How important to match 3 front speakers?

[kstandsteve]

When I went to buy my new home cinema amp saturday I was discussing my existing speaker setup. The dude told me that I need to change my centre speaker.

At present I have 2 floor standing Mission 702e's together with an Eltax Jupiter 10047 centre speaker. He tells me I need a mission centre so that they will match as different makes of speaker will not necessarily be so.

What do you think?

If he is right what speaker should I buy - it will need to be Beech finish to please the missus!

Cheers

 

[stevedster]

he was talking tosh, as long as the power and output of the speakers is roughly the same then you will be fine.

 

[nheather]

The thing I've read and heard is that the centre and fronts should have similar drivers so that the frequency range and tonal qualities are the same.

The argument goes that if a sound moves from left to right (or vice versa), with a matched centre it will move smoothly whereas with an unmatched centre it might appear to jump.

How noticable this is I could not say - not sure myself whether this is something that could be heard by the casual listener or whether you have to be a fanatical tweeker.

Cheers,

Nigel

 

[Zog]

read this

 

[recruit]

It is best to keep all the front 3 speakers the same as the balance across the front will then be seamless, not so important for the rears but definitly the fronts...

 

[Knyght_byte]

i had a pair of Wharedale 7.3 Diamonds, lovely speakers.....i bought a Gale centre speaker a few years later when i got a Sherwood receiver....and altho it was fun having 5.1 for DVD's which i was slowly building up a nice collection of, you could always tell exactly which speaker was producing what sound....it definitely wasnt matched up....

when i moved to my MA Silver S speakers on a denon 3803 amp, but with the Gale still providing centre, it was even worse...lol.....then i got the matching Silver centre which is literally the same size and type of drivers, and cabinet size even (well, except length, my fronts are floorstanders, the centre obviously is like a chopped off floorstander on its side with the tweeter in between two mids).....and its perfect, seamless panning across them.....never totally obvious which the sound is coming from unless the recording wants it to be that way....

definitely worth matching them in my book.....

 

[Tamas]

Hello. I would recommend that all your speakers should be matched to the degree of having similar drivers and sound. Each manufacturer to some degree chooses a voice for their speaker lines. If you truly want to enjoy surround sound for movies and music all your speakers should be matched. The only speaker you dont have to worry about is your .1 subwoofer.

Regards, Tom

 

[Londondecca]

Normally I would have said they should be matched but recently my son wrecked the drivers in my AE Evo 1's and I have been using some cheap Infinity rear speakers. There is a difference in timber or tone but it is not dramatic and for the moment I can happily live with this setup.

 

[AndrewB]

Hello. I would recommend that all your speakers should be matched to the degree of having similar drivers and sound. Each manufacturer to some degree chooses a voice for their speaker lines. If you truly want to enjoy surround sound for movies and music all your speakers should be matched. The only speaker you dont have to worry about is your .1 subwoofer.

Regards, Tom

I think Tom is correct, in general, but in my projector setup I am using a 7ft wide screen and my main L&R speakers are very high quality (ATC SCM50 active monitors) which are positioned under the two edges of the screen. In this situation, I have found that I get excellent sound without any centre speaker at all. The fact that the matching ATC centre speaker is about the size of a mini and costs over £5,000 is an additional incentive to go the phantom route...

Andrew

 

[Nic Rhodes]

A matched centre will certainly help. The ideal is 3 identical speakers in the same orientation but this is rarely possible. Centres are a compromise but good ons are just that, a bonus to sound.

ATC 50s, cool. A man of taste, you know you want that centre....