firing sound?

Is there an "inherent" problem with radical toe in, when the main sound from the front drivers cross in front of the listener, instead of the more conventional setup where the crossing point is behind the listener - and if so, what?

Is this (potential) minus factor in fact low, if the listener is just a foot or so back of the crossing point?

 

o_holter

Showing 3 responses by mijostyn

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@o_holter 

If you are not sure how they are wired take an AAA battery and while holding the negative speaker lead against the negative pole of the battery tap the positive lead against the positive pole of the battery for a split second. If both woofers move out they are in phase and Bipolar. If one moves in and the other out then they are out of phase and dipolar. 

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@newbee 

There is always a "right way" to set up well designed loudspeakers in good rooms with maybe 2 or 3 options. There is no good way to set up poor loudspeakers in either good or bad rooms.

mijostyn's avatar
mijostyn
8,570 posts
 

@o_holter 

I may have missed this but what brand and model are these loudspeakers. The way the speakers are wire has a huge affect on how they operate. Are the drivers in phase (both front and rear drivers moving out at the same time) or 180 degrees out of phase (front drivers move out, rear drivers move in)?? In other words are they Bipoles or are they Dipoles. Planar loudspeakers like ESLs are dipoles, the front and back of the speaker are 180 degrees out of phase. Using dedicated front and rear drivers gives one the opportunity to wire them either way with extremely different results. Once I know how they are set up I might be able to make some suggestions.  

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