Hm. I wonder if your experience is more of a reflection on the VP150, or on vertical vs. horizontal centers.
With the smearing of the soundstage that is clearly the case as it went away when I tried the VP150 vertically. OTOH it still didn’t sound as dynamic or as well tonally matched to the M80s as a M80 or M22 center to me.
Part of the dynamics may be sealed vs ported. And cabinet size driver sized and numbers and crossover may also play into the tonal issues I hear.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not an a crusade to trash this particular speaker. I’ve never met a horizontal center speaker I liked as much as good towers or bookshelf speakers. For most people the VP150 does a great job. I hesitate to talk about this anymore because like the DLP rainbow thing if you learn to see it they say after that you always will. Well for some people it may be the same with tonal differences. Once I heard it I couldn’t ignore it.
IMO if horizontal centers sounded as good as towers you would see more people running 3 horizontal centers across the front. I haven’t seen one yet. Personally I would prefer 3 VP150s across the front to M80/M22 mains with a VP150 center.
