I think John is referring to a pair of speakers side by side as a center channel. Yours are over / under the screen, right?

When I was screwing around with placing my 22’s, I found that if they were too close together, one would actually sound better than two. At around 24” apart, they started to sound better. They are about 36” apart now and I’m liking it…..a lot. Any further apart and I can tell there are two speakers instead of sounding like one big center.