If you are thinking about a 5.1 system, you can go either way: dipoles, bipoles, or direct radiators. But if you are considering 6.1 and especially 7.1, I's start to more heavily recommend monopoles. The reason being, real theaters use monopoles (obviously, lots of them, far away). Dipole speakers in the home were always an *attempt* to mimic the diffuseness created in a theater. Now, as you increase the number of speakers, it is less likely that you'll be able to localize any one speaker anyway. Dipoles work by delivering mostly *off-axis* sound to the listening position. The problem being, ever seen an off-axis freq response of any speaker? Atrocious. The high freqs are rolled off like you wouldn't believe. So more speakers, less localization, but much much better imaging if you use direct radiators. *And*, they *do* work much better for multichannel music. I have used Energy's in the past and really liked them. But Paradigm also makes some nice monopoles too.