Speaker Types: Floorstanding, Bookshelf, Bipolar, Dipolar, Subwoofer
Speakers come in all shapes and sizes. As part of our Fluance Ultimate Guide to Home Theater Setup , we walk you through the different styles of speakers available.
Floorstanding
- Sit directly on the floor without a separate stand.
- Often called tower speakers because the enclosures are typically tall and narrow.
- Usually contain multiple drivers such as dedicated woofers, tweeters, and midrange drivers.
- Large enclosure usually allows them to produce more bass than other speakers.
Bookshelf
- Almost always has a smaller enclosure than a floor-standing speaker.
- Usually contain a woofer and a tweeter, although some models may also include a midrange driver.
- The smaller enclosure of bookshelf speakers limits their bass output.
- Can also be used as a surround sound speaker.
Bipole/Dipole
- Drivers are arranged in pairs facing different directions.
- In some cases, there is a front-facing woofer and two tweeters aiming in different directions.
- In bipolar speakers, the tweeter is most important, because the sounds that you want to be directional, come from the tweeter.
- In this configuration, the listener hears almost no sound directly from the speaker, only sound reflected from the walls, ceiling and floor, which makes the sound more spacious.
- Dipole speakers fire their drivers out of phase, whereas bipole speakers are in phase.
- Bipole and dipole speakers are often mounted directly to a wall.
Subwoofer
- Reproduces very low frequencies that are below what a typical woofer can handle.
- Most have just a single driver in an enclosure.
- The long wavelengths of the deep bass tone produced by the subwoofer emanate equally in all directions, so the driver doesn’t need to face the listener.