[Louis O]

Hi All,

I wanted to share some pictures of a custom speaker I just finished in level 2 Walnut

It's a Alnico Bipole XRS and wired to run in either 4 or 16 ohm.

Thanks,
Louis

[roscoe65]

Looks great Louis!

I would imagine you could also wire dipole as well. 

[planet10]

I would imagine you could also wire dipole as well.

You could but i don’t know why you would.

dave

[dB Cooper]

Anybody else visualizing an H.O. implementation of this same concept?

[Folsom]

You could but i don’t know why you would.

dave

Especially if it had a crossover to lower the excess bass you get from room gain, if you are not in a massive room.

[planet10]

Especially if it had a crossover to lower the excess bass you get from room gain, if you are not in a massive room.

It is hard to understand what you mean.

dave

[Folsom]

Bipoles don't have baffle step loss. That combined with room gain puts lower frequencies with 2-3db extra. A crossover can obviously bring it down. Tuning with a port may work, depends in numerous things. So when you switch to dipole you have baffle step loss, and the bass will be light not having 3-4db gain from bipole.

[planet10]

Bipoles don't have baffle step loss. That combined with room gain puts lower frequencies with 2-3db extra.

A bipole does have a bipole dip. They need to be used well out into the room, so room gain is not usually significant except at really low frequencies where the box is already down in level.

A crossover can obviously bring it down.

A low pass filter on the rear driver can help avoid the bipole dip and still have baffle step compensation. With no HF you could put them closer to the wall where LF lift might be an issue.

So when you switch to dipole you have baffle step loss

When you wire as a dipole, you have 2 drivers essentially pretending to be a single driver on a board, bass cancels, the box does little. With the narrowness of the box and the likelyhood of the driver being lowish Q, you would need a helper bass driver to have any bass.

dave

[rajacat]

I owned a pair of the original Omega bipoles with the Fostex 4-1.2" drivers which I later upgraded to the hemp drivers.
I thought they sounded great pulled out into the room without any crossover components. It's great to see this design with the latest 6" XRS drivers.  I toyed with the idea of having Louis build me a similar pair.
IMO, they don't need a crossover. I suspect that many would prefer this configuration vs. the monopoles. I tried wiring them as dipoles but definitely favored the bipole setup.

[Folsom]

Bipoles can be tuned just right crossoverless. I have found having the port on the front can work really well as it will drop the bass some being on the same baffle near-ish the driver. It is not perfect in a measurement, but sounds good.

[Ultralight]

Love my bipole RS5.  For me, uch better than normal forward facing RS5.  It makes the whole room sound much more spacious/large in scale.

[Folsom]

Love my bipole RS5.  For me, uch better than normal forward facing RS5.  It makes the whole room sound much more spacious/large in scale.

Nice, I hope I get a chance to hear Louis's fine drivers in one some day. I actually think bipoles are pretty rad.