I came back to your comment I like it so much. I’m glad you picked up on that little segment with the audiophile police. I knew it was a bit snarky, out of character for me, but I got a chuckle out of it. I’ve never personally had any issues with audiophiles, they’re into it at a whole different level respectfully so. But the stereotype (pun intended) is funny.
I have two Polk Audio S30 center channel. Sounds great. They are hooked to a two channel amp. I split the one output. From the receiver. 150 watts each.
Thanks for watching and the comment! I have a two channel amp, but it's tied up powering a DVC passive sub. know my Sony is rated to 6 ohms, but my center channel although nominal 8 ohms, will go down to 4 ohms at points, so I didn't want to smoke my center amp output by hooking them up in parallel without some resistance compensation.
I did It. Like you...someone says I'm Crazy...but I'm not...i just trust my ears!!! For voices Is AN Amazing choice...for music Just Need, sometimes, my subs.
I’ve been trying to find something explaining if I can hook up two bookshelf speakers as a center channel … I’m so nervous to make the attempt and damage my recover or the speakers … you’re a brave Man.
Don't do it. But not for the reason you are probably thinking. Sure it might cook your receiver or amp, I really don't know. Even if it doesn't, two speakers playing the same signal is going to sound terrible. One good bookshelf speaker will work perfectly fine for a center channel. Just don't lie it on its side, keep it upright as the speaker designer intended.
I guess if you spaced the two speakers out in a traditional stereo layout configuration it could work. You might get better sound from different places in your room. It's still a goofy idea.
Interesting setup, i am connecting my speaker in series and i didnt have any problems , done this for 11 years, but i read more about adding the resistors ,, Thanks for the share :)
Thank you for watching and the comment! If you do ever try the parallel with resistors setup, let me know if it sounds different than what you're currently running.
Well I’ve purchased a 4 channel input 12 channel output zone designated controller with independent volume for each speaker. Handles the ohm coupling problem and you may double not only center but all other speakers. I’m adding 4 more channels to my 7.2 system thus ending up with 11.2. Creating an affordable surround hemisphere by making it a more amercing experience. Just saying.
That sounds very cool. I've got one with a stereo input and 4 pairs of speakers. I'm planning on using it for listening comparisons. I still haven't hooked it up but you gave me inspiration. Yours is a much bigger project. Let me know the outcome I've considered that myself, it's essentially very similar in principle to the way movie theaters handle less channels but still have it sound decent with a bunch of speakers, (many movies are still 5.1 and 7.1 but theaters have a few dozen speakers).
@@wattspeakers Hi Good to share these things and hopefully are helpful with what your after. With the “sound design” that’s being used for expansive audio it seemed that an affordable way to create a audio hemisphere or audio bubble if you will was the way to go. Having 11.2 will increase that experience and eliminate audio “dead zones” or “hot imagery” gets still have object based surrounding elements. And will increase the listening experience on CDs or whatever your music source is. BTW I’m using both direct frontand dipole sides and Quadpole for the ceiling. Have the ceiling ones left to install but playing the Ultra High Definition 4K of Bladerunner 2048 was a completely immersive experience last night.
My main system comprises of 2 identical sets of coaxial monitors. The inner set is right underneath the TV (mounted on a wall) on a TV stand, facing directly forwards and tilted slightly upwards. The second set is placed on speaker stands about 3 ft from the either end of the TV and TV stand and towed slightly inwards. I also have a Yamaha 8 inch subwoofer (it is surprisingly powerful, clean, and tight sounding) placed right between the 2 coaxial speakers on top of the TV stand which raises the subwoofer about 20" off the floor. Needless to say, it sounds amazing. The stereo imaging is probably the best I have ever experienced. The hybrid tube preamp I use really brings out the HOLOGRAPHIC imaging.
Thanks for watching and the comment! That actually sounds pretty cool, no pun intended. I've been researching the hybrid tube amps and would like to try one.
I think since the speakers have bi-amp terminals, I would wire the LF in series and the HF in parallel. That I think would reduce the circuit path in the highs where I think it's more critical, and allow the amp to run higher impedance where it needs it most. Ended up adding a 2nd 7channel amp so I could have 14 channels lol. Being similar to you in that I diy speakers subs and so forth, a good amp, you just can't have enough to power projects. And I still pull my haflers out of the closet some times. Good investments with some cheap mods.
I ran 3 speaker center channel for years a Sony center and 2 Sony bookshelves,a Denon AVR powering center and center line out to Kenwood power amp to the bookshelves. Just had the gear laying around so I tried it and left it that way.
100% It will be an issue and using two center channels is typically a really dumb idea. That said, some people just don't notice such things and they'll be perfectly fine doing it. It still seems utterly pointless to me.
@mikescott5440 thanks for watching and the comment. I know some people have claimed success with more than one center channel, but personally I like one better. There's already so much going on, that adding another variable is a challenge. In my experience, a single decent center channel at ear level and the system properly calibrated sounds good enough to me. I'm pretty sure that even in huge movie theater setups they only run one center channel.
