Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Given the choice btn side-by-side150's or M80s...

I found these articles very informative and useful in helping make my center (and other) speaker decisions.

Surround-Sound Speaker Placement: Problems and Solutions

The Center Channel: Unique and Difficult

Music in the Round #4

Cool, thanks for the links Dean.

IMO unless you have a very large room, listen to lots of 2ch stereo or just won’t buy a subwoofer then bookshelves and subwoofer(s) is the way to go. If you haven’t read the first article I posted above for a better overall explanation than I can give.

As for an AT screen I started out thinking that way but reading posts here steered me away from one. An AT screen will to some degree (maybe not significant for most) limit picture quality and sound quality because of the physical nature of the screen itself. Additionally using an AT screen usually necessitates placing the front speakers in or close to the wall which will also effect their performance. OTOH the nice clean look of an AT screen with the speakers behind it has a quality of it’s own. And I imagine it doesn’t suck to have the sound actually coming right out of the screen like a movie theater.


Except for placement restrictions I cant think of one, but I try to stay open minded.

I would love to arrange for a geeks day at Axiom so we could play with all these combinations as a group.

That would be fun

try 6 m80's as lcr'r behind an at screen, kicks butt!

I would imagine M22's would sound very similar to M80's at center since center channels don't usually carry much bass. All this talk about how placing speakers above the screen screws up the sound stage really has me wondering how mine sounds so good? I wonder if it's because most people who have theirs above the screen have them right above the screen and not close enough to the ceiling to use it's reflections to their advantage? Mine is bolted right to the ceiling and pointed at my head, and honestly with both music and movies I can't tell that the sounds are coming from up there, they seem to come directLy out of the mouths of who ever is onscreen!

And I have tried exhaustively to close my eyes and hear that its coming from my ceiling ever since reading about the problems having your center channel speaker above your screen, and I just can't hear it coming from up there. My only explanation is that where its positioned is reflecting perfectly off of my ceiling to hide its location sonically.

But then again maybe I just don't know what to listen for? I wish I lived closer to some of you fanatics so that I could come listen to your set-ups (expecially when you're doing your A/B experiments!) And you could come listen to mine & pick apart my placement. Although it may be painfull to hear critisism of my system, if it ultimately led to a better sounding set-up (which is hard to imagine åt this point), then it'd be well worth it!

Oh, count me in for geek day at Axiom!!!

I’ve found that having the center speaker up high creates a wall of sound effect that is actually quite pleasant for movies and even some music. Suddenly switching to the level tweeters especially below the screen can sound thin or anemic by comparison. To me the tradeoff is that the height matched (at least close) tweeters of a vertical array can have much better imaging and tonal balance. I say can because proximity to walls, TV screens and anything effecting first reflections can blow the improved imaging all to hell leaving the high mounted center actually sounding better by comparison.

Also as mentioned on at least one of the articles above many sound engineers spread some of the center channel information out to the mains to create a more seamless soundstage and take advantage of the usually better quality of the main speakers.

Part of my test I didn’t mention was popping in the Blu-ray HD audio sampler that came with my Oppo. I don’t care for most of the music but it sounds awesome. I thought this would be the most definitive example of quality audio I could use. I started listening switching back and forth between speakers and couldn’t hear a damn difference, even when I moved off center. So I stuck my ear up to the M80 and all there was barely enough coming out to keep the stereo image from collapsing to the nearest main. I have to say it is a beautifully mastered DVD as it made the front soundstage sound perfect with all three centers.

This brings up another point I should reemphasize. The example I give of sonic differences are things I have found that really highlight them. When testing in my apartment I found that probably 7 out of 10 movies sounded nearly identical with any center speaker which I figured was likely explained by the sound engineer blending the center channel information out into the mains. If you physically disconnect the center while leaving on in the receiver you can hear this better. Learned that trick from John when testing out what PLIIx does with surround sound.

The biggest issue for me using a different center for music is mostly imaging. The tonal differences are usually highlighted when using PLIIx to create the center channel. However, this can be mitigated somewhat by adjusting the “wide” parameter, in effect being your own sound engineer.