Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Differences in center channel choice-advice/help?

Hey guys, I Am new on his forum But I have a question, I am planning on purchasing a pair of M60 towers And am wondering If the M3 bookshelf would work as a center channel? I feel this may make the soundstage more seemless and would also allow me to have my tweaters pretty close in height to one another... I really like the idea of a vertical center and a few tests have shown that even a moderately prices bookshelf can outperform an expensive horizontal center configuration. Has anyone ever tried this before or compared the M3 to the vp150 as a center?
Any thoughts would be great!

Thanks,
-Rmb

Never tried it myself but many around here have an recommend it. I use a vp150 and am pleased with how it performs. If i was getting a new center channel today though I'd go with the vp180 . I'm sure others will chime in with more help.

Oh yeh, Welcome to the forums!

I have not heard the M60s or M3s for myself but from everything I’ve ever read here the M2 or M22 would be a better match for the M60s. I’ve tried both the M2 and M22 with my M80s and found both preferable to the VP150. As long as you are using a subwoofer either of these would work fine, however, in a larger room the M22 might be the better choice.

Cheers,
Dean

RM, welcome. Yes, I definitely prefer to use a vertical center as similar as possible to the mains. As Dean commented, the M2 or M22 would be a better match for the M60s than the M3 would be.

So out of curiousity why would the m2 match better when the M60 has dual 6.5 inch woofers ??? would not the lower bass response in the center be appealing ... for fuller sounding voices and smoother transition into the towers and subwoofer... Just my thoughts.???

If an M2 was selected, the crossover would be no lower than 80Hz. Its low bass response would be irrelevant and the mid-bass to sub transition would be very smooth. The all-important mid-range would be handled by the same 5 1/4" driver as in the M60s.

Ok thanks!

RMB, the best center would be to get a matching M60 for the lower bass that you mentioned. I will guess like many of us this is not an option so unless you are willing to buy the VP180 for a more perfect tonal match, any other speaker will be a bit of a compromise.

But don't lay the M60 on its side.

After hearing the M3's run full-range in the blind test at Axiom last month, I was really impressed. I wonder if we are all making too much of the tonal differences between the M2 and M3, especially with the V3 upgrades.

FWIW, I have a VP100 with M60's and am very satisfied.

Please keep in mind that room placement makes such a huge difference in your perception that even when using identical speakers, the center channel is likely to sound a little different when cycling through pink noise.

Having directly compared M80s, M50s, and M3s, we are making too much of the tonal differences. As I recall, the M3v2s were more similar to the M80v2s than either were to the M50tis (read v1s).

Ken, wasn't your comparison flawed, shorting bars on the back of the M80s loose or something like that?

In my experience, the M3's are different tonaly than the M22 and M80s. The M80s and M22s have a much cleaner midrange to them. That dip in FR makes voices from the M3s sound to be behind the other sounds rather than in front of or equal to. Now this was all with v2's and my Ti M22's so with v3's, YMMV.

No, it was on the M50s. We had the M50s out of phase for about 50% of the comparison.

With certain male voices the M3's like to add a fat or bloated characteristic to them. The wonderful jazz vocalist Kurt Elling comes to mind. Female speech/vocals sound better IMO. I think this comes from the mid-bass hump and voicing on the M3 which has this effect on the speech region.

Based on the on-axis response curves, the M2 and M22 does not have that characteristic. Like Grunt and JohnK also mentioned they would be a better tonal match for the M60 than the M3 and would also give you more natural vocals/speech out of the centre.

The only concerns I would have with the M2 is power handling and being able to keep up with the M60's during dynamic movie passages and speech intelligibility in large rooms at further listening distances. How large of a room is your theatre, listening distance etc?

It was only on "stun".

House, have you personally heard the M3v3?

I have 2 pairs of M3 v2's. One pair in 07 and the other sometime in 08/09. Looking at the on-axis frequency response of the M3v3 it is pretty identical to the v2, with the exact same mid-bass hump.

Thank you for the clarification.

I've also listened to comparable speakers with those same passages which have a flatter on-off axis response more resembling that of the M22 (based on independent 3rd party measurements) and they do sound more natural in the speech region compared to the M3.

IMO I think it is the midbass-hump that has this affect on certain male voices. Not all, just some. On the other hand it is desirable on some recordings. With the centre speaker though, speech is a primary concern.