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RE: Centre speakers for Home Theater

Posted by David Aiken (A) on December 23, 2008 at 04:27:20

In Reply to: Centre speakers for Home Theater posted by chris on December 22, 2008 at 22:45:53:

If you're going to be happy with a centre speaker it has to match tonally with your L and R front speakers. You will find that voices will wander "on and off stage", from the L or R speaker to the centre or from the centre to the L or R speaker at times as the character moves on and off screen and if the speakers don't tonally match you will find your attention being drawn to that fact every time this happens. If you've got MBLs for your L and R speakers, I'd start by looking for something from MBL.

If you want a quick proof of my claim, hook your TV's speakers up to the centre channel output of your receiver/AV processor and try running with them acting as a centre channel for some time and see what you think. You'll need to match levels, of course, but I can assure you that it doesn't work well. That's why many people prefer the "phantom centre", ie no centre speaker.

Get a centre speaker that tonally matches your mains and you may very well feel quite positive about centre speakers. The matches first I tried, including using my TV's speakers, did not work well. When I eventually upgraded my main speakers in my HT system, I made a point of choosing speakers from a line with a tonally matching centre speaker and eventually added the centre. I tried several options before then and was unhappy with all of them because of the tonal change in voices moving into and out of the centre channel.

So, before you even start considering receivers or AV processors, think long and hard about just what speaker you can use for a centre and how well it matches your mains.



David Aiken

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