Tekton Double Impacts

Too funny. I tried for the better part of 2 years to get good sound from HT. Actually it was probably more like 4. Whatever it was, I gave it the college try. Brought a slew of processors home, full range surrounds, everything. Nothing sounds good once you run it through HT. Nothing. By far the best center channel is two good stereo speakers running stereo. By far. When I say, "by far" I worry someone may think this means by audiophile standards. No. It means so obvious your wife who thinks everything else is imaginary, over the top and nuts says, "No way!" and "How can it suck so bad?" when she hears HT.

The world is currently in the grips of several even greater mass delusions, but the superiority of multichannel and in particular the need for a center channel is always out there ready to take it’s rightful place at the top of the heap the minute we come to our senses on the other two.

I ended up yanking my center speaker and just use the phantom image of my DIs. Nothing I used sounded good, so I gave up. After a couple years of doing that, I don’t miss the center channel for movies, but I do miss it slightly for 5.1 music as I just use quad at the moment with KEF LS50s as rears. If I were to ever invest in my HT/5.1 setup again, I would get a Tekton center channel to match the DIs. But that would take a new room, so it likely will never happen...and I am totally at peace with that.

I just rolled through some demos using a phantom image with the DI’s. While it did offer better integration, and the muddiness was gone, there are some drawbacks. I felt like now the dialogue sat a lot deeper in the mix instead of being more out in front and the soundstage was also quite reduced with the left and right now responsible for imaging across the whole width instead the edges. I guess I mean to say it sounded more natural, but also less dynamic and more confined.

Of course, this was limited viewing of some scenes from John Wick 3 and a full episode of the Mandalorian, so I’ll give myself some time to adjust and see what happens. I ran with a phantom center a couple years ago, but eventually went back to the dedicated channel.

Hi, I have a pair of Double Impacts from late 2016 and one of the woofer driver cones is starting to separate from the surround. I would imbed a picture in this comment, but I'm not sure how? I emailed Tekton a couple of weeks ago, but haven't heard back from them. Should I attempt to glue the surround to the cone where the separation is occurring or do I need to replace the driver? I think this is a 10" Eminence driver, but not sure of the model. Any suggestions would be a huge help!!! 

My thought is to replace the same driver on both speakers.