Why not use mains as centers

I helped a buddy set up a great home theater, with a lot of room, and we actually used a pair of Magnepan MMG's because he had the space and an extra pair, man they sound great. We had no interference problems, and actually just split the signal with a good DH Labs Y-splitter from the processor. It has worked great. It's a bad-a__ theater. All Maggies: IIIa up front (rebuilt at Magnepan), MC-1's for the rears, the pair of MMG's for the center and a single Velodyne DD-15 in a fairly large room. Very nice for music, great for theater. Anthem D-1 with an Innersound ESL running the fronts and a Parasound 2205 running all the other speakers, it's a really bumpin' home theater, turned out great.

Maggies are a special case. Considering their construction, using a pair, edge-to-edge with the HF drivers together, actually works well and, imho, better than any of their dedicated centers. In fact, one of the very best MCH systems I have ever heard consisted of three pairs of 20.1s with one pair as the center, edge-to-edge and sharply angled with the HF ribbons pointed at the listener.

As for others saying that they hear no interference with a pair of standard speakers side-by-side, that's fine. That there is interference can be demonstrated with measurements but the degree to which listeners hear it or are bothered by it varies greatly.

Kal

thanks for the input.I was just going to put them on both sides of a 73" screen,use them for movies and play music in two channel.I have the room I was just wondering why I don't see anybody doing it.

Sorry Kal, I disagree with you.

Mark

My two cents worth , a good center channel with 2 mid drivers flanking the right and left side of a tweeter mated with matching drivers in the left and right fronts will not only give a more seamless integration with timbre matching but the designs of most good center channels will pan sound across from side to side better than a speaker made to be used as either the left or right side of a pair of speakers. Center channels in home theater do more than vocals. The center channel is where 90% of a movies sound will come from no matter what type of movie. In my opinion it is the most important speaker for home theater sound. With 90% of the sound coming from the center channel why wouldn,t it be . I have to agree that a specialized design for the center is better for home theater use. I cannot agree with a statement that center channels are designed to accomodate positioning and not performance. NHT AC2 , Martin Logans ,to say that center channels like these two of many were not built with performance of sound first is hard to beleive. Sorry , my two cents actually ran up to five cents worth. Damn inflation! Cheers