Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to ASR. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions.
Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!
Just get a full-range center speaker and enjoy the full-range signal in the center channel! If you've not had a capable center speaker, you may not realize how much deep bass(not LFE) is in the center channel, especially in action movies. After all, the center channel in movies is a discrete channel with its own sounds, and it carries more than just dialog. Why would you want to shuffle that off to the front L/R speakers?
Could not agree more. The complication is once you have a flat panel display. It steers you to horizontal centers and none of them are truly full range at required SPL.
While my Revel 426, which is one of the largest horizontal centers, goes down to 30hz in room, it can’t do 30hz at 105dB. Arendal has even bigger center with 4x8” woofers in their 1528 series but never heard that one.
Not that I am recommending it to others, but I strapped a small SVS sub to the center to make sure it can do close to 105dB at 30hz.
Could not agree more. The complication is once you have a flat panel display. It steers you to horizontal centers and none of them are truly full range at required SPL.
While my Revel 426, which is one of the largest horizontal centers, goes down to 30hz in room, it can’t do 30hz at 105dB. Arendal has even bigger center with 4x8” woofers in their 1528 series but never heard that one.
Not that I am recommending it to others, but I strapped a small SVS sub to the center to make sure it can do close to 105dB at 30hz.
Exactly what I did. I turned my Polk LSiM706C center speaker into full range by adding an REL T/5i sub, connected via REL's Speakon connecting cable. You then just have to dial in the sub's crossover and volume to your liking. You can't believe how much deep bass there is in the center channel signal until you make your center speaker capable of playing it.
I was referring to very down to earth notion - nobody liked my posts. As a matter of curtesy I often do for every thread I decide to participate in. But that's just me.
Exactly what I did. I turned my Polk LSiM706C center speaker into full range by adding an REL T/5i sub, connected via REL's Speakon connecting cable. You then just have to dial in the sub's crossover and volume to your liking. You can't believe how much deep bass there is in the center channel signal until you make your center speaker capable of playing it.
I am immensely satisfied with my Hales Transcendence Center speaker for my Home Theatre. It sounds huge, deep Rich and clear, and has wonderful off axis performance that allows it to blend with my L/R Hales T1 speakers. Really seamless.
And it’s a big mother! Goes deep enough that I haven’t felt need for a subwoofer in my system:
(those are photos I grabbed from the web. My speaker is covered with black velvet under my screen so it’s hard to photograph)
Truth to be told center does not need is's own sub. The reason I ended up going this route was to enable more granular adjustments to the center, apart from the overall bass management and to enable the center to get close to 105dB at 30hz as I am driving it full range.
I do enforce the low end of my bed channel speakers with subs, and then again enforce my subs by distributing LFE load to bed channel speakers as well. I gets complicated with such setup but eventually can work well.
Really fun for me these days as I'm learning more every day sometimes by happy accident. The discussion here has made me pay more attention to my center channel so just now I experimented with the crossover setting. I believe it was set by default at 120Hz. I changed it to 200Hz first and that was terrible so then I tried 60Hz and Wow! what a difference that simple change made. The sound is much clearer and louder than before. Not sure I understand what's going on there, but I can't argue with the difference in sound. I made the change while watching Ford vs Ferrari so now I'll have to try it on a musical and compare it to the phantom center sound which is where I first noticed a difference between a phantom center and a dedicated center speaker.
On a totally separate note I've started another thread covering the topic of dual centers and what's incredibly interesting is this YouTube video I found:
Optimal crossover is generally where you speaker and sub response is flat, so it works as intended. To the extent there are bumps in crossover area on either end, then it just does not add up ideally.
I also find that rolling off LFE channel sharply after 100hz brings additional clarity. Technically LFE is specd to 120hz, but I still find it sounding better.
