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