Thank you very much! It's ironic that you said it sounded "realistic", since I work on so many Realistic speakers lol. But truly I appreciate you watching the video and the compliment. I'll take it while i can get it. My home theater system has evolved over the years, and began with a Vizio 5.1 soundbar, (which didn't sound half bad and was quite nice for a smaller room). It crapped out after a couple of years and the quest for better took root. Wow... Looking back, I started with an Energy Take Classic system, then got into their "CF" or Connoisseur series, which were pretty cool, but don't even compare to the RC series. Energy Speakers are very good. Energy was a really good brand, or at least most of their products were. They had a few duds in there like any other speaker company, but the Energy RC Series is about as much bang for the buck as one can get for mid / high end Hi-Fi. The only thing they offered better was the Veritas and while I'd no doubt get me some if I could afford them, the RC or "Reference Connoisseur" series was likely their best mass market product and some actually preferred them over the Veritas because they're a little more warm sounding. The cabinets and finishes are basically flawless. The cabinets are thick, heavily braced, insulated thoroughly and sport some super fancy Kevlar Weave Woofers that have real phase plugs, (not attached to the cones). They're bass reflex and relatively compact considering how big they sound. This home theater system is composed of the Energy RC-70's, RC LCR, RC-10's and RC Micro speakers for the Atmos works out really well for TV, Movies and Music. The Energy S 12.3 is wild, but really rounds out the package. I had 3 Energy 8" subs before I scored that big 'ol 12" mega watt beast and it easily out performs all three of them combined. I thought I might not have enough bass with one subwoofer, but that's not the case at all. I really like the Sony Receivers too. They're mass market, but they are in my opinion the most consumer friendly, high quality affordable audio video receivers on the market. My NAD may sound a little sweeter, but I love how easy the Sony integrated with my Sony Bravia and Sony Blu-Ray player. So easy to use and it just works as expected. The "ES" series is a solid choice and the ZA1100ES that I chose, was because its minimalistic compared to their others. Its been referred to as the stripped down, big engine hot rod version. Not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, just what you need and then some... With plenty of clean power to back it up and personally I think it does a fantastic job with decoding multiple formats and upmixing stereo to near perfection. It's quite magical listening to music on it. I have a smaller surround sound system as well, made of guess what... Yup more Energy and Sony stuff. It's in the Master Bedroom, and it's the little Sony DH550 with a Sony Bravia and Sony Blu-ray, with Energy RC Mini Left, Center, Right and a couple of RC Micro's for the rear surrounds. Dual Energy ESW C8 Subs rounds out two in 5.2 ;-) That system sounds really good in its own right, and honestly would work fine in the majority of living rooms. I also had an Energy RVS and RVSS surround sound setup, that I gave to my in-laws. That was nice as well, (but very old school when they were first trying to make products for home theater). The RVS was a true MTM D'Appolito design and the rear surrounds were bipole, which sound pretty cool. I set that up for them with a Sony DH-790 Atmos receiver, one my 3 Energy CSW 8 subs, and a couple of little RC Micros for the upfiring speakers. Thanks again for the comment and watching... Next up: The Realistic MC-1201 final tuning, (Zobels and Bass Reflex Ports)... We'll see what happens with that (rolling eyes).... Nah, I'm thinking they'll jamb actually and looking forward to putting the Real back in Realistic.
Well, actually as long as the two speakers are identical putting them in series doesn't cause any issues. Putting in a resistor however kinda does. You're creating a voltage divider that is linear on one side (the resistor) and non linear on the other (the speaker). Your "8 ohm speaker" is more likely about 6 ~ 7 ohms in the midrange with peaks at the resonance frequencies that could be 20 ohms or more, possibly a lot more. So at some frequencies your putting half or less than half the voltage across the speaker terminals and at other frequencies your putting maybe 75 or 80% of the voltage across the speaker terminals. You are thus significantly changing the frequency response of the speakers. Putting them in series divides both the voltage and current in half so each speaker gets 1/4 power relative to what a single identical speaker would have gotten at the same volume setting. Their frequency response however will not be changed so as long as your amplifier has plenty of voltage capability to provide sufficient power into 16 ohms, the series connection is the best option. It doesn't change the behavior of the speaker whereas adding the resistor does. At some particular frequency, both speakers might be 7 ohms, at another frequency they are both 20 ohms... as long as they are identical, everything works out fine whereas the series resistor is never going to be identical to the speaker it's in series with. Maybe at one or two frequencies it will be but that's it! Does your configuration cause comb filtering? Yes, that's all true, do you notice it... well maybe but probably not nearly as much as many people think. Would it measure poorly as you move the microphone across the room? If you could time window the measurement and see only the direct sound then yeah it probably would. You would really need to take the two speakers outdoors away from all reflections to do that and then yeah you could measure the comb filtering. In your room... you probably won't see the comb filtering in the measurement because you won't be able to isolate the direct sound from the reflected. Will your configuration provide a satisfying listening experience? Yeah, it probably will so don't pay too much attention to the naysayers. Would a little bit of room treatment help? Yeah but I don't think your room is an, "echo chamber", you do have some absorptive furniture that already helps but yeah putting up a few absorber panels would probably be a good idea. You can get them with art work on them so they just look like art and not an acoustic panel. I subscribed to your channel because well... you do a lot of stuff with speakers! I've been designing/building speakers since the 1970's so it's definitely a passion of mine too. I don't do much with conventional box speakers anymore or with passive crossovers but these do have their place so there are occasions that I do. For the most part however I've done primarily active crossovers since the mid 1980's and mostly open baffle speakers since the mid 1990's. Keep up the good work, I always enjoy watching other speaker guys working on neat projects!
