Are there any current high end dipole speakers (dynamic)?

berner99 wrote: "So while sound walking around the room may or may not be a marketing gimmick, a 3" sweet spot means something fundamental is wrong. c. Also in any indoor concert some percentage of sound reaching you will be indirect. Are most speakers today direct radiators? " 

"Direct radiator" speakers still generate a lot of off-axis energy and therefore a lot of reflections.

At most normal listening distances in most rooms, most of the sound that reaches your ears is reflected sound. And most of that reflected sound started out as off-axis energy. What we perceive is a weighted average of the direct + reflected sound, which implies that what a speaker is doing off-axis (including around back!) matters.

A bipole or dipole speaker produces additional spectrally-correct reverberant energy. With proper set-up (dipole and bipole speakers should be out in the room several feet), this results in a warm, relaxing, rich timbre. They also do a good job of conveying a sense of immersion and of disappearing as the apparent sound source.

I’m a dealer for dipole speakers and used to build bipolar speakers. What I do now shares some common ground with bipolars, and I still think very highly of the format.

Duke

Berner99 asks: "Wouldn’t the amount of reflected sound that reaches listener be very different from dipole/bipole vs any random ported box speaker?"

Assuming similar radiation pattern shapes, yes having two such patterns - one in the front and one in the rear - will result in a correspondingly higher reverberant-to-direct sound ratio.

Berner99 continues: "And which is one is closer to what a person would hear in e.g. symphony hall?" 

Imo the dipole/bipole configuration has more potential to replicate what you would hear in a concert hall.

Briefly, at a good seat in a concert hall, the direct sound is strong and the reverberant sound is strong BUT (and here is what largely differentiates a good seat from a poor one), the early reflections are weak. It is the early reflections which are the most detrimental to clarity.

I find this to be valid in home audio as well. For instance, if you push your Mirages back near the wall, their "backwave" energy has a relatively short reflection path before reaching your ears, and clarity suffers. However if you pull them well out into the room, perhaps five feet or more, not only does clarity improve but so does timbre, and on a good recording you also begin to feel immersed in the soundstage on the recording.

Sonus Faber’s top two models, the SE17 and the Aida, both have adjustable rear-firing arrays. Imo this adjustability is a good idea.

Anyway the topic of how to replicate "what a person would hear in symphony hall" is a huge one, and this post just scratches the surface.

Duke
into dipoles, bipoles, and quasi-bipoles