How to hook up powered speakers for Left/Center/Right setup?

[Joeyd33]

I've seen people say they use powered speakers for their home audio setup. But I'm confused as to how you would get a powered speaker setup for a center channel?

Unless I'm remembering the posts wrong, maybe they were just using powered speakers for left & right and then passive speakers for the rest?Do I need to get a certain receiver?

I am limited to running only bookshelf speakers with no surround speakers. But I also need a center channel for movies, since every setup I've had that is only left and right is usually pretty bad when it comes to movies since one side seems to dominate if you aren't dead center.

 

[DVDdoug]

Some AVRs have line-level "preamp" outputs (as well as speaker outputs). You can mix-and-match passive and active speakers but I don't think many people do.

Or you can get an attenuator to convert speaker level to line-level. (That's assuming you have a center-channel speaker output.)