On January 8, 2009 at 18:15, Daniel Tonks said...
For many many years I avoided using a center channel in my system, mostly because I had no good place to put it. The phantom center seemed just fine.
I finally got around to adding a center channel speaker. I chose the Dayton UA721 Speaker Kit w/o Cabinet available from Parts Express as Sku 302-854.
[Link: parts-express.com]The quality level is close, if not higher than, my two front speakers. I chose to build the cabinet myself so that I could make it fit on the shelf below the TV.
It took a few weeks to get used to the localized sound over the more expansive (but hollow) sounding "phantom", and now I love it.
After installing the speaker and calibrating the system, I was watching a baseball game and was impressed with the way the crack of the bat hitting the ball seemed to come from a central source. I now understand what you meant by the "more expansive but hollow sounding phantom".
It's a huge improvement when listening to almost any source. Both discrete 5.1 sources and 2-channel surround sources. The only source I've listened to that sounds better coming from just the two front speakers are stereo FM broadcasts and the like ... sources engineered for two-channel stereo.