Thanks so much for watching and subscribing, as well as the detailed comments! Thank you for your common sense approach to the dual center channel setup. It's appreciated because while it's one thing to read, study, watch videos and so on, it's easy to get paralysis by analysis and so many audio experts implicitly do not recommend two center channel speakers. The reasons against it are likely completely true, but there's the elephant in the room which is simply that a person can hook up any amount of speakers and you'll still hear it. I mean... Consider a real movie theater with a professional sound system that costs, who only knows how much... Perhaps 100's of thousands, or possibly a few million dollars. I was in one of the emagine theaters a couple weeks ago, and there were literally about 70 speakers in there. I've watched the QSC theater tutorial videos and they pump mono, as few as two channels, 5.1, 7.1, 9.1, etc. through all those speakers, or as many channels as whatever they're showing was produced. Theater goes can still hear it and it sounds good regardless of how many channels they're playing through all those speakers. It's all distributed beautifully, but still there's multiple speakers playing in tandem. Wow, building speakers in the 70's, you've been at it a long time as well. Very cool. Much respect to that. I'm confused about the thoughts on putting resistors in series and the voltage divider constant on one side and not the other, and it causing frequency behavior issues, as well as it being better to run them in series without resistors. I'm pretty sure that what I'm demonstrating in the video is accurate but I'm curious about what you said. The way I understand it, is that a resistor in series doesn't change anything, it just creates resistance, which sucks up energy and dissipates it as heat. Non inductive audio power resistors don't alter the frequencies either as far as I know. They do cut down power to the speaker, but that's pretty much it. And honestly it didn't change the SPL of the center channel. With two in parallel the center would have gotten louder, but with the two I setup the way I did, it was a zero sum. In other words, the Calibration still held true to the left and right speakers, just as it had with the single center channel. There's a really good explanation that's much fancier than mine, at www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/the-loudspeaker-crossover On the topic of hooking up speakers in series, unless I misunderstood what you were saying, that is contrary to my understanding. When working with passive crossovers, it's not possible to send an unaltered signal from one speaker to another if they're hooked up in series because there's only one path to ground and each speaker assembly with its crossover and drivers in the path will cause an unequal signal at the negative. In other words, for the original center channel signal from the amp to get from one center channel speaker to the other, it would first pass through a number of components, inductors, capacitors, voice coils, etc. before reaching the second center channel speaker's positive terminal. There cannot be a direct short circuit at the binding posts, or else the amp would immediately go into protect mode and there would be no sound. It is possible to hook up the two center channels in parallel however. That's the only way to get equal signals to each of the two center channel speakers. That's how mine are hooked up, with the exception of the 8 ohm resistors in the path of each 8 ohm speaker. So, each center channel speaker is behaving as a 16 ohm speaker, but because I've got the two 16 ohm speakers hooked up to the receiver in parallel, it halves that, back down to 8 ohms. Essentially, what I've got is one huge 8 ohm center channel. But... I could be wrong, but like Monk says; I don't think so. Let me know what you think. You've struck my curiosity. Thanks again for watching and subscribing. I'm ready to start editing my next video, which will be the pair of Realistic MC-1201 RestoMod speakers I recently built. I changed them from sealed to ported and added Zobels. I'll do the comparison frequency tests too. I know they sound good, I think better than they did, and definitely better than the original stock speaker, but I still need to do the frequency test to see if I've changed the frequency response the way I intended to. It sounds like it, but I'll need to measure to make sure. Stay tuned for that, it'll be uploaded by next week I hope. It's takes so much longer to film and edit than it does to make speakers!
@@wattspeakers You can’t think about current as first passing through the first speaker and arriving at the next somehow modified. Current is a flow that’s the same everywhere in the circuit it passes though. Two different speakers in series would cause issues exactly as you described, but two identical speakers will not. At any given frequency the identical speakers will have the same impedance in both magnitude and phase. Because they are the same, both are getting exactly half the supplied voltage independent of frequency. Try this experiment, put two resistors in series, let’s say two 8 ohm resistors. Connect this series resistor pair to your amplifier and adjust it to, let’s say 2.83 v RMS across the resistors. Now measure the connection point between the two resistors. You will get 2.83/2 or about 1.4 v RMS. Now change to a different frequency and measure the midpoint voltage again. It’s still about 1.4v. If you have a tone generator run it up and down the dial from 20 Hz to 20 KHz and monitor the voltage. It will remain about 1.4 volts. Two resistors in series is a linear voltage divider, it divides voltage equally independent of frequency. Now, try the same experiment with an 8 ohm resistor in series with a typical 8 ohm speaker. It doesn’t matter which comes first in the circuit. Measure the voltage at the midpoint again as you move the tone generator frequency from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. You will see the midpoint voltage change with frequency. This is because at one frequency, the speaker may actually be about 8 ohms but at another frequency your speaker may be 20 ohms. Your voltage divider just became 8 ohms in series with 20 ohms so the voltage is not split equally. This is a non linear voltage divider. (It is not frequency invariant) Finally, put two identical speakers in series and repeat the experiment. At some frequency both speakers are 8 ohms and thus voltage is split equally. At some other frequency both are 20 ohms and thus voltage is still split equally. Two identical speakers in series is a linear voltage divider. Crossover design is quite complex and requires advanced mathematics to calculate. Done incorrectly resonance circuits can be created due to interactions between capacitors, resistors, and inductors in the crossover. This can cause wild fluctuations in the impedance curve of the completed speaker that can dip below 2 ohms. Blind attempts to correct this can actually make it worse, adding a resistor in series with a hot tweeter can actually bring the total impedance even farther down instead of up. This can be very confusing because common sense would dictate that adding the series resistor would bring the impedance up but it can actually do the opposite due to the creation of resonance circuits that exist totally within the crossover, independent of the speaker impedance. When I started in the 70’s we didn’t have the software we have today, so it wasn’t an easy task. Today, we have things like LspCAD to do the math for us. www.ijdata.com/ This is 800 Euro (about US$890) but there are some free crossover design packages. I have no experience with any of them so I can’t say how good they are, but I suspect they are accurate. There are also free measurement systems like REW but I also have no experience with it, I use one called ARTA. I think REW is probably a very good program but the “UMik” microphone typically used with it, not so much. I use an Earthworks M30 which is significantly superior but also significantly more expensive. The article in your link is a good article but a bit over simplified especially where they talk about adding a resistor in line with a tweeter. If you put it in the wrong place in the crossover it can create unexpected results. Directly in line with the tweeter is usually the wrong place, before the first series capacitor in the crossover is the right place. You can do Zobel networks and I use to do that when I built more passive crossovers but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the simpler the better. I would sometimes create this very complex crossover to iron out the frequency response perfectly and the speaker would sound terrible. I would then strip it down to as few components as possible and still get a decent response and it would sound great! So keep it simple is the key. These days I just go DSP active for almost everything and rarely use passive crossovers for anything. In the home theater I’m building now, the side surrounds do have passive crossovers but the L/R mains and center are all active. If you can do it, active is just an all around better way to go.
