[NealH]

will Brian Cheney ever design a top to bottom dipole speaker?  Just one look at Magnepan's sales figures is enough to convince the most hardened dissentient that there is life on the other side, too.

[Brian Cheney]

I will never make a fullrange dipole, particularly a narrow one, due to the Dipole Effect which cancels whole frequency ranges at wavelengths longer than the baffle width.  I will probably make a hybrid with dipole mid/tweeter and enclosed bass, but again linearity suffers.  Dipole sound is pleasant and spacious but not very accurate due to the late arrivals off back and side walls, a much greater problem with dipoles than enclosed speakers.

[ABEX]

I use to be a dipole fan,but I found you can get as good a sound in terms of transparency  as you get from a Dipole along with better bass. Then there are alot of other issues and Brian touched on some. Beaming,size,placement and a perculiar amp synergy made me sell mine and go back to the BOX!

I found The Box ,depending on the drivers, are truer to the live event!

[jgubman]

Isn't the Super Tower a dipole (at least the midrange)?

[Andrikos]

If anything, you can say that Big B's top of the line speakers (RM40, RM/X) are more line arrays than they are dipoles...

[James Romeyn]

Isn't the Super Tower a dipole (at least the midrange)?

The FF1 SRE, FF3 SRE, & STIII SRE had/have quasi-dipole mids only.  Quasi because the rear wave is largely damped throughout most of its range.  There is a sawtooth shaped piece of high density foam damping most of the rear wave output.  I owned the FF3 SRE active ferrite.  It was more expensive than the RM40.  I'd take the RM40 over it.  The one area better on the FF was its bass, due to biamp only, active crossover, & thicker cabinet.  No way the better sound was worth all the extra hassle & hardware.