grunt, that's what i tend to believe would happen too.

that would create a kind of distortion:
for someone sitting in front of the RF speaker, sounds from the LF speaker would move over towards the RF speaker, but the sound from the CF would not move as much as the rest.
is my thinking right?

Jacques, in the past I did a fair amount of experimenting with a phantom center and found it very satisfactory in the circumstances you describe. Two advantages of a separate center speaker are that the center image is anchored to the center even for listening off the center axis and that the ability to increase the center volume independent of the mains helps with low-level movie dialog. Neither of these appear to be significant for you. You report no problem with hearing dialog and you're positioned in the center anyway.

If a listener to the phantom center moves to the side the image stays in front of him and also moves to the side, but no farther out than the speaker on that side.

You guys are speaking from a perspective of tonal match and off-axis viewing. I'm speaking from a perspective of switching back and forth and determining which one sounds the best.

I am going to say it depends on the movie mix. I am a 2 channel movie guy and most movies sound pretty darn good. Pixar's The Incredibles is astonishing. Watch the scene where Mr. Incredible goes to see Edna for a new suit. Poorly mixed movies (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen) can leave the dialog very recessed and having the ability to bump up the center would be nice.

I'm not sure if I'm missing your point, but I have a VP150.

Is Jason the only one to do a listening test on the new VP160?

I'm anxious to hear more reviews so I can try to decide between the VP160 and VP180 during the promotional period!

How the sound moves relative to speaker/listening position will depend on how it’s mixed. Not all sound coming from the mains is the same. A door closing off stage left is still going to come from the left speaker no matter where you sit if it was mixed that way. Anything that is mixed evenly between the two mains, often drummers and lead singers in bands and much movie dialogue will move closer to the nearest main speaker. How great this effect is depends on how far apart your speakers are, how off center you sit and how far from the screen you sit. In your case you can’t get very far off center, your mains aren’t very far apart both of which will help to keep the front soundstage imaged around the screen.

Sitting very close can make the sound seem more like it’s coming from the speaker itself rather than a generalized soundfield centered around the screen. However, this also holds true for a center speaker where if you sit very close the center, since it often has less blending with the mains, than they have with each other, can sound like a point source. So you end up hearing the speaker as distinct and separate from the rest of the sound field. This is most likely to happen with a vertical speaker. On the other hand if you have a horizontal center and sit very close it can blur the imaging especially of a stereo recording being played back in multi-channel. This can also happen with things like movie dialogue where it should sound like it’s coming from a particular character on each side of the screen but instead gets all blended together by a horizontal center.

To give you a perspective I have 3 M80s as L/C/R. I often turn off my center M80 when listening to well mastered music where I want the surround speakers engaged but don’t want the issues a center can cause for a well mastered front soundstage. I also often have to tweak things when watching things on Netflix, which I only get in two channel, because the receiver in multi-channel pulls all the dialogue to the center while leaving the music and sound effects alone. With my mains over 12 feet apart what I end up with is much of the sound field collapsing to the center speaker. Instead I switch over to Dolby PLIIx and use the controls to adjust the width of the center image so it blends with the rest of the soundstage.

If you or anyone is interested I’m sure somewhere around here are the lengthy comments I made while testing center speakers in my apartment and house. I’ve tried a VP150, single M22s, double M22s (both vertical (each side of the screen and above and below the screen) and horizontal), single M2, a vertical upright M80 and a vertical upside-down M80 and phantom M80s. The results were so dependent on the situation, room, seating, speaker position, source material etc. . ., that the only generalization I can make is if you need/want a center speaker getting one identical to your mains, or as closely sonically matched, is almost always going to sound best, but even this isn’t an absolute. So there just isn’t any simple - things always sound better with a center speaker solution.

thanks for the short but very interesting reading. :-)

It is nice to see someone who has played around with this stuff as much as I have. In the end, despite all, I think going back several years ago when THX was more in vogue, I believe their concept still applies today that in listening to both music and movies in a multi-channel format, the optimum way of hearing the sound as intended was to have identical speakers in their appropriate position for ALL channels. Of course, in the vast majority of home theater set-ups, this is just not possible,hence, the development of horizontal center channels and to a less extent multi-driver surrounds like the QWS4s/QS8s which, in the end, are still compromises and more affected by room acoustics and positioning. The QS series and speakers of their type, of course, are designed to replicate the multi-speaker surround set-up in theaters that is just not possible in the vast majority of homes.

Bump.

I agree!

In a perfect room identical full range speakers would be the best possible setup. Unfortunately not many people have access, even when purpose built, to perfect rooms so they must as you say compromise.