Dialogue sounds clear on my end, overall the dynamics sound good but the echo in the room is maddening. You need some room treatment starting with a rug or carpet and maybe some folded blankets over the leather seats/couch. And ending with some drapes.
Agreed the room needs some treatment. After my wife takes down the Xmas tree, I’m going to change things up in the room. The toughest part of that, is that my rear surround speakers are hard wired, so I’ll need to modify what I’ve got. We were considering moving the home theater setup to the basement and using a smaller system in the main living area. I’ve got a nice little surround setup that resides in our master bedroom, comprised of a smaller 5.2 Sony receiver, (I’ve also got a small 7.2 Sony), with Energy RC minis and a couple of 8” energy powered subs. In many respects the smaller system sounds better for average listening and watching shows and movies. That system also employs a wireless class D amp for the rears so no long runs of cable are needed. Another setup I’ve wanted to try, but not purchased yet, is the JBL 5.1 sound bar with detachable wireless rear surrounds. Thanks for watching, listening and the comment it’s very much appreciated thank you!
Absorption will act like an equalizer and take out much of the high frequencies way more so than the low ones. Diffraction will keep the same amount of energy and just put a few absorption products at the first reflection point. And one thing that I found to make a big difference in my 5.1.4 Atmos set up was to get all the floor speaker tweeters at the same level preferably ear level while seated, and have the mains same distance from the rear wall as the center or centers. Thanks for the video
I have 2 jbl es30 speakers that i was thinking of paring up to make one center speaker could one yust change the wiering and yous just one of the crossover filters?
I did this with 2X MK150s running in-series and it’s been great. Mainly to keep the center on the same bed layer as my L and R meaning I have center playback on each side of my OLED with the L and R further out. Matching speakers on the LCR and on the same plane will uplift playback incredibly on some many levels.
Thanks for watching and the comment. Running them in series isn't good, but the left and right of the screen positioning on the same plane as the left and right would work well I imagine.
Interesting experiment. I saw a comment, though, where you went back to one center. (I'm not surprised.) But hey, there's nothing wrong with trying new things. I'm curious, though: Is that receiver not 4-ohm capable?
Thanks, yup I went back to one center, with better positioning, most recently setting it on 15 degree stands so its projecting more into the volumetric center of the room. Much clearer and better panning. The towers are so good matching that it's really hard to tell when the center is functioning with multi channel or if it's just stereo. The Sony receivers are only rated to 6 ohms. That's more appropriate for 8 ohm speakers because while they're "nominal" is 8 ohms, in practice they're likely operating in the 4 to 8 ohm range with variations in playback and demand.
Hello, 2 channel on top and bottom, it will need some testing. But 2 center side by side, no... Too much comb filtering with that setup. One day i will try 2 center, bottom and top, with DSP time allignement. This way, i think there will be less comb filtering because you don't move much your head up and down on the couch than side to side. That would be cool to test
About the intelligibility issue, I find when running 90db efficient speakers with excellent dynamics that loud portions of movie soundtrack, especially what I consider "old school Hollywood loud," play waay too loud. I actually run a compressor algorithm on VLC. I use a PC for my movies so it's super easy to run a compressor on VLC. This keeps low level audio intelligible without being drowned out or rattling the walls when the soundtrack gets loud. Also keep in mind old school movie soundtracks often were mixed using either the really old Academy Curve or the House Curve. Either will benefit from from a Smile EQ. But newer soundtracks are recorded to play better on speakers with flat response curves. If you have good speakers try some EQ. If you're speakers are too dynamic for casual viewing, use a compressor.
I remember when I first got into this hobby. The first thing I did was through out the center. The sound was too tiny compared to using the L & R mains as center. sounded sooo much better. IMO The problem with the center channel is not the speaker itself like so many say, it's that it's only one. They should at least start making them with two tweeters on the ends. I remember the Yamaha rxv 592 had dual center connection. They should have kept that feature.
Thank you for watching and the comment! Coincidentally I'm planning a video project where I swap out my multi speaker A/B class and instead run it in stereo with a decent D class amp. My theory is that the issue arises due to the mixing. Stereo seems to hold the imaging better, and I am feeling that the dialogue is clearer and seems more cohesive to the TV screen. Surround sound is super cool and I do enjoy it, but I'm interested to go back to plain old stereo and uncluttering the living room.
You do *not* want multiple tweeters separated like you're saying, since the signals will interfere with each other resulting in comb filtering. You want *one* high-frequency driver in the center, and best, aligned with the woofer. Thsts why audiophile HT systems will almost always have one center speaker in a vertical configuration. Ideally, this will be centered vertically and horizontally behind an acoustically transparent screen.
good video.. but if your avr or processor, only haves 1 center channel output.. its just the same sound! you would get the same, experience if you center was just longer and bigger. its basicly just spreading the sound more... so my choice, would be getting or making a bigger center.. and buy speakers with horns, their sound stage is just more clear
Thanks for the compliment and watching the video. Regarding your suggestion: Agreed. There's a follow up video to this one, where I go back to a single center. Two running together did sound "different", but for most content not in a good way.
I don't know if you tried having an all tower speaker set up even the center channel it sounds really awesome gives it a very wide range sound. And with the tower speaker as a center it sounds very natural like it's there but it's not there it's a very unique feeling you get but very nice
Interesting how you went about setting up a second center, I have two center's also and both are identical but I use external amplification so I use a Y-splitter cable from pre-pro going to amps and then off to each speaker and it works perfectly. I watched alot of youtube videos and read alot of online forums and 99.9% of people say not to do it but in reality it works better than I expected. It may not suit everybody but if you want to try ---- go right ahead. I had excellent audio from my single center channel so why did I want to try a second center >>>> well I had an idea one day so I just had to settle my curiosity and I am glad I did. It's not a night and day difference but it does produce a bigger center image, I have the speakers below and above the TV. Comb filtering is not an issue when sitting in your chair you only notice it as you stand up as your ears pass through the level of image being produced. Was it worth trying >>> "YES".
Thank you for watching and commenting. I was reading your comment and thinking that your experience and outcome is identical to mine. The single Energy RC LCR is more than capable of being fine on its own. I had find a second one on eBay that was cosmetically in mint condition, matching the rest of my setup. The original LCR center I had / have is a little rough in the veneer and grille, but sounded fine on its own. I wanted to fill up the empty space and "try" it. I also find it to be better with two, but mainly just because it makes the center soundfield wider, which makes it pan more seamlessly, and each center's tweeter is directly on axis with my wife and I, which resulted in a cleaner dialogue for each of us. Plus, with two center channels, I can really crank it up with no weirdness, whereas when I pushed it too hard with one center channel, I could tell when it was getting sloppy. If I get around to making a dedicated home theater I'll likely run separate amps, that's the way to go.
@@wattspeakers Your system must sound really good, I hope you are happy with it. I do not have a dedicate theater room I use the lounge room. I am using 3 external amps. I have 18 bookshelf speakers and six 12" subs [12 speakers for surround and 6 speakers for LCR]. I have used a Y-splitter cable on all of the channels, so I basically have two speaker setups in my lounge room all working as one system. It all works just as it should, personally it sounds excellent. It's a really BIG sound, I love it, I don't need to turn it up loud to produce a BIG sound. By the way I live in Australia.
@@lorindamikaela Hello from America and thank you for watching as well as the comment! Wow, so you're running the equivalent of a HUGE 3.1 with an emphasis on the "1", with those 6 subwoofers! When you say 6 x 12" for the subs, is that 12 inch driver size or cabinet size? I was thinking it might be the latter, based on the 18" bookshelves you mentioned. Thank you for the compliment on my setup. I'm very grateful for everything the Lord has provided, all the blessings including the decadent ones like the home theater setup. It took a number of years to get to this point, but I continue to tweak and experiment. I've been through about 5 sets of speakers, several receivers, a few different TV's, not to mention all the cables and wiring. It's a lot. That being said, I am happy with it, but not thrilled with the dual center channel setup and will likely change that first. I've not done any measuring, but on some hard to hear shows, (like Yellowstone where several of the lead male characters grumble a lot), it's not as clear as it was with a single center channel. With other shows and movies I don't have that problem, but I think there's some truth to the comb filtering effect when running two side by side. Danny at GR Research did a video where he talks about and measured a couple identical speakers together and the higher frequencies get wonky due to cancellation. I think that's what's going on, because it seems like we need to listen to it louder than usual to hear as well. It's surprising since we sit less than 12 feet away, but I'm guessing that much of that cancellation, or perhaps unintended compression is happening right in front of the baffles when the sound waves are first emitted from the drivers. It's certainly hooked up right, and the y splitter with the resistors is doing what it's supposed to, but honestly, I'll be switching it back to a single center channel very soon. I've got a box from Amazon still parked by the front door containing a studless wall mount for the TV. I want to get the center channel on a short stand on top of the entertainment center so it's closer to the same height as the left and rights, and surround speakers which are all at ear level. Long term, I'm torn... I really think that pro styled home speakers would work immensely better for home theater. There's a few videos I did with an old pair of Realistic MC-1800 bookshelves and they incorporate a pro mid-bass driver and a horn loaded dome tweeter. They are ultra clear when it comes to vocals and dialogue. Perhaps because there's less reflections, or perhaps because that's an inherent part of the design for PA speakers. So... I'm thinking about building a DIY 5.1 setup with that philosophy. Thanks again for watching and commenting! I'm really happy you visited the channel and invite you to watch some more content. I'll do some random ones with the home theater stuff, but mainly I'm just building cool old speakers.
@@wattspeakers It has taken 5 years to put my system together. I have all my speakers custom made by a speaker company here in Australia. All my speakers have black leather on the baffle. The 12 surround bookshelf speakers use a 6.5" Satori woofer and weigh 10kg each [22-23 lbs]. The 4 front left and right bookshelf speakers are even bigger and weigh 22kg [48lbs] each again with black leather but use a 7.5 Satori driver. The six subs have black leather and they use a 12" driver. Each center channel speaker weighs 25kg [55lbs] they are 38" wide 17" deep so they are very big. Each center speaker uses dual 7.5" Satori woofers and dual 5.5" mids to match the front main speakers. All the speakers use the Satori woofer which are fantastic. It has taken a long time to save money and put this alot together but it has been worth it. I'm the same as you the Lord has blessed me and I am very grateful to own what I have. You can see my speakers on the company website. The company owner liked them so much he put a photo of my front main speakers on his website. The link >>> adelaidespeakers.com/monitors.html Go down the page on the left hand side under the photo it has written >>> "Blackwood with leather baffle (custom 600mm high). Price is for the base model, of course custom made always demand a premium price. I wanted to put together a system to last me until Jesus returns which is not too far away I think.
Thanks for watching and the question! Yes these are two 8 ohm center channel speakers that are connected in parallel to one center channel output on my receiver, with a splitter y cable I made. The splitter cable has an 8 ohm resistor in front of each of the speakers, effectively creating one huge 8 ohm center channel.
@wattspeakers I want to connect 2 center channel like you for better image but I know I can't connect directly 2 speakers to one output. This can burn the speaker or receiver who knows.
@@yournightmare9999 not if you do it right which is the whole point of the video? why don't you just watch the video like the rest of us and not ask stupid questions. someone had to say it.
@@yournightmare9999 maybe you could try putting 2 identical center speakers in serries or do what this guy did in this video. me personally i would prefer to just get a bigger center speaker and add more power if i had an issue with my center speaker which i don't, as its loud and clear. i think i would rather mess around with dialogue lift than have 2 center speakers. but it's interesting and i have thought about what it would be like many times before but i don't think i would actually do it. i think i would actually rather a complete change of speaker if the speaker set, I was using didn't make and sell a larger matching center speaker to upgrade to.
