Video Asylum

Posted by sam9 on February 26, 2002 at 09:04:17

In Reply to: Center channel or 5 *identical* speakers best for HT? posted by SJT on February 24, 2002 at 09:53:43:

Although I currently use a no-matching center, I previously had three identical FL,FR and CC speakers. Nothing great but the tale that follows may be interesting.

I did some experimenting. I first noticed that when using the HT level set-up tone generated by my AVR, the center sounded very different. This seemed a little odd. A bit later I came into possession of a 1/3 octave spectrum analyzer with pink noise generator. Just by ear I noted that the pink noiuse would sound very different when run through the center channel. No subtle A/B switching needed. I got more serious and took note of the actual spectrum. R&L were pretty similar - center was very different. I swapped speakers around and took care that ever aspect of the signal path was the same. No mater what I did the center always was very different. (As an side experiment, I tried the center both above and below the screen. Bothe positions were very different from the R&L but alsdo from each other.)

Conclusion: The effect of room position (and probably reflections off the monitor cabinet) is so extreme that "matching" a center to the R&L is largely meaningless. Of course you could go to ridiculous extremes that produce wierd results (say a Magnepan center with Bose micro-cubes for L&R!), but I think any reasonable combination would be acceptable. There are other considerations for the center channel such as a smooth off-axis pattern, good sonics in the dialog part of the sound spectrum, practical physical dimensions that are more important than just matching it to the L&R.