Originally Posted By: Mark


I'm not so sure about this. (Not that i have evidence to the contrary, either).

A phantom center would be perfectly matched to the mains, of course, since it's created by the mains. And if you're sitting dead center, I don't see issues with dispersion of sound.

To me, the benefits of using a separate center involve anchoring the dialog to the center image when people are sitting outside of the sweet spot, and having the ability to "bump up" the center by a few decibels to increase intelligibility of poorly-mixed soundtracks (though some receivers might allow the phantom channel level to be bumped as well.... I don't know)


All the extensive testing I did of various center speakers and using a phantom center fits exactly with what you say Mark. There can be benefits as you mention, however there can also be issues especially with tone changing between the speakers even identical ones.

@ J. B. I wouldn’t even think of using a center speaker in your setup. It certainly wouldn’t be worth the money and IMO based on a similar setup I had it would likely sound worse than a phantom center because it would localize the center channel too much. The only thing that will sound more seamless than what you have now are headphones, but then you’ll lose the midbass punch, so stick with what you’ve got.

Last edited by grunt; 12/27/11 01:22 AM.
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