@@wattspeakers8ohms when connected in parallel will go down to 4 ohms, placing 8ohms resistor infront of the speaker will bring it again to 8ohms even the connection is in parallel.? Im confused, i have Onkyo tx nr5100 which is capable of handling 4 to 16 ohms each channel , i am using Bose acoustimas 6 II with this receiver, im not happy with the center speaker and wanting to add one more separate center, how do i do this? Please help me,,,,a subscriber from philippines.
If you like it do it everybody’s saying shit about it. It’s not the same equipment not the same house set up or anything probably not the same air pressure different elevations so you have two Center channels if you want. What’s up? I have three tower speakers for left right and my Center. And it’s phenomenal.
I'll bet the three tower setup is very nice. Theoretically if I turned the center vertically it "could" make a difference, but this particular center channel actually measures almost identically regardless of position and axis.
Love the handle! Thanks for watching and the question! Truth be told, I have an extra amp or three that I could have used to go from the center channel pre out jack, but didn't want to hassle with turning on a separate amp... Lazy I know. I love eARC and just using one remote, so the thought of worrying about the amp auto on, or pressing the on button didn't thrill me. Just thinking about it, I can hear my wife: "something is wrong with the stereo"... But seriously, yours is a great idea and that would have been a more audiophile approach to it.
I have jbl stage A190 set up and have 1 center speaker vertical on the wall next to the tv, i want to get another jbl center speaker for the other side but only have enough ports on my avr reciever for 1, can i use surround L/R for these or use 1 center speaker port and 1 surround, would that work
Thank you for watching and commenting. That is a fantastic question and may deserve a video in the future! Personally I am back to running one center channel speaker instead of two center channels... HOWEVER, if I were to take another crack at two center channels, I would use a separate amp for the center channel. It requires that you find an amplifier that has auto on/off, ( for example I've got Audio Source AMP100 that turns on when it senses an input signal, then goes into standby if there's no signal). Or, you can turn on the amp separately, or have a trigger setup, (I've not experimented with them myself, but they seem straight forward. Back to the hookup, your original question: The AVR will need "pre-outs" (common on mid to high end AVR's). The center channel speaker binding posts are not used, instead of connecting the center speaker(s) to the receiver for power and signal, the center channel speaker(s) are connected to the external amp. The amp is interconnected with the AVR's center channel pre-out, (a single RCA jack), to the external amplifier's pre-in jacks, (two RCA jacks left and right, via an RCA Y Adapter or "splitter" consisting of a cord with one RCA male and two RCA males on the opposite end). Depending on the amplifier, you could hookup 1 to 4 additional center speak speakers... Considering it has a mono/bridged setting for one speaker, and A/B stereo channels. Once the external amp is setup and center speaker(s) connected, set the amplifier volume (I usually start at the 12 o'clock position). Then run your normal auto calibration routine via the AVR. And there you go! Easy.
Thanks for watching and the comment! Ironically I was thinking the same exact thing! A black vinyl decal carefully applied might work too. Now if only I could camouflage the Rock Band Drum set.
Thanks for watching and commenting! Excellent observation. I really didn't want to say whether it was better or not. Truth be told, it sounded "different", and in certain respects fuller, unfortunately after watching many movies and shows, I ultimately felt that it degraded the intelligibility. I went back to a single center channel and raised it up another foot which cleaned it up some also. I really believe that center channel issues might be caused mostly by poor mixing, especially the stuff that gets compressed for streaming. Poorly designed center channels or improper speaker positioning just exacerbates the problem.
if the receiver have an amp out for the center, just add a power amp. class d can take 4 ohms all day. even 2 ohms for some models. and the center have clean power that can go loud, which is great as it is the most important speaker. if the receiver have assignable channels and the setup supports it, one can probably also go that route
Thank you for watching and the suggestions! Unfortunately the Sony receiver's assignable channels are limited. They've got 2 outputs that can be utilized for Bi-Amp front left right, or surround rear left right, (for 7.1), or 2 height channels, (Atmos), or Zone B (for stereo in a separate room). My original intent was to try and use a separate amp with the center pre-out as you mentioned, but it's an extra piece of equipment that is more complex to setup, turn on and off, cost more, etc. The beauty of the setup is my wife and grandkids can use it without any hassle or things not working as expected. Everything syncs and is controlled by the TV remote only, which is super handy. Just turn on the TV and the rest of it just comes to life and works. It should have enough power to drive the two centers, as it's ratings suggest anyway. I'm guessing it should be in the area of 50-70 Watts on the center channel at 8 ohms. The splitter I made was less than $15, and so far, so good. Honestly it seems like it's working better than I expected. We've watched several shows and a couple of movies. It was a definite improvement over just the one center channel. I know it's technically not recommended to run two centers, and I've got no way to measure polar patterns, but it's certainly clear and plenty loud. It seems to pan left and right much more seamlessly now. I think I got lucky... Maybe the combo of the type of center channel speakers, or the fact that we're sitting smack dab on axis with them, but they sound cool together. I've wandered into the kitchen and elsewhere and haven't noticed any weird behavior being off axis. One day I'd like to build a home theater in the basement, and trim down the equipment in the living room, but that's a long way off. Thanks again for watching!
@@wattspeakers glad it worked out for you. if it sounds better ..it is better:) gaining vocal clarity and enough power without sounding stressed is certainly more important then some potential theoretic drawback
I think you had originally planned to put one 8 ohm 100 watt resistor in series with each 8 ohm speaker resulting in 2 separate 16 ohm loads that would then be joined in parallel to end up with a resulting 8 ohm load. BUT… The way you soldered the resistors, you created a 4 ohm 200 watt resistor and put that in series with the 4 ohm speaker load (two 8 ohm speakers in parallel) The end result is the same, but you could have just used one resistor instead.
@@MikeSowsunThank you for taking your time to watch my video and the insightful question which I'm glad you asked. So, yes the reason for the parallel connection is if two loudspeaker assemblies including the internal crossovers, are hooked in series, it affects the second speaker in that daisy chain. For example: if doing it the way you mentioned, what happens is the first speaker plays kind of normal, the second speaker's character would be altered by the crossover and drivers ahead of it. The second speaker would essentially have been crossed over twice, in addition to any fluctuations from the coils in the drivers from the first speaker. Let's say for simplicity I attempt to illustrate this with words: The first 3 way loudspeaker with the positive cable from the amp connected to the positive terminal... This speaker will play almost as intended, although since the negative terminal is hooked up from that speaker to the second speaker's positive terminal, (in series), the second speaker is fed what's left over after all that filtering and the added inductance from the voice coils in the first speaker cabinet. The second speaker in the daisy chain is already at a disadvantage because it's not being fed a full frequency signal potential. It's instead forced to operate on the negative return which has the full signal that's been divided low pass/mid and high pass. In other words, that signal has already passed through not only the crossover from the first speaker cabinet, but also the 5 separate coils driver coils with this particular LCR. Like any inductor ahead of a driver, this creates predominantly a low pass feed to the second speaker. In addition and complicating that issue even more, is the first speaker's inductance out has yet more filtering to go through and 5 more driver's coils creating additional deviation. The first speaker may sound half way decent, but the second speaker in the series setup will suffer. In essence, the way I connected it should result in two speakers playing identically as designed. This does increase comb filtering however since both speakers are reproducing the exact same frequencies simultaneously. The way you mentioned doing it, may actually have less comb filtering because it's like having two completely different sounding speakers attempting to reproduce the source signal. Your method may work better to mitigate comb filtering, at the expense of the speaker's tonal quality being... Let's say "different". Daisy chaining speaker cabinets in series is actually more suited to PA speakers which aren't going to cause a noticeable difference at a festival for example, where efficiency and coverage are paramount vs home theater, where accuracy and off axis wide dispersion drivers are utilized. Even at theaters equipped with a myriad of identical speakers (I counted forty full range speakers at my local theater not including subs), those have hardware and software to distribute the various source material over all those speakers... regardless if the commercials are in stereo and the movie is in 5.1, or 7.4.2 they aren't in series they're wired in parallel and the signal is distributed amongst the 40+ speakers. Of course in a theater with horns determining the coverage area of higher frequencies, the chance of comb filtering to be noticeably audible is diminished. That's all my opinion and pseudo science that I've come up with over the years, and I could be wrong, but that's why the channel is called the world according to Todd lol.
Hi Chris thanks for watching and the comment. I have tried plugging the ports, but it doesn't sound too good. Energy made dedicated aperiodic speakers, like the 3.1e and 4.1e, but the RC speakers were all purpose built bass reflex designs with the exception of the "micro" which are sealed.
I just had an idea 💡 what if you took two center speakers and placed one chest level and another on top above the ear lever same distance as the bottom one. Would that work 😂 I promise you I’m not high just a thought. It would make a phantom center with out that harsh noise directly hitting your ears .
I've heard people say that it works, but honestly after trying two center channels, I don't think there's a good way to address the destructive interference of two identical sound sources. Maybe it would work better if two entirely different speakers with characteristics were so different it was not difficult to tell there's interference, but it might sound worse too. Not sure there's an easy answer to the perfect center channel and so much of it depends on the mixing, that even when it's thought to be perfect, something will sound awful, (usually the super cool movie you have company over to watch). Yes it's a tough one to get right. I would say more focus on room treatment and a really nice center channel with ear level positioning is about the most one could ask for. I run a smaller HT in our master bedroom, compromised of Energy RC Minis all at ear level and it sounds very good. Not as big and bold as my home theater in the living room, but in many ways it sounds clearer.
good one. i have been considering multiple centre channels as well. WOuldnt it be fine if we connect 2 8 ohm speaker in series and connect to an amp (if it supports 4ohm load)?
Thanks for watching and the great question! If your receiver / amp is rated to 4 ohms, you "should" be able to hook up the two 8 ohm speakers in parallel, (you could use a simple biwire speaker splitter cable). Some older amps and receivers have a switch to go from 8 ohm to 4 ohms so I'm not sure if one of those would work or not. The receiver and amps that go down to 4 ohms without a physical or software switch would be perfect. The only thing to keep in mind is some speakers while rated as 8 ohms, might go way lower in certain frequency ranges. Your amp would let you know there's a problem by going into protect mode if that's the case. You don't want to hook them up in series, (with the positive hooked up on one speaker, and the negative on the other with a jumper in-between). I'll give you a spoiler alert to a video I'm editing currently and will publish soon... I went back to a single center channel and raised it up so it's better positioned. Two Center channels side by side like I had definitely looked cool but after a couple weeks and enough various shows and movies we watched, just didn't sound quite right. One over and the other under TV, or on the left or right of the TV may not behave that way or might not be as obvious, but two together does impact the sound quality. Watch for that video, it'll be out soon.
What is the center channels frequency response at various angles even slightly off axis? In other words, what are your horizontal and vertical dispersion measurements like? Center speakers are extremely difficult for engineers to get right.
Thanks for watching and your question! Honestly, I've not checked in the room response, but I've got the Dayton Omnimic and DVD that handles all the channels, so that's something I want to do. As far as less amateur response and review, there's a bunch of stuff to read on the RC series, (most of it good), but Sound & Vision has good breakdowns of the ones I've got. www.soundandvision.com/content/energy-reference-connoisseur-rc-70-surround-speaker-system-measurements For the RC LCR, I'd copy and paste what they said but it's a lot, with a bunch of graphs. If I understood the assessment correctly, it measured pretty good. Horizontal position: The responses at 15-degrees and 30-degrees off-axis, show curves that are relatively close to the averaged on-axis response. The vertical off-axis response of the RC-LCR follows the on-axis average almost perfectly, making the vertical seating height relatively non-critical. Vertical orientation: off-axis response proved to be relatively free of serious dips and peaks even at the maximum measured off-axis angle of 60-degrees. Thanks again for watching!
I’ve been blessed with a woman who loves sound as much as I do, but understands what it takes to get that sound! I feel a little pride in that. I’d guess there’s plenty of guys who would love a system like I’ve got in the living room, but it takes up some real estate for sure, something not all wives are down with. No matter how much marketing hype there is for any particular small compact systems like sound bars, there’s simply no way to achieve the same effect from those. Will they sound nice and suffice? Sure. I didn’t even start building out my surround system until my $150 Vizio 5.1 went on the fritz, but it was fine for the living room. What I’ve got now in there, is just stupid big for the room. Sony ZA1100ES, with a full array of high end Energy speakers is ludicrous in that room by any standard.
Hi Brett, thanks for watching and commenting! I've tried it that way in the past with a different setup I had, and it sounded good, immersive as you said. I was going to try that again, except several months back I fixed all the holes I made in the wall from experimenting with various brackets, mounts, and so on. One day perhaps I'll get around to building a proper home theater in the basement.
front high speakers with dialogue lift would do the trick Aswell, sounds cool. I tried it the other day with my set up and it puts some of the center channel info into the front height channels and sounds kind of cool. i prefer front heights and Yamaha sound modes over atoms with front up firing. something for anyone with up firing atoms speakers to look into is whether or not they can set up front height for Atmos instead of front up firing because front height sounds way way better. i had a newer atoms receiver and a pair of new up firing Atmos speakers sitting on top of my front towers and i didn't really like it much, but now i have a older 2014 model Yamaha receiver with front height speakers and it sounds excellent. I'm not sure why Atmos even come up with the idea of up firing speakers when we have had front height speakers long before Atmos and they sound way better than up firing speakers. so the way i look at it is that up firing speakers are a scam because all you have to do it sit something tall on top of your tower speakers and then sit a couple of normal back speakers on top of that and you have front height speakers that sound a million times better than up firing atmos. to be honest a 5.1 receiver with atoms and virtual speakers sounds similar to having up firing speakers so you don't even need up firing speakers really. for me its front height speakers all the way otherwise put them in the ceiling i guess if you want proper Atmos but I'm happy with front height with old school Yamaha sound modes it's much more immersive than actual Atmos with up firing speakers.
Seems you like you have an underperforming center channel, to go along with your echo chamber of a room. Your room acoustics are probably not conducive to clear dialogue; another center isn't the answer but to each their own. I guess.
Thank you for watching and the comments! I am more inclined to think the room and lack of treatment is more of a problem than the speakers. Here's some info on the speakers www.soundandvision.com/content/energy-reference-connoisseur-rc-70-surround-speaker-system-measurements At one point I had it set up better, using the big area in it's rectangle fashion so the left side wasn't wide open like it is now, and it sounded better that way, and I might do that again, but it's a ton of work moving that setup around, moving the furniture, etc. In person it sounds dang good in spite of the echo chamber, (reflections are inherent with any home setup). My wife and I need to get some curtains, stuff on the walls, area rug, etc. Some sound treatment would be cool too. It may be a project I tackle in the future, but honestly we'd rather get all that out of the living room, just use a 5.1 sound bar again, (I've had my eyes on the JBL with the detachable surround speakers), and I eventually want to build a home theater in the basement and set it up more appropriately. For now, the second center channel seems to have met my desire for producing a fuller center soundstage and better panning from left to right. Haven't really had much issue with dialogue, even with just the one center channel, but now with two it's even clearer.
I didn't like how you ended the video. You were supposed to test it with your wife to see if it sounded better but all you showed was sound demos of music in atmos that got compressed by RUclips and played on my stereo office media speakers. Not very informative. I read in another comment it was less clear and you went back to one center speaker. I was going to suggest getting a larger center speaker and put it a level higher under the TV. You would only need to raise the TV less than a foot, so it would still be at a good level. I got an SVS Prime Center speaker and I also boost the center channel on my AV receiver 6db to hear audio speech more clearly. It's only medium priced at around $400. I also don't think you needed the crossover on the bouncy Atmos speakers so high. I would adjust it 120, instead of 180Hz. I have my large front speaker at 60Hz I think and the center and 2 surrounds at 80Hz.
Thank you for watching and commenting! So... I think this latest video will clear it up. Apple TV 4K Gen 3 Sound Quality Review Dolby Atmos LPCM - WATT Podcast #2 April 14, 2024 ruclips.net/video/yj0GMEBidO0/видео.html That is the follow-up to the one with my wife, and actually has the single center channel closer to ear height, which made an audible improvement in the center channel playback. With regards to the ratio of sound playback and informative information is very dependent on the project I'm doing, but the rhythm is a work in progress, so I appreciate that constructive criticism, thank you that helps me a great deal and think I've got a solution to it. I am glad that you mentioned that you listened over office speakers. I knew that decent sound was an issue because thus far I have only recorded on my cell phone that I'm filming with. From this point forward any sound demonstration will still be live with me as I experience it, but the sound from the speakers will be recorded with a nice stereo mic good up to 120 db. That way, it will enhance the listening experience overall for viewers listening over nice headphones, or like you over office speakers or folks with their handheld devices. That being said, as a newbie RUclipsr I'm impressed at how well just a regular cell phone does for recording and videoing, AND even edited and published over it. Additionally from this point forward I will be using better hardware and software. Instead of doing it all over the phone, I’ll be doing the editing with legit stuff. I recently switched from android, so this is my first experience with Apple products. I have gone several years without any serious computing power so I equipped myself with pretty much everything