Flatscreen between speakers

A thought for those who might try a curtain over the screen, have a Roman shade made the width and height of the screen.  If there's a substantial space from the top of the screen to the ceiling, have matching panels that stay stationary and hide the hardware that lifts the curtain vertically.
If you go the distance, get a remote control for lift and fall....
Home theater like the big ones....supply your own fanfare..... ;)

To keep it in scale, no lion....a cat's long meow, or kittens...*L*
If it 'has to be' instrumental, a kazoo....😏

@ticat 

my experience has lead me to believe that 2 channel and HT have no business being seriously pursued in one room

Could you please list where you see the incompatibilities?

Personally, I find 2-channel severely limiting for classical music in particular, where a huge number of recordings is available on multi-channel SACD and other disc formats (Bluray, Dolby Atmos, etc).

Until recently, my main speakers were Quad ESL-2905 driven by a Krell amplifier, and supported by a big subwoofer, so quite good for 2-channel audio.  They are also quite good at providing 2 channels of a home theater system.  My main source is a universal disk transport which retrieves data from CD, SACD, DVD, Blu Ray and 3k disks, If need be, I can switch my turntable through a 2-channel Krell Pre-amp but for everything else I normally used the DACs in my Marantz AV8802 pre-processor.

IF I want to play 2-channel music, I do it through components which would satisfy me in a dedicated room though they are co-located with "home theatre".

Finally, there are awesome recordings of music performances which add yet another channel - video!  Don't want to watch?  Just shut you eyes, but you miss out on the whole experience.

shooter41

richardbrand

I understand how your processors and you SOLVE the lack of a center channel speaker.

IF possible, try a small center channel rather than skipping it, that is my advice to anyone following. 

After so many years of prioritizing and enjoying excellent 2 channel imaging in my dedicated listening system, and many years of improving TV sound, (starting with old CRTs I hot wired decent speakers to, the fidelity was always there), I am very sensitive to sound that is erroneously off-center of a visual image, especially dialog meant to be centered, or off-center dialog not originating from the correct location.

A common issue is a TV above a fireplace, no center speaker. My wife and sister-in-law house/pet sit for many wealthy people, and I check out the home theaters of many of them. I shake my head at the poor sound so many have.

My Small 5.1 Home Theater

I am left handed and sit on the left end of the sofa (some but not far off center), near my end table, coffee warmer, coaster, kleenex, box of remotes, left side wall ....

Donna, right handed, is at the right end, her coffee warmer ... no right wall. No one normally sits, or needs to sit dead center in my setup due to two factors

1. DBX Soundfield 100 Cross Pattern Dispersion is designed to create a WIDE phantom center image of any 2 channel material (I often 'force' 2 channel),

Toe-In Alternates

and

2. using a Center Channel Speaker (even a small one) physically anchors the center to the center of the image no matter where you sit, because if you rely on Phantom Center, and you sit off-center, it is not going to work as well as sound ORIGINATING from the center. Off-center dialog will have some Phantom Off-Center mix by the originators, which assumes a center speaker,

I am happier with the smaller Jamo, the Klipsch was just too efficient, even after software adjustments

In my office, 2 channel, all center Phantom, I re-configured everything so I could sit dead center for the 1st time ever.

spenav OP

@mihorn.  I am not sure your point about natural sound in the video. Sometimes my wife and my daughter try to talk to me at the same time and I have difficulty understanding them. Is one of them NOT a natural sound? 

     Exactly. We can enjoy many natural sounds at same time without much effort. Ex. Women chat with friends and enjoy the live music in the live band cafe. However, to listen the un-natural sound (like the left speaker in the comparison video), we must change something in our body (ears, eyes, and brain). Each time we hear un-natural sound to natural sound, vice versa, we must change the hearing mode. And it’s hard for brain and bad for health.

     My system is natural sound and I am always in natural sound mode. And I don't like listen un-natural sound system like before. I can still change to un-natural sound mode, but I don’t like do it because it is very uncomfortable action (like spit my eyes out and widen my eyes to suck into between 2 speakers). It’s called the immersive sound. I must listen un-natural sounds some times but I feel like un-natural sound sucks out my life.  Alex/Wavetouch