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In Reply to: RE: Omni-directional Speakers posted by mbnx01 on January 10, 2008 at 08:25:34
>I like omni's but they are VERY room dependent. They need to be in close proximity to rear/side walls. Think of a Bose 901 (I know it's painful, but bear with me). If you put it in the middle of the room, what do you have? A single front-firing 4" speaker.
They're less room-dependent than conventional speakers and work best well away from reflective surfaces.
Once you get more than 2-4' (not a typo) away from a conventional speaker in a typical room you hear more sound from the reverberant field than you do coming directly from the speaker. Your brain does a better job separating the direct sound from the reverberant field when their power spectrums match which is not what you have with a conventional speaker where the midrange starts to beam and the non-coincident midrange + tweeter create a notch in the reverberant field centered on their cross-over frequency (speakers with multiple midrange drivers have even bigger problems).
Speakers with uniform total power output up to a few kilohertz therefore sound more natural; whether uniform means the same output in every direction, uniformly decreasing outside a 45 x 45 degree pyramid, or a more complex pattern like a dipole (polar response of cosine alpha) or cardioid (1 + cosine alpha). More controlled dispersion just retains texture and clarity farther from the speaker so sitting closer to omnidirectional speakers is a fine idea.
Placing monopole speakers too close to reflecting surfaces is going to get you a more uniform boost than with conventional speakers where the gain decreases as you move into the midrange which leaves your singers with chest colds. They're less sensitive to the room and placement.
Bear in mind that pointing drivers in one direction doesn't mean that's where the sound is headed (an eleven foot long 100Hz wave wraps around any speaker you can fit in your living room like it wasn't there) and that multiple drivers pointing in different directions don't yield omnidirectional sound (for example bipoles must have cancelation where the path length difference between listener and speakers is an odd multiple of 180 degrees).
I built a set of Linkwitz Plutos for my smaller listening room. Apart from the limited low frequency output (fixable with sub-woofers crossed in at 120Hz) they're exceptional for an $800 parts cost or $3K internet direct assembled price including amplification.
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