I eliminated my center channel problem decades ago.
I got rid of the center channel.
Simplicity.
I know that’s probably not the answer you were looking for. 😬
Are your speakers losing air?
I was reminded of my own advice today. I was fiddling with something in my HT system and had my head right up to the center channel. I noticed that sadly, there was a lot more air and ambiance up close to the center speaker than at my listening location.
I remembered the advice I often give others about room treatment. If you sit up close to your speakers you can really hear the detail and ambiance they create, and that all the information you lose between there and your normal listening position is due to the room. That is, your room is lossy.
In this particular case I resolved the issue by putting a 2'x4' acoustic absorber across the entertainment center, essentially hiding it entirely with the center peeking up above it. Problem solved, and suddenly movies and dialogues have a lot more acoustic information than they used to.
This also shows us a couple of other issues. My center is, by deliberate design, extremely wide dispersion. I am most likely suffering from this vs. say a horn loaded center like Hsu or Klipsch offer. That is, a limited dispersion center may not have had these issues. The other is that my Butcher Block double wide rack is itself a source of interference with the original signal. This I may fix more permanently with an IR repeater so I can keep the panel in place.
Anyway, hope this advice helps you in evaluating how to get the most out of your speakers and room.
18 responses Add your response
Lost here is the obvious observation of speaker diffraction off the table top of the equipment cabinet typical in these setups. The diffraction generates more and more interfering energy which becomes part of the wave launch though never in time with the voice or the music. That is unless the speaker is mechanically grounded to the higher mass of the cabinet. So called isolation devices themselves are another form of delayed storage like a capacitor. TomD |
@deep_333 The concentric drivers are also very interesting ideas here. The big challenge for a center is you want to have the dispersion of a 3-way speaker, but the height of 1 woofer! It’s a compromise achieved in a variety of ways. Sometimes with very very small midranges and/or very low profile tweeters but the concentric design is also a good fit here. The negative for concentric is the doppler shift that happens, especially in a smaller concentric. Still, it is undeniably a good possibility for a low-height, 3-way center channel, or even a less ambitious 2-way with a single concentric. |
A well designed concentric driver design is a great fit for Center channel applications. I use a specific Andrew Jones design with the bass drivers crossed over at 200hz...and it works like a charm. The advantage of a concentric driver (to begin with) is quite well known...It doesn’t have to be all that difficult to find a center channel that just works, if you do your fair share of thinking beforehand. |
| Post removed |
Well @tvad - I guess you solved it for everyone!! I mean, yes, listening nearfield solves the problem if you can listen or want to listen nearfield.
EQ and room treatements have some areas in which they overlap which is in changing the overall tonal balance, but they are not entirely replaceable with each other. To use a visual metaphor, you can change the color balance with EQ but not detail like you can with room treatments. As you increase the treble, you also increase the early reflections, so your signal-to-noise remains constant. By absorbing early reflections you actually improve the signal to noise ratio. |
| Post removed |
@simonmoon That's why I built my own. 😁
@moonwatcher I think you touched on several issues aboout how the home center channel is always a compromise. In m y case while. the off axis performance is excellent, I don;t have floor space to put it in anywhere but on top of the audio rack, and hence the excellent vertical dispersion is a double edged sword.
|
The nature of the beast. Most center channel speakers are more or less "regular" speakers turned 90 degrees on their sides, so yes, there's bound to be issues with dispersion. You might get them to sound great to you, sitting in the sweet spot, but for anyone sitting a few feet off axis, not so much. |
...that's what and why I've blown off treading into adding a center channel config into my current array (omni 'surround' with a sub front at the cl 'up front')... What happens if you increase the gain to the center drivers? Does it muck it up, or improve the 'imaging'? Curious minds get more curious overtly over time... ;) |
You’d be shocked at how many well known and well respected, center channel speakers have horrible off axis speaker performance, and measurements. A good friend and I, spent several weekends measuring every center channel speaker we could beg, borrow or steal. And we were pretty consistently in a state of disbelief. And it’s not as if getting decent vertical and horizontal off-axis response is some majore engineering task. So, it does not surprise me at all that it sounded better when you were up close. Luckily many improved just by tilting them up a bit. But some were so bad, they actually sounded better set vertically. |
| Post removed |