On the myth of "the matching center channel speaker"

[teaman]

Jul 25, 2015 23:06:24 GMT -5 gus4emo said:

Hi guys, question, has anyone ever tried two speakers for the center channel, I mean at the same time,?

I have. I ran two Infinity P-QPS speakers side by side on a single center channel, then I split the speaker wire into two cables at the speaker terminals to power them. I did this using an older Technics receiver several years ago. It worked fine, the speakers were fairly efficient and the speaker components themselves are very small, not like the channel amplifier was pushing a big woofer on the two speakers or anything. Sounded okay for the time I used it like that until I upgraded.

[Deleted]

I have heard it's a bad idea. Lots of cancellation. But I've never tried it

[Erwin.BE]

Jul 17, 2015 21:45:06 GMT -5 scrappydue said:

for any who say they dont notice a difference. well sorry you dont get to have a dedicated room and false wall. for the rest of us that can have that, well we would not do it any other way. period. its the best. i have two theaters in my house. one consisting of a klipsch cinema setup and i rock LCR behind a 138" 2.35 screen. panning is perfect.

That is a great front stage with 3 identical speakers.

Still, even in this almost ideal situation all 3 LCR will sound different from each other:
Presuming MLP is on axis, only the center is aimed to MLP. Speakers sound different off axis, although some are a lot better than others.
There's a door opening to the right.
The early sidewall reflections of the center will arrive later because it sits further from the side walls.
The center is closer hence it will sound louder.
The Left and Right speaker will produce more bass because these are near a tri-corner (side/front/floor) where the Center is only near a bi-corner (front/floor).

Decent DRC such as Dirac is therefore a must for any system, identical center or not. I don't think YPAO and the likes will cut it.

I am building large LCR spakers with identical drivers, coaxial tweeter+mid and dual woofers. I considered using only 1 woofer for the center because I know the bass will be enhanced more than the bass of L+R anyway, but in the end I didn't bother and will let Dirac do it's trick.

[Deleted]

You are 100% correct. But that holds true to ANY room and ANY number of speakers. Only room treatments and RC will correct them. No different from 2 channel to 11.2 channel

[scrappydue]

Jul 26, 2015 11:21:31 GMT -5 Erwin.BE said:

Jul 17, 2015 21:45:06 GMT -5 scrappydue said:

for any who say they dont notice a difference. well sorry you dont get to have a dedicated room and false wall. for the rest of us that can have that, well we would not do it any other way. period. its the best. i have two theaters in my house. one consisting of a klipsch cinema setup and i rock LCR behind a 138" 2.35 screen. panning is perfect.

That is a great front stage with 3 identical speakers.

Still, even in this almost ideal situation all 3 LCR will sound different from each other:
Presuming MLP is on axis, only the center is aimed to MLP. Speakers sound different off axis, although some are a lot better than others.
There's a door opening to the right.
The early sidewall reflections of the center will arrive later because it sits further from the side walls.
The center is closer hence it will sound louder.
The Left and Right speaker will produce more bass because these are near a tri-corner (side/front/floor) where the Center is only near a bi-corner (front/floor).

Decent DRC such as Dirac is therefore a must for any system, identical center or not. I don't think YPAO and the likes will cut it.

I am building large LCR spakers with identical drivers, coaxial tweeter+mid and dual woofers. I considered using only 1 woofer for the center because I know the bass will be enhanced more than the bass of L+R anyway, but in the end I didn't bother and will let Dirac do it's trick.

They might measure difference but I can assure you the test tone sounds identical. This was a build picture. The right side has a door added now. The door is acoustically treated as it is the right speakers first reflection point. The left reflection point is treated as well. Everything is measured to be perfectly symmetrical in my room. So I get what your saying in theory and maybe I got lucky. I know my dimension for my room got me very lucky for bass as I actually cut like 9db out if my sub amp at 20 HD and my subs run flat to 8hz in my room. I'm sure my next house I won't be so lucky. This place is just a rental.

[vneal]

No myth just people unwilling to look at the facts. Matched speakers will sound better

[Deleted]

Jul 27, 2015 7:26:29 GMT -5 vneal said:

No myth just people unwilling to look at the facts. Matched speakers will sound better

+1000000

Not sure why people are so thick headed here.

[Erwin.BE]

Look, there is just no such thing as perfection in audio. Only degrees of imperfection. Obviously 3 identical speakers with excellent off axis behavior behind an AT screen is as good as it gets. But it's still not perfect.

[Deleted]

Jul 27, 2015 13:16:24 GMT -5 Erwin.BE said:

Look, there is just no such thing as perfection in audio. Only degrees of imperfection. Obviously 3 identical speakers with excellent off axis behavior behind an AT screen is as good as it gets. But it's still not perfect.

This is just stating the obvious. The only thing perfect would be to be AT an actual event of crime being committed with buckets whizzing and explosions etc. so to get the reproduction as close as possible the more speakers the better to fill any gaps. This is not magically different when talking about the center speaker cause some have been able to hear a nice phantom image. We have a phantom image between left and right surrounds. But this hasn't stopped people from putting two more speakers and channels in there for back right and back left surrounds. Again. The more speakers the better. If they all
Match. Hats as good as its going to get.

[Deleted]

here is another reason why a "phantom" center is a bad idea:

" With Dolby Digital Tracks (if I remember correctly DTS doesn't do this) using a phantom center results in a compressed single / Reduced dynamic range, when you down mix a signal.

[jmilton]

Or, this:

"In most A/V publications, they will tell you to stick with one brand and line of speakers so that the tonality will be the same across the entire soundstage. That’s true. But, if you look for neutrality in sound, you can mix and match with no problem...The point of this treatise is to say that you can use different speakers in your home theater, as long as they are all neutral. And, the story doesn’t really end there. Most new SSPs and receivers have built-in room correction that will flatten the frequency response, as well as set delay for speaker distance, and so on. As a result, the basic frequency response of a speaker is not so important as it used to be." Dr. John Johnson

hometheaterhifi.com/reviews/speaker/surround-sound-speaker-systems-reviews/mixing-and-matching-the-paradigm-c5-center-channel-speaker-and-two-electrostatics/