Well in the reality of the big picture, that's a good thing. I would venture a guess that the number of people who own HT systems that use identical center speakers placed behind something like a sound transparent projection screen is small, maybe on the order of 10%?
Like for many things/times in life, I believe we may looking at some things thru rose colored glasses. The old systems weren't always better.
I didn't say anything about the speaker having to be behind an acoustically transparent screen. Having all three be just below the screen, for example is certainly no worse than these ridiculously awful setups with "center channel speakers" sitting on the flipping FLOOR pointed upward because the owner has to have screen at eye level (when ALL theaters up until the 1990s when stadium seating started to appear, were above eye level and most reclining seats shift your view upward anyway). Then there's "dialog lift" (standard feature in Yamaha AVRS, but can be simulated with Mini-DSP or even a mixer in others).
The front (not quite half) of my room is shown here lit up. The center speaker is identical to the left/right (they just have grey grills because I bought them from two different sellers, trying to match my original driver PSB B15 speakers with the identical matching T45 models that have the same setup but with an extra bass driver on the bottom). Other than the Front Heights being slightly offset due to the non-transparent screen (there's a blackout drape/window behind it so no room to do transparent), they're all identical drivers with dialog lift making the entire front stage (not just the dialog) come from about 35% up the height of the screen (Wides are now raised to match that height level; this is an older picture).
Speaking of Toole, he's a huge fan of using acoustic controls that are part of the room. He did something similar in his living room. The Thomas Kincaid art is actually very thick sound absorbing "tapestries" that largely kill the first reflection you're talking about. It was utterly detrimental to the sound. It's so much clearer now and accurate imaging wise. Thick carpeting kills any floor reflections. All overheads are tilted downward towards the MLP (Front Heights are on Pro downward tilt stands with sound absorbing material behind the speakers.
Thick blackout drapes serve dual functions and are in the back of the room behind the rear speakers, the front of the room behind the screen and on the left hand side of the room across from the outboard fireplace (it and the bookshelves act as natural diffusers while the drape opposite them kills the return wave). The thick seats themselves act as natural absorption as well. There are both Surround Height and Heights + Tops (10 total overhead) speakers.
Surround Height are only used with Auro-3D (I can use Rear Height, Surround Height or the Auro-3D preferred array of both). All surround speakers are arrayed to Auro-3D and Lexicon (THX Mode) traditional theater style surround arrays (4 sets of arrays, equal to many real theaters of the time period). They also work with Logic 7 due to the extraction processors for 11-channel Logic 7 (25 speakers total including 4 optional floor arrays extracted from out-of-phase ambience of the Mains + Side Surrounds).
Here's the RT60 (Studio Level deadened)
I think there is some rationalisation for using it, even if the centre speaker is excellent and identical to the left and right front speakers.
When mixing to 2 channel, the phantom centre cannot be made quite as pinpoint as when 100% of the content is coming from a centre speaker. But the sound engineers were happy with the size and weight of the centre image that they were getting in a phantom centre situation, and probably did not mean to give the listener a relatively pinpoint and diminutive centre image.
Furthermore, when left and right speakers are being used to create a phantom centre, a fair amount of their content is spreading out to the side walls and coming to the listener with additional apparent source width, and this further creates some sense of size weight and breadth to the phantom centre image. When you put 100% of that content to a centre speaker, even a perfect and perfectly matched centre speaker, it doesn't have the benefit of the near side wall reflections, which Toole has shown are positively perceived in stereo.
The accuracy and "pinpoint" imaging of speakers varies greatly. Any quality speaker will have VERY pinpoint imaging in stereo. Garbage Out = Garbage In (to your ears). Stop using substandard poor imaging speakers and your point is lost entirely.
As for Toole, he was talking about stereo playback only. We're talking about a home theater setup. If you use a PROPER dampened/dead room, there are very few sidewall reflections to "bounce" off of. So what do you do, then? You use a stereo upmixer like Sonic Holography or AuroMatic. DSU/PLIIx/Logic 7 also work great.
These use lots of simulated reflections from actual speakers around that dead (not live) room. In fact, you can simulate any room in existence with such a setup because
your room doesn't really come into play (or barely). Do you want to hear the room on the recording or do you want to hear your (inferior) room? I don't want to hear my rectangular room playing live music! I want to hear Carnegie Hall or whatever venue the recording was made at. If you're bouncing sounds off the side-walls, you're hearing your room not the original venue! That is unacceptable.
AuroMatic simulates a decent reflective room for studio recordings (that don't have a venue) so you still miss nothing. In fact, this is where Sonic Holography and Logic 7 really shine by recreating the spatial effects around you like headphones brought out into the room itself.
In this environment and with quality 3 identical pin-point imaging speakers, Center Spread can only make the sound quality worse. I've verified this in testing. They actually sound identical in practice once properly aligned. All Center Spread does is lose the center position LOCK for off-center seating. While I don't have a Center Height speaker (no room), you still get 2x better center positioning with Dialog Lift and Front Height than no center at all (or center spread).
