Dipole speakers, subwoofers and that rear wall

For clarity, do you mean the front wall???  

Think of it like this.  When you go to a performance, are the performers in front of you or in back?

Dipoles are unique and enjoyable speakers.  As noted above, embrace and don't destroy the rear wave.  Use diffraction, NOT absorptive surfaces on the front wall.  Why would you want to defeat what this design type is all about?  If you can't pull them well off the front wall you will miss out on what these speakers can do.

For me, in the final analysis, dipoles are fun but not always the most accurate.  But in the right room with the right music, well you may be a very happy camper indeed.

Oh, you mean "cabinet." That’s what most people call the box that holds speaker drivers.

What I mean is the mids and highs are in separate enclosures in the front and rear. They have NO common space between front and back mids and or highs. Usually about 18-22" apart (front to rear). Front baffle and Rear baffle enclosures are within the CABINET housing. They fire from the back of the speaker and hit the front wall FIRST. They don’t require such a large, long space to produce the same airy affect but they are deadly accurate also..

Small planars enclosed with NO open rear pole from the front driver. Way better design.. GR tried the same thing.. I had both of his Neo 10 x 2 and X 4. Like I said great sound affects, but accurate, NOT even close. His NX (?) different story.

Danny was also the fixer on the 123s too. Kinda.. LOL. They were just BAD. You needed a stadium size room to start with. The sweet spot was as wide as a sofa and it wasn’t so sweet. :-) There were several pairs around here 15-20 years ago.

GRs OB servo is a VERY nice system. I use it with Rythmiks sealed systems. They aren't cheap to finish out either.. Paint is through the roof.. 1K to 2K in one year for auto finish. 100% mark up.

The rear wave is not what these speakers are all about it is just, with most designs, a necessary evil. What you should try to do is minimize the downside to dipoles and then attempt to make them as accurate as possible. Listen to Duke's advice from Audiokinesis. Other than the obvious limitations of my Quads the only downside to this speaker is the rear wave and it must be dealt with. 

This is awesome discussion, thank you all. Just a few responses and keep it going ;). One thing I'll say about my Quad 2912's is that I have had many audiophile listening sessions with people bringing their own gear - sometimes outpricing them by miles, and in blind(ish) listening tests, people always positively picked out the quads. 

That doesn't *necessarily* mean they are better in the eyes of an engineer with a microphone and an analysis program (REW?) but somehow the result apparently is pleasing. I'd note though that my receiver has a bunch of 'fake surround' options that sometimes accidentally get turned on, and funnily enough they sound great, and if I then switch back to direct mode, it feels 'deflated'.. for a minute... and then I appreciate the non-warbly non-surroundy perfect stereo image of quads. Perhaps the same applies here. Perhaps the stereo image effects that dipoles excel at outweigh the downsides of the rear reflect?

My context is that I am building my own livingroom-and-home-cinema. Completely from scratch (newbuild house). Due to wife-acceptance-parameters I will likely have to keep my quads fairly close to the rear wall (ignoring toe-in, about a meter (3 ft)). Behind them I will put my SVS PC4000s (I have 2). Ha, I slightly worry that the soundwaves from subwoofers will hurt the mylar of the speakers.

Anyway,  the weirdness for me is that if e.g. we have a single kick drum shot. Bang. If we have 10ms delay before the reflection comes through, does that then sound 'babang'? Is 'bbang' not preferable'? Either way most people seem to agree I should probably put damping material behind my speaker so I'll do that.