| Re: Surround Sound With TV Over Fireplace [message #71515 is a reply to message #71512] |
Fri, 24 February 2012 13:33   |
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Wayne Parham
Messages: 18723
Registered: January 2001
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Illuminati (33rd Degree) |
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A few thoughts, starting with some basic concepts:
About wives and sound, I actually think most wives care about sound as much or more than their husbands. It's just that if the husband is one of us - an audiophile - and has a tendency towards large, ugly and/or expensive equipment, then their wives object. But it's the ugliness they complain about, not the sound. They don't want our hobbies to cause them to skimp on other things, but since they do like fine things, if you can get them on board with a purchase, they are often times as excited about the home theater as you are. Give her a beautiful room with attractive loudspeakers that sound good, and she'll brag about the sound of your home theater more than she does any other aspect of it.
About center channels, when done right, they're a huge improvement. But when done wrong - as they usually are - when they are designed to fit into a particular space, compromising all other aspects to do so, they are almost always worse than no center channel at all. My general suggestion is if you can use a center speaker that is exactly like the right and left speaker, then do so. If you can't, then don't use a center channel at all. Use right and left speakers with uniform 90° horizontal beamwidth, and angle them in 45° so their axes cross in front of the listeners.
In practice, this philosophy works very well because a phantom center is pretty easy to accomplish realistically as long as the left - right span is not large. By "large span" I mean a width that is greater than about twice the distance to the listeners. If the screen is 100", then the speakers can be placed ten or fifteen feet apart. If the audience is at least five or six feet back, then a good phantom center can be developed using this technique. When larger screens are employed, it is pretty important to have a center speaker, but larger screens are usually used by projectors, in which case speakers can be mounted behind the screens.
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