From: brian@comp.vuw.ac.nz (Brian Boutel)
Subject: Re: need recommendations for center channel speaker
Organization: Dept. of Comp. Sci., Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand.
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 07:59:42 GMT


In article <1992Oct2.044043.15378@dunix.drake.edu>, kjt001@dunix.drake.edu (Kevin Tieskoetter) writes:
|> hold on, hold on...you guys are talking about projection TVs and buying
|> identical speakers for the center channel....I'm a college student...I
|> don't have money...I spent $200 for a pair of front speakers (and I'm
|> estatic about them...for the price, I can't believe the sound), and I
|> can't spend much on another speaker.
|> 
|> I was talking in the $20-$40 range...and no new TV (besides, a
|> projection
|> tv wouldn't even fit in my room...)
|> 
|> -kevin
|> 

Well, I wasn't *seriously* proposing a projection tv with an identical speaker
located behind an acoustically transparent screen.

Unless you have an unlimited budget, and want a dedicated room for home theatre,
there are practical problems with setting up a surround system.

My "home theatre" is separate from my audio-only system, which is in another room.
It's just as well, since an identical speaker for the centre channel would have
to be a 6 foot-high panel. Perhaps, with the right covering, it could serve as
the screen for the projector (-:

Back to reality.
The A/V system is in a small sitting room, which is where we would go to watch
tv anyway. I don't want a dedicated theatre in the house, I want our little tv
room to become a reasonable substitute when I watch a Dolby-encoded movie. I also
want to switch audio through from the other room sometimes, so I want the main
amp and speakers to be reasonably good, but not too expensive. I have a Sony 29"
tv (we're a PAL country, so it's like the multi-standard Sony's you USA people
can get), and a Lexicon CP1 for surround and Dolby decoding. No multi-channel
amp, so I have to provide 7 channels of amplification (8 if I had a sub-woofer)
with separate amps. This can take up a lot of space, as well as being unsightly.
For the side and rear channels, I have the amps in the roof space, with
line-level signals and power fed up through the walls, and speaker cables feeding
down to the speakers, which are mounted high on the walls. The main speakers are
a typical British 2-way (Arcam 2) sitting on wall-mounted stands. In addition to
the tv, Lexicon, and main speakers, I have to accomodate a vcr, preamp, main
amps, the equivalent of a cable decoder, as well as the centre amp and
speaker(s). No laserdisc yet, software availability is still a problem here. This
lot is not easy to accomodate without changing the character of the room, and the
rat's nest of cables has to be seen to be believed.

I've tried to get an orphaned speaker from the importers to match the main ones,
but no luck. So I've tried two other speakers I had lying around, JPW sonatas,
and Celestion 3s. Positioning is a problem and I had to do some serious
degaussing after one unfortunate experiment. Now, I'm actually using the tv's
built-in speakers. It's not that bad, the particular model from Sony has
non-detachable speakers which are tonally quite similar to the Arcams if you
ignore the bass, and the Lexicon allows a variable amount of the centre channel
bass to be blended in to the main speakers. It's not ideal, but it's ok. Perhaps
I'll go back to the Celestions next week.

Another complication is that if my wife wants to just switch on the tv and watch
it, she has to be able to do so without understanding how the rest of the system
is connected this week )-: The trusty Radio Shack programmable remote with
around 	20 sequences defined copes with this.

What am I saying? Well, if you want a centre speaker for $40, forget it. Use a
phantom centre - most dolby decoders provide this facility, and unless you have
people sitting way off centre, it's quite acceptable.

What do you say, Chris?

--brian



-- 
Internet: brian@comp.vuw.ac.nz
Postal: Brian Boutel, Computer Science Dept, Victoria University of Wellington,
        PO Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand
Phone: +64 4 471-5328   Fax: +64 4 495-5232