Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater M80 as center channel speaker

You should be able to run a phantom center, Usually, In the menu where you select large or small speakers, You can also select None. Which is what you would choose for the center channel.

Fred, since not all HT setups include a center channel speaker, all HT receivers have to include a setting for that possibility. As Brandon points out, in the speaker setup menu you set the center speaker "none", and then the material that would have gone to the center speaker has to be sent instead to the two mains equally. When that happens those sounds that are of equal level in the mains are imaged midway between them, as if a center speaker was there, for a listener in the middle. When the listener moves to the side, the center image moves with him, but not farther out than the main speaker on that side.

Thanks gents, I'm still learning. At some point I probably would have started pushing buttons to see if/when 'phantom center' appeared on the receiver's console.

I will play this weekend to see what it sounds like. Not that I have the space to ever use an M80 for a center.

Yep, just tell your receiver you don't haved a center in the speaker setup menu, then you will be in phantom mode, as we call it.

When I'm in phantom mode I wear purple tights and a skull ring. I don't think it enhances my movie experience, though.

<---- backs away slowly

You could place the M80's spaced a bit forward from the wall-mount TV, no, so that you could get behind them to the components? I've been thinking about a vertical M22 center on a short stand in front of my DLP stand.

If I get energetic I might try using one of my surround M80's as a center
Mel N.

just get 2 stands/racks and put them on either side of the center

@ Fred

I’m very interested in what you think of using a phantom center with the M80s as they compare to your M22s. I’m about to pull the trigger on more Axioms (hedging my bets with the falling U$D) and one option I’m considering is also getting dual M22s just in case the M80s above the TV idea doesn’t work. If your dual M22s compete well with the phantom M80s as centers then I will surely get a couple to use when I need to use an actual center speaker. I’ve been interested in trying dual M22s ever since the center channel shootout posted by Mojo and Jakewash.

@ onn

If you do get energetic please post your impressions, I would like to know how you think the M80 compares to the VP150 as a center.

Dean