Centers - Go big or go home

Dear readers,

Some of you may know that I spent a few years working in the motion picture equipment / audio industry.  As much experience as I had there, I still sometimes feel like a newbie dealing with the limitations of a home theater.  For instance, in theaters we always had 3 or more identical speakers BEHIND the screen.  These were full range speakers meant for high efficiency, high power and broad dispersion.

In the home we usually compromise with the center significantly, and try to make weird compromises for surrounds (remember di-poles?). 

I am posting here to say my position on using a center channel speaker in the home has evolved a great deal after experimenting with a new much larger center than I had before. 

https://speakermakersjourney.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-center-at-scale.html

Here is what I used to believe was true:

A center channel is modestly better than a phantom center

This was based on the size of TV's we have at home vs. a theater,  and knowledge about how head related transfer functions affect how we perceive a phantom center vs. a real one, both in terms of listening area but also in terms of perceived frequency response. 

First, I was wrong.  I'll rephrase it now:

A small, 2-way center channel is modestly better than a phantom center. A large 3-way center channel is a glorious addition to a HT system and feels like adding a subwoofer, even when that 3-way is low-frequency limited.

I'm listening to a 3-way center with 2x 7" woofers and a 4" midrange and it's amazingly better than the 2-way with 5" woofers even at modest volumes.  First, all 2-way center channels suffer from a high crossover frequency, around 2 kHz.  This means the mid-woofers carry almost all of the signal, diffusing the location of the center.  Having a midrange seems to focus the dialogue exactly in the center of the screen, no matter where you sit.

The part that is really new and noteworthy to me is that the sound feels as if I added a subwoofer exactly in the middle of the speakers, despite the fact that the speaker is not a full range speaker and high passed by the processor at 80 Hz.  It's a huge difference, and it brings all the benefits we associate with an excellent subwoofer, including transparency and depth which seems to open up the midrange and treble. 

So, that's my new advice.  If you have a choice between phantom and small centers stick to phantom.  If you can get a 3-way center then you absolutely should.