Who turns center off when listening to music

I use the center channel all the time for everything. I listen almost exclusively to 2 channel recordings and up-mix everything to 3 channels with simple channel summing and subtracting - no complex processing. The 3 speakers are very close together, on 1 foot centers. This creates enough crosstalk reduction to restore a normal width stereo sound field while completely eliminating the comb filtering caused by the phantom center image created when using only 2 speakers. Anything panned center will only play through the center speaker. The speakers are all far away from the side walls, and all close enough together to have a similar acoustic interaction with the room and thus create a cohesive sound. I think one of the biggest problems with center channels in normal use cases with wide spacing between speakers is that the center speakers are loaded into an acoustically different space than the side channels so they don’t blend in as well as they should, even if the center speaker is identical. A wider spaced 3.1 system might work better in a wide room, where all 3 speakers are a long distance from any corner position. My limited experience has supported that notion.

@kota1 

I'm with you and the chairman on the center channel. Not sure about that bowl of cigarettes. I guess he needed those to maintain his singing voice. 

Who the hell owns and listens to a high-end, 2-channel system and doesn’t sit in the sweet spot?

I think most everybody with a high end 2 speaker system has a chair in the sweet spot. Still, I work with a lot of people who appreciate their high end 2 channel systems when they’re listening from other positions in the room. I get to see a lot of people’s rooms and learn about how they use them. They’re not all 1 seat arrangements. A high end system can do a lot more than imaging, as you know, so there’s still a lot to appreciate over a lower capability system even when seated outside the sweet spot.

@soix

I totally understand why they don’t use a center channel. I’ve been to audio shows and listened to plenty of high-end 2 channel systems. I know what they can do. A center channel used the way I use it does something they can’t do. It can prevent comb filtering from inter-aural crosstalk. The argument that it’s not necessary is well taken, as I know from experience that the sound can still be great despite the crosstalk. Nevertheless, I prefer to not hear that crosstalk. The only ways I’ve found that work for me to my satisfaction are to either use a divider wall between two speakers that comes all the way up to my face to keep the speakers from playing into the wrong ear, or use an array of 3 speakers that are fairly close together and employ channel summing in the center and differencing on the side speakers. There are other recursive schemes out there that also do a good job of reducing crosstalk but I feel they add issues of their own.

Crosstalk was never an intended feature. It’s a parasitic effect that comes along with only using 2 speakers. People found that they could live with it, and 2 speakers is the simplest way to get some kind of stereo effect, so it became the default standard, mostly out of practicality. Some people have adapted so much to it that they actually add crosstalk to their headphone setups to simulate speakers in a room! I definitely don’t like that with headphones, but to each their own. I do what sounds best to me. Crosstalk isn’t my favorite thing.

My setup still requires that I sit in the sweet spot for full stereo imaging. If I go out of the sweet spot the imaging collapses but centered vocals still stay in the center. More typical multi-channel systems are less sensitive to sweet spot position, but it’s still the best place to be.

@soix

when you’re at a live concert how do you prevent the strings on the left from bleeding over into the woodwinds on the right? Do you bring your own personal divider with you to make it sound more “right” to you? To each his own I guess.

No, at an orchestral concert there is no crosstalk. Each instrument is producing sound from it’s actual location, each producing a single stream of sound that crosses my head once. If the instrument is straight in front of me, the stream of sound from that instrument will hit each ear simultaneously with one pass.

With a stereo 2 speaker setup, if the instrument or singer is phantom imaged straight ahead of me, that means that each speaker is playing the same thing, which causes the sound stream to hit my head from two different angles at the same time. This causes two identical streams to have different arrival times at each ear, creating comb filtering that changes the tone. Never in the natural world would you hear two identical sounds hit your head from two different directions at the same time, which is why the phantom center illusion works. Our brain doesn’t know what to think of it so it positions it solidly in the center, but not without tonal compromise. There’s also a problem with the HRTF not matching a source coming from straight ahead. Sound that hits the head from an angle produces a different tonal response at the ear drum than sound coming from straight ahead. Since our brain thinks it’s coming from straight ahead, the tonality is confusing. I think for a lot of people this gets interpreted as a depth effect, and they like it. I read complaints that when center vocals are played through a center speaker they sound too forward to a lot of people.

Why do most high-end manufacturers ignore these issues with 2 speaker playback? There are many reasons, but I’ve read a lot of people complaining about the sound when these issues are corrected, so it seems there are generations that have adapted to the effect of crosstalk and expect it. With a lot of up-mixing algorithms there are settings such as "stereo wide" which allow the user to turn down the strength of the center channel or even turn it off when listening to music. When I listen to Dolby Atmos mixed music I often hear that the center channel is weak or completely turned off, with a phantom center being used from the two front left/right channels instead. Why do they do this? I think it’s listener preference from years of conditioning, as well as the fact that a lot of people are using a different kind of center channel that’s not optimized for music, and also because in a setup where the side channels are closer to the corners of the room, the center channel is in position in the room that is acoustically un-similar enough to the side channels that it creates a noticeable incongruity in the sound.

@soix

It seems I haven’t communicated the concepts very well. But it doesn’t matter. You can read about the problems with 2 channel crosstalk if you’re interested. I don’t doubt you are correct - 2 speaker setups will live on as the primary critical listening arrangement for most high-end systems for decades to come. I've had many such discussions and I've changed no one's mind. I have no interest in changing anyone’s mind. I’m just sharing what I do in case someone is interested, and I'd like to get some feedback that people understand the concepts at least. But ultimately I guess what matters is that they like what they hear from their systems. I like what I like so I’ve got to be me even if I’m the only one in the world who uses the setup I do. I’m just glad the equipment is available to set up the way I like and there’s no law against me using it that way.