I think we can all remember that back in the day when center channel speakers became an item in Home Theater, in reality, because of space issues and positioning, they really always have been a "compromise" in sound. That was primarily because of the advent of Dolby Pro Logic which still had sound and bandwidth limitations.
Once DD and DTS came in to existence with their full-range discrete channels, at that point to me, all bets were off. Now we have "lossless" audio with even more dynamic presentations so we can't say anymore the center channel speaker is the most important yet still put these sound and size limitations to it.
Bottom line for me has always been, if you can't use a similar speaker to the L/R, at least have one that has big enough drivers so you can run it full-range without strain. There are center channels out there that do provide these features without being overly large. I am hoping for that from Axiom in the near future. In my opinion and in current applications, five and a half-inch drivers just aren't big enough anymore.
