A gentleman was in town recently and called to arrange an audition (U-1s here). He is interested in Sound Lab A-1s as well, to use them for conventional two channel listening and in a home theater setup. He is building an addition to his house for this room.
Depending upon how far apart the left and right main speakers are positioned, a center channel speaker may be desired, or not. Sound Lab makes the Marquee center channel speaker for this purpose. Other center channel speakers may work, but it's important that the speaker be similarly voiced as the main speakers. In the case of the customer referred to above, he will have a projection screen claimed to be acoustically transparent, well mostly. This is a very good thing in the case of Sound Labs, due to their dipole radiation for the purpose of accurately reproducing the reverberant sound field. Positioning the main speakers is possible so as to produce a good strong center image. The need for a center channel would be determined by room acoustics, speaker positioning, and screen placement. A single M-1 or perhaps one of the smaller models such as an M-2 may be used for the center channel, positioned behind the screen.
For surround speakers, I would recommend using dipole speakers as well. While less critical than the main and center speakers, they shouldn't sound drastically different from them, which box speakers would. Sound Lab M-3s or Dynastats can be placed quite close to sidewalls due to dipole cancellation on the sides, but if they're still too big you could use something like the wall mounted Magnepans, I forget the model. I couldn't recommend Martin Logan since the sound is quite different from Sound Lab, the former having noticeable glare in my experience.
I'll try to post thoughts and suggestions on subwoofers later.
Brian
Depending upon how far apart the left and right main speakers are positioned, a center channel speaker may be desired, or not. Sound Lab makes the Marquee center channel speaker for this purpose. Other center channel speakers may work, but it's important that the speaker be similarly voiced as the main speakers. In the case of the customer referred to above, he will have a projection screen claimed to be acoustically transparent, well mostly. This is a very good thing in the case of Sound Labs, due to their dipole radiation for the purpose of accurately reproducing the reverberant sound field. Positioning the main speakers is possible so as to produce a good strong center image. The need for a center channel would be determined by room acoustics, speaker positioning, and screen placement. A single M-1 or perhaps one of the smaller models such as an M-2 may be used for the center channel, positioned behind the screen.
For surround speakers, I would recommend using dipole speakers as well. While less critical than the main and center speakers, they shouldn't sound drastically different from them, which box speakers would. Sound Lab M-3s or Dynastats can be placed quite close to sidewalls due to dipole cancellation on the sides, but if they're still too big you could use something like the wall mounted Magnepans, I forget the model. I couldn't recommend Martin Logan since the sound is quite different from Sound Lab, the former having noticeable glare in my experience.
I'll try to post thoughts and suggestions on subwoofers later.
Brian