Does bipole/dipole speakers with WDST are useful with Dolby Atmos?

[David Brenes]

Hi. I've been looking forward to upgrade my 3.1 system to a 5.1 (and eventually 7.1, and so on). Currently I have a pair of r15m and rc62 II in a less than ideal room.

 

So I have been reading about rear and surround speaker placement and functions either for music and home theater. I've reached to the following conclusions:

- 3 types of speakers: monopole, diople and bipolar

- in the past it appears that dipole was a good solution due to lack of object sound positioning. Now with Dolby Atmos it doesn't seem like the greatest choice

- apparently, even today, in less than ideal rooms for perfect speaker placement, bipole/dipole speakers are a better option due to that lack of properly object sound positioning with monopole speakers.

- for music purposes look for monopoles or higher end bipole/dipole speakers with better frequency range response in case of using multichannel stereo.

- Klipsch has some models that appear to be a type of bipole/dipole speakers (models ending with an "s") and also Dolby Atmos specific speakers (models ending with "sa") and of course, monopole speakers (i.e, bookshelf's, floorstands, etc.).

 

*My question:

Klipsch claims that WDST (Wide Dispersion Surround Technology) available in -s ending models i e. Second picture (eg. r14s, rp402s...). Can provide object positioning which I infer that they can be suitable for Dolby Atmos home theater, BUT I can't find anywhere if exactly these speakers does actually give a truly good Atmos experience.

Does anyone knows anything about this? Any experiences? Especially for less than ideal rooms.

I appreciate your help.

 

Here are some articles I found helpful

 

https://www.crutchfield.com/learn/rear-surround-speakers.html

 

https://support.klipsch.com/hc/en-us/articles/360025546612-Different-Types-of-Surround-Speakers

 

[wuzzzer]

For the most part a bi or dipole shouldn’t be used with Atmos.  Years ago stuff was mixed completely different and surrounds were designed to just spray sound everywhere.  With Atmos you want to be able to localize the sound object.