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RE: IOYW! how important is a centre channel, and broad coverage for it, and timbral matching for a SMALL room!?

Posted by David Aiken on October 10, 2007 at 21:56:39:
On the other hand Iâ€”most definitely not a "self appointed home theater guru"â€”prefer my system with a physical centre speaker in place.

Having said that, this is in a system with a receiver with Audyssey EQ which helps get a good tonal match with the other speakers, and the centre speaker is made by the same manufacturer as the other speakers and intended to match tonally anyway. Depending on what room eq options available in your electronics, how good your setup of centre and front speakers is, and how good a tonal match they are, your results may most definitely vary and I can understand the opinion of people who sit on both sides of the fence.

My current setup is my 3rd attempt with a centre speaker. The first was an attempt to use the TV's own speakers as a centre channel and the second was with a centre speaker recommended by my dealer but which was a completely different make and design to the front speakers I was using at that time. Both of those attempts were disastrous failures with the transition between the centre and the other speakers being quite jarring whenever something moved into or out of the centre channel. Despite that, I did find I had a slight preference for the physical centre channel rather than a phantom one when things stayed in the centre channel, though the tonal differences annoyed me. As a result, I tried it again with a matching centre speaker from the same manufacturer some time after I changed my other speakers. With a speaker intended to work with my others I finally got results I was actually happy with, but I think the Audyssey eq deserves part of the credit for the final result.

When it works well I think the physical centre is definitely better but if it's not working well, then a phantom centre is definitely going to be preferable in my view.

David Aiken