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Omnidirectional speakers. The future?

I have been interested in hi-fi for about 25 years. I usually get the hankering to buy something if it knocks my socks off. Like most I started with a pair of box speakers. Then I heard a pair of Magnepans and was instantly hooked on planars. The next sock knocker was a pair of Soundlabs. I saved until I could afford a pair of Millenium 2's. Sock knocker number 3 was a pair of Shahinian Diapasons (Omnidirectional radiators utilizing multiple conventional drivers pointed in four directions). These sounded as much like real music as anything I had ever heard.
Duke from Audiokinesis seems to be onto the importance of loudspeaker radiation patterns. I don't see alot of other posts about the subject.
Sock knocker number four was a pair of Quad 988's. But wait, I'm back to planars. Or am I? It seems the Quads emmulate a point source by utilizing time delay in concentric rings in the diaphragms. At low volumes, the Quads might be better than my Shahinians. Unfortunately they lack deep bass and extreme dynamics so the Shahinians are still my # 1 choice. And what about the highly acclaimed (and rightly so) Soundlabs. These planars are actually constructed on a radius.
I agree with Richard Shahinian. Sound waves in nature propagate in a polyradial trajectory from their point of source. So then doesn't it seem logical that a loudspeaker should try to emmulate nature?

holzhauer

Showing 2 responses by newbee

newbee
4,751 posts
 
Opalchip, I agree with most of what you had to say about hearing what is on the recording unedited by the design of certain speakers types. And it was well said. BUT a Yamaha DSP or a DBX5bx? Boy, did you lose some ground there! :-)

Just give me my hair shirt thank you......
newbee
4,751 posts
 
I just had what is probably an absurd idea. There is a parallel thread which has created as much diverse opinion as this thread. In it folks are discussing the pros and cons of multi channel. Why not combine the two threads so we can discuss in a multi channel set up, should we use planers, electrostats, bipolars, direct radiators, whatever. I'm sitting here visualizing a room with Shahanian speakers set up in all five (or 6) positions. Mind boggling. :-)
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