Question-is there a point at which a center channel can become too large? I mean, with the left/right speakers supposed to be around 10-12 feet apart, or the same distance apart as the listening position is from the center channel (my understanding anyway), would it not cause a seamless sound across the front because there is less space between the front speakers? If so, is this a good thing, or should there be a more noticeable separation between the three front speakers, which would happen with a smaller center channel.
Maybe I'm way off in left field, but that popped into my head this afternoon.
Thanks,
Cam
Cam in my experience testing two M22 speakers laying horizontally above my screen in my apartment (mains only about 6 feet apart) I found that for multi-channel sources the center of the soundstage was way to wide for most music. For studio recordings it made the vocalist, drummer and/or any other instruments coming mostly from the center channel sound blurred across the front like the vocalists mouths were 5 feet across. No amount of tweaking any settings could “tighten up” the center channel image since the drivers were physically spread out 4-5 feet. Note this was also sitting 6-8 feet away from the screen and the further back you get the more the line array of a horizontal center starts to sound more like a point source since it’s angular width decreases relative to distance.
OTOH I did find that for movies and most concert SACD/DVDs the “wall-of-sound” effect created by an array of horizontal drivers seemed more like a movie theater of concert. Also, at first I thought the large horizontal array sounded great for everything but once I started listening critically I didn’t like the smearing effect it had on multi-channel or PLIIx music. I imagine that for most people this will not be an issue since the “wall-of-sound” does seem quite impressive.
That’s the reason I’ve been musing the idea of getting a VP180 and mounting it on a stand so it can be rotated 90 degrees between the horizontal and vertical so I can have the best of both worlds.
(yes I’m eccentric)
Cheers,
Dean
