There is a pretty good article about how to choose the right center channel for your 5.1 setup.
http://www.audioholics.com/education/loudspeaker-basics/center-channel-speaker
The last 2 lines of that article is all anyone needs to read
This part:
"The best advice one could give when choosing a center channel speaker or any of the speakers in your theater room is to NOT just blindly rule out a particular type of design because someone says it theoretically cannot work. Test them with your ears in your listening environment across your listening area to decide if they are right for you"
The very last line is the best advice.
Center channel positioning and angling can be challenging especially when faced with multiple listening positioning. Experimentation is important; and then it is just as important to STOP fiddling when it sounds good!
I know the purists won't agree with this, but I've found that you can train your ear to accept just about anything. Optimum placement aside, you can learn to love your set-up even if it's not perfect. Hey we all have variables to work around, not everybody has a room and budget so flexible that anything's possible. But that doesn't mean you have to scrap your dreams of owning your very own hi-fi home theater system.
Take me for example, when I put together my last HT I had nowhere to place the center channel speaker besides bolting it right to the ceiling. Well I did so and never thought too much about it, it sounded fine to me... well, at least if it didn't sound fine in the beginning I can't remember it. And it couldn't have not sounded very good for very long because all I have are fond memories of watching movies in that HT.
In fact I was so happy with it that when I put together my current HT the plan from the very beginning was to anchor the VP150 right to my ceiling. That was it, I never even considered putting it anywhere else. This is because I was already so used to it being up there, and also because I was not really aware that it's 'proper' placement was under the screen. So up on the ceiling it went, and I've been stupidly happy with it.
From everything I've read on here it should sound terrible up there, but my ears are so used to it, it sounds incredibly natural to me. So it seems to me that with a little coaxing, and perhaps a dash of ignorance, you can accept just about anything.
Of course the 'know it alls' will whine that you're destroying the sound field, killing the experience, and just plain old doing it 'wrong'. But if there's one thing I've learned from watching the 'Matrix' it's this..... ignorance is bliss!
I know the purists won't agree with this, but I've found that you can train your ear to accept just about anything.
My sig on audioholics is a quote from Dr. Floyd Toole saying the very same thing. I personally believe that the brain is the most sophysticated filter and editing tool anyone will ever see.
Personally, I hope to never see my brain.
I totally agree with you, though.
Does anyone here ski or snowboard and have color-tinted goggles? When you first put the goggles on, the snow appears to take on the same tint as the goggles, but your eyes adjust fairly quickly and the snow looks white again after a few minutes. Then, when you take the goggles off a bunch of runs later, the snow appears to take on a tint that is the negative value of your goggles. This is because your brain applied the negative value to your vision in order to cancel out the goggle tint.
Brains!
Happens when you're reading by a red light or just using a red flashlight. You come into white light, and everything's green. It's really weird.
...which is why the bias light I've talked about works so well, and makes the colors on screen look more true. It gives your eyes a true reference white.
Nice read. Thanks for the link.