Exactly. Imagine the outrage...
I did some casual testing with the center in a variety of different positions and orientations :
- vertical, to the right of the TV (standing on the receiver) -- sounded OK but the dialog etc. was VERY clearly offset to the right, didn't like this at all
- horizontal on top of the TV, with a paperback book raising the speaker an inch or so to minimize the fringing -- sounded better, but lost the nice sharp "dialog is dead center" feeling that I got with the speaker vertical on top of the TV
- vertical and inverted on top of the TV -- clearly the best so far, with clear sound centered on the TV image
- vertical but not inverted -- didn't try this one because of the fringing but suspect it would be even a bit better because the bulk of the dialog seems to come out of the woofer
So... what does all this mean ? My first thought was "OK, I'm convinced, sign me up as a charter member of the Friends of Vertical Center Speakers club". My second, more sober thought was "hey, stupid, you probably just figured out what Axiom has known for years -- that you need to have a symmetrical driver layout on a center channel speaker".
Think about it for a minute... if you have two woofers surrounding a tweeter then the woofer output is going to sound like it is coming from the midpoint of the woofers, ie in exactly the same spot as the tweeter. Works the same for the VP150... everything should sound like it is coming from the midpoint of the speaker.
Try the same thing with a horizontal M2 or M22 -- the woofs and tweets come from different points and you blur the sound a bit. BUT -- wait for it -- put TWO horizontal M2/M3's side by side and they work like a symmetrical VPxxx speaker with the sound all seeming to come from one point.
Vertical M2/M3/M22 is no problem. A pair of vertical speakers on each side of the TV should also be no problem.
Sorry to be hogging my own thread but this is interesting, at least to me
I ordered a single M2 earlier this evening based on preliminary results; was briefly thinking about changing the order to get a VP100 instead (now that I understand their design a bit better) but after some thought I haven't really discovered anything "bad" about a single vertical M2i center. I do understand the guy who started the "what would happen if'n I took a hole saw to my VP150" thread a bit better though.
