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Is there soemthing special about center speakers in HT? I have 2 full size bookshelf JBLs that I used as rear speakers, which had great range, and presence. My current JBL center speaker (one of their higher end studio series, not the little junk Best Buy ones) still sounds flat. Can any good speaker be used for a center, or do they need special range or XO propoerties, since they will be doing mainly voices?
If this has been answered before, I apologize in advance.
Follow Ups:
IME,unless you can use an exact match as your main speakers,you're better off not using a center channel at all. I have yet to hear a center channel speaker(even by the same manufacturer)that sounded better than just the two mains.JMHO,YMMV. Try it without the center to decide for yourself. Hope this helps...
*IF* I could adjust the phantom center mix, and especially the level of it, I would happily prefer that way. It doesn't seem to be happening...guess they want to sell more gear. I think the 6.1 stuff is aimed at fussier people, so you can buy an extra pair of matching speakers, one for the center and one for the rear, instead of trying to get a single. That way you're spending more $$ and feel you're matching properly.
DPL-II should provide you with the ability to adjust the width of the front soundstage -- the amount of material sent to the center vs.left and right speakers. I forget which adjustment variable this is.
The detail I left out, I have JBL S310s for fronts, and S38s for the rears. So, a nice JBL bookshelf two way, that I like, or their flagship "Center speaker". Do centers HAVE to be shaped so weird?
Thanks for the all the advice so far. And I will try 4.1.
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I'm assuming your Maggies are the fronts now??Though I have Maggies, I did NOT find the MGCC centers to be a good match. A center speaker will ideally match the fronts, and these ones sure don't match the 1.6's. Sorry, no equalizers etc. for me to MAKE something defficient try to work acceptably, this isn't a Bose shop here. I found better matches that weren't planar. Unsurprising something the size of the MGCC's planar doesn't match well enough. So choosing the MGCCx isn't a given, unless you're running a strictly Maggie shop.
I found places out here very flexible about loaning center speakers for home trial. Even ones that don't typically loan gear. You gotta try them at home. And do listen carefully to the center all by itself too, to make sure you understand its inherent capability, outside of the context of being a center. And also hook it up as a left with a Maggie as a right, etc. Course it won't be a perfect match, but listen for a flow, some sort of cohesion between the two. It's a pain in the ass really, almost as bad as integrating a sub nicely with Maggies.
I have tried to figure a way to meld the two systems, and started tearing my hair out.
I have done it, one way, with some effort, and it's working acceptably well, music being the main thing. It is now uncompromised for music, the issue for HT with Maggies for fronts is you need more power to keep it clean than an HT receiver can deliver. I just deliver the HT front pre outs to the music system, so no problem for movies. It wasn't a problem of $$, it was the systems taking up too much room individually, with Maggies liking to be several feet away from walls, as you know. Quite frankly, the sound on DVD soundtracks is not nearly as high quality as you might think, considering the bit rate. The space is mostly used for video (duh!) and sound seems to get definite short shrift. But it's good enough for a movie, though better is always nice.
and the big old TV would mean the Maggies about 3 feet from the rear wall.... Could work.But, won't the sound going through My Sony 444, even if it goes to a separate preamp, then amp, won't the Sony degrade\kill the sound quality? Doesn't your receiver seriously degrade the signal? Again,, fi this has been asked a million times, I am sorry.
You know how you can get an almost holographic sound field with stereo when you have the Maggies and your listening position adjusted right? Well, I think using Maggies as fronts you need a center speaker. Otherwise the phantom center seems too dispersed, and dialog gets lost (at least for me), and you have to turn the sound up louder than otherwise. Depending on your source DVD... Sometimes almost ALL the sound is coming from the center. When a DVD says Dolby 5.1, this means there are *up to* 5.1 channels of info, but many have little more than the center, there's virtually no LFE or surround sound. So with these movies, there's a lot of them, a phantom center is not so bad and dialog levels were mixed appropriately.What I'm saying here is, if you decide to try Maggies for the fronts, because of their nature, you will probably have to have a center speaker, one you can independently adjust the level of. I suspect the "dialog enhancer" some gear has boosts the center mix level, but controlling the center level some way independent of the fronts is definitely beneficial for many movies.
And my experience is that taking the preamp outputs from your HT receiver (if it has them) does not noticeably degrade the DVD movie sound for the fronts. I mean, it's been degraded by the HT receiver already, and further degradation would be the only result by letting the HT receiver amplify too... :)
So you're ahead, taking the degraded signals to better quality gear ASAP in the chain.But there's something else. If you have a DVDP with 5.1 analog outputs, you can take the DVDP front R/L (of the 5.1 output set, not the stereo set) directly over to your "good" system pre/amp. HT receiver degradation is eliminated. Now it's strictly DVDP degradation, but have eliminated the receiver from the chain...some receivers aren't that bad, really, to be fair, especially in the digital domain, it's the analog domain where they are so easily bashable.
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It has been answered a few thousand times in the planar forum.
That's why I did not ask in Planar. 2 separate rigs.
Speakers are the least accurate and weakest link for any reproduction chain. Speakers used to reproduce music accurately generally have insufficient dynamic range for home theatre* (I have two systems mah own self!). BUT, the centre channel is most often used for speach, and Maggies (or some other speaker that reproduces speach VERY clearly) might have some use there. There IS the matter of tonal incompatibility, but what the hey! For myself, I use Yamaha nearfield studio monitors everywhere (and a pair of Adire tempests as subs. . . they actually double as my subs in the audio system as well . . . the reason for two{well, mostly}). It works amazingly well, but then I am partial to flat response. I can actually use the same setup for pop/rock/electronic jazz, but in classical music, the violins would never forgive me (nor the acoustic guitars in 70's Ronstadt/Lightfoot pop, or acoustic folk!)*those who have Elvira Madigan, which is more about Mozart than the characters . . . well, you're allowed to differ! Use your music system for that.
Once you fully see the light, anything else is like listening to fingernail on a blackboard.
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