Video Asylum

• confused -- do you have any budget? - chris e. 03:26:50 05/18/03 (1)
  In Reply to: Should ctr be ESL if main front are ESL? posted by Guest on May 07, 2003 at 13:13:05:

  It sounds as if you don't have any money yet you are still getting some form of center channel? If you have some budget, check into the audiogon and used ML center channels. I have a full ML system in my ht and have tried various centers (just to experiment) and nothing works terribly well except another ML. The one exception is a ribbon or dipole.

  You might try getting a definitive center channel (much less expensive than the ML) like the 2000 series and see about it as an alternative. Certainly I would NOT get a traditional front radiator -- it just won't blend well with the ML sound.
  
  
  

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  • Re: confused -- do you have any budget? - Guest 10:08:10 05/27/03 (0)
    In Reply to: confused -- do you have any budget? posted by chris e. on May 18, 2003 at 03:26:50:

    No, what I said was I don't have a lot of money to put into the cc - not "no money". I had budgeted about $500 for a cc, but i've sinced up'd it to $1000 in the hopes that I can find a second-hand ML cc.

    Thanks.
    
    

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• Re: Should ctr be ESL if main front are ESL? - sam9 11:10:37 05/10/03 (2)
  In Reply to: Should ctr be ESL if main front are ESL? posted by Guest on May 07, 2003 at 13:13:05:

  I've been in the same quandry regarding Magnepans. Nothing will be quite as satisfactory as a matching center, however, I really can't afford the Magnepan center just now. I've tried a couple of alternatives. My impressions are as follows:

  A- run of the mill bookshelf speaker won't do - it just sounds odd, especially for anyone not seated dead center.

  B- Two mini (but high quality) speakers such as a pair of Gallo micro-spheres set in the center with each turned aboyt 30 deg from center are not too bad.

  C- I also tried an RCA made speaker from RadioShack that uses a very good ribbon tweeter that supossedly radiates evenly over nearly 180 deg. This too is not bad.

  (B&C were E-bay and garage sale scrounging.)

  D- Do without. If you setup the AVR with center=none, the center signal gets split between left and right. With Magnepans, this is the smoothest sounding of options but with a couple of drawbacks: 1-When I setup my AVR this way, I cannot made any level adjustment to my "phantom center". This is mostly OK but can cause a problem with the dialog on some DVDs. 2-Multichannel music sometimes looses some imaging, although quite a few multichannel recordings don't use the center channel anyway.

  If your main interest is watching DVDs, I wouldn't worry much about any of these so long as the dialog sounds OK. If you listen to a lot of multichannel music you may find the least compromising solution is to go without ("phontom center") until you can afford a matching ML center speaker.
  
  

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  • Thank you! - Guest 08:05:46 05/12/03 (1)
    In Reply to: Re: Should ctr be ESL if main front are ESL? posted by sam9 on May 10, 2003 at 11:10:37:

    Great options to think about! My primary interest of the system will continue to be 2-multi channel music for me. The move to HT is really for the rest of the family. I am SOOOO looking forward to watching SpongeBob Squarepants in 6.1 surround ;-O

    I've been keeping an eye at the online classifieds and noticed the M-L Cinema available second-hand for around $900 give or take. That's a few hundred dollars more than I had budgeted for my center speaker, so now I'm considering scratching the sub and putting the $500 budgeted for it toward the center. The SL3s go down to about 30Hz, so I may be able to live w/o a sub for a while - especially considering that I should be able to bypass the Bass Management System of the AVR and redirect the low frequencies to the front mains.

    Btw, I haven't picked up my AVR yet. The one I had in mind was the Outlaw 1050 at about $500 or so new.

    Thanks again!
    
    
    

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    • Re: Thank you! - sam9 23:12:21 05/12/03 (0)
      In Reply to: Thank you! posted by Guest on May 12, 2003 at 08:05:46:

      BTW, I also have this wierd idea that if find yourself noticing audio nuances while watching a DVD, the director was probably not doing his job. I remember an interview with Danny EWlfman regarding the music he wrote for Batman. He said the goal is that music should affect for mood and response, but that you should not be aware of it.
      
      

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