Doesn't have to be (and certainly isn't advertised to be) mch only.
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Revel Concerta C10 Review (center speaker)
- Thread starter amirm
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beagleman
Major Contributor
But the lack of bass in this tiny speaker, will make the sub OR left/right speakers have to go all the way up to about 200-250 hz to be FLAT response wise, and you will be able to locate where the sound is coming from for sure.
Anything much over 100-120hz is easily located. The onmidirectional thing only applies to lower bass sounds.
Full range L/R speakers cannot solve the deficiencies of poor center channel speaker. If you redirect upper bass frequencies from the center to L/R, you'll still have the same problem of actors' voices being separated from the screen when they were intended to be coming from the screen.
Anything above about 100 Hz is not going to be omnidirectional. That is precisely why you don't want your subwoofer playing above that level. And if the sound engineer wants to give the sound (a voice, a cannon, thunder) a direction, he or she will include higher frequencies (above 100 Hz) to go with that sound and will place them in the desired channel (L, R, C, SL, SR, etc.)
Certainly. The L/R are closer to full range. Actually Revel's matching L/R pair to go with this center are 100-20k.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Buy better imaging and full range mains and throw out the centre.
The centre speaker has always been, and still is, a horrible compromise unless you have identical L,C,R mains in line and an acoustically transparent screen.
This speaker has a dreadful response. I reckon you'd be better off with a 1960s paper full range w/whizzer cone for a centre.
I guess Revel is incapable of comprehending the intricacies of speakers and this application. Good thing there are so many better speaker companies.
That was precisely my point. Ideally, you'd want your center speaker to comfortably cover frequencies down to about 80 Hz.
It’s a very small speaker, why would we want to compare it to a “full-blown” speaker. At least it has better polar response among the others tested so far.
Oh, I'm sure they comprehend it just fine. They've intentionally designed a speaker to fit in tight spaces, knowing very well that it's going to be a huge compromise. Most of our home theater systems are full of compromises. Gotta pick your battles.
You didn’t answer the question.
beagleman
Major Contributor
One must judge a speaker by it's intended use. ((YOU SAID THAT BY THE WAY))
It is a CENTER speaker. It can not reproduce many voices well....Nor mate with most subwoofers.....
It does not work great at all for a center, due to total lack of bass.
You are making excuses for this, but bashed other brands. Why not make excuses for them also??
This is after all a $500.00 speaker in 2008 dollars.
At least be consistent and call a spade a spade!
If you put the crossover at 100Hz you will have a big hole in the response between 100Hz and 200Hz.
I do 100Hz LR 48dB/oct and I wouldn’t say it’s locatable but it still muddies the sound stage. LR 24 dB/oct is locatable once the speakers are turned off.
There must be something I miss in the discussion and praise of this center speaker. To me it seems clearly designed at a time when a center speaker was considered as a nice to have afterthought in an existing stereo system, placed below the TV... To me and many others who have a proper HT setup, LCR should ideally be identical speakers even if we sometimes have to make small compromises from that.Since we know what the response is:
Mounting on a wall as intended in combination with the high pass filtering might not result in the elevated levels for a similar design without the HP filter. Since these are on-wall designs, these probably fit more of a Marie Kondo lifestyle choice rather than the whole full-blown HT.
As is evident from the FR, it is already at -20dB at 80Hz. 80Hz would be a typical and often recommended crossover point in most HT setups with mono subs, except perhaps for small lifestyle systems. So the blend with a sub in a multichannel system in that category will be bad, with a huge suckout in the important 80-160Hz frequency band.
On the other hand, with a "boundary woofer" like what for example Lyngdorf makes, with a frequency response up to 500Hz it could be a different story, but then the center channel is no longer doing center channel duty, which is the whole point og having a center in the first place...
Furthermore, the THD-measurements below 200Hz at both 85 and 96dB SPL (including 4.5% THD at 600Hz for some reason) is pretty horrible by most standards, even at a fairly low 96dB SPL ( I wonder how the THD looks at +20dB peaks above the 85dB THX levels (105dB)... from the 96dB measurements it looks like it will result in a complete meltdown). I wish @amirm could show THD numbers at both 85 and 105dB for speakers in general. The 105dB numbers tell a whole lot I think...
So what is so nice about this center that it deserves such a high score? I could understand it if it was moderated as a "lifestyle" product?
Dispersion and good frequency response from 500Hz and up perhaps? But still it has to be reasonably well balanced with other important properties I think..
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Savage!
Regarding center channels, the best sound I've heard with external speakers, in terms of "mapping the sound to the image" has come from my little Spendor S3/5s which a bought long ago to flank my plasma TV. (It's an "ED" definition plasma, one of the first, and I still own the thing in my family room). Though I wired for a center channel I never needed it. The S3/5s have a wonderful "free of the box" imaging quality and even from fairly off center the sound just seems to be coming right from the TV image. Dialogue just maps right on. I've never heard any centre channel do as well in terms of being "invisible" and giving the illusion the sound is coming directly from the screen.
On the other hand that smaller set up is suited to being able to pull that off. The speakers aren't very far apart.
Whereas my home theater uses a screen that can go up to 12 feet wide, with the L/R speakers on either side. I've tried using only stereo L/R and it does work from the sweet spot on the sofa, quite well. But it just doesn't work of course for going much off center, so engaging my big center channel (which is how I usually listen) works better in that regard. I use Hales Transcendence monitors L/R and the Transcendence Center channel, and they are a good timbre match, but still even with some room correction with the AVR, it's not as seamless in mapping to the picture as my 2 channel Spendor speakers with my plasma.
When mounted to a wall I guess the FR must be flat to 150Hz. It’s already -5dB at 150Hz. On small speakers it’s normal to use a higher crossover frequency for subwoofers, if you use 150Hz then the expected -3dB point is 150Hz. It’s already at -5dB. Don’t you think wall mounting will not give you the required 2dB?
It was answered by another poster earlier in the thread:
Revel Concerta C10 Review (center speaker)
No. The Predicted-in-room response is excellent above bass. Think of it this way. Take a perfect speaker that has 20 to 20 kHz response. Then high pass it at 200 Hz. Does it become a terrible speaker? Yes it does, without a doubt. It’s literally turns into a mobile phone speaker. You of...
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My point was that with this speaker you are going to have to set the crossover much higher than 100 Hz, thus allowing the subwoofer to draw too much attention to itself.
There’s always something to compromise when you limit the height of the centre speaker. You can’t have your cake and eat it when you place limits to the system design.
This is not a no-compromise speaker. However, in my book C10 offers the right compromise. You just have to use a higher crossover frequency for the subwoofer. I’m happy that @amirm agrees.
beagleman
Major Contributor
Maybe, but 150 Hz is still fairly high. In my set up for video, anything over about 110 Hz starts to sound semi crappy.
Why should what appears to be sound quality ratings in absolute terms consider such design compromises? If so, then should we include different categories of design before we make any judgements? Should we do the same with subwoofers? Below 10kg, 10-50kg, 50kg+? And speakers? So quality given size and price constraints? I would be perfectly fine with that but it would be a different kind of rating... This center is not in the same league quality wise as any of the centers I've had (even cheap ones) or currently have in my HT, so I would not call it "Fine" or "Great" without moderating that heavily as a lifestyle product for those who use it with their TV and have no ambitions for a proper HT setup.
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