Can anyone comment this, please:
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The VP100 is a sealed speaker, while the M3 and M22 are ported. The VP100 uses a pair of 5.25" drivers and a 1" tweeter in a horizontal MTM (midwoof/tweeter/midwoof)arrangement.
The horizontal MTM arrangement is in general just a bad design choice for a horizontal centre channel. A vertical MTM arrangement has advantages. It limites vertical dispersion while still allowing good horizontal dispersion. When you put an MTM on it's side, then you get good vertical dispersion and limited horizontal dispersion. You want the good horizontal and limited vertical (you don't want sound bouncing of the roof and floor).
The larger problem though is lobing when you are off axis of the center. If you only sit directly infront of the centre channel (on axis) it won't be a problem. The further you go to the left or right of directly in front (off axis) you start to experience lobing. The crossover between the 5.25" drivers and the tweeter will be at a high enough frequency that the wave lengths the highest frequencies the 5.25" drivers produce will be shorter than the distance bewteen the two drivers. As you go off axis, the one 5.25" driver gets closer to you while the other one gets farther away. So the sound from the closer one gets to you before the other one. This is lobing and it is audible.
To solve this you need to get the crossover point to the midwoofs as low as possible and getting the two drivers as close together as possible. Neither of which the VP100 seems to do. The other solution is to use a 3way center, where there is a driver directly under the tweeter like a bookshelf and two woofers on either side.
A bookshelf center can't suffer from these problems. Plus a lot of people consider it the ideal to have identical speakers in every position.
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( HTF)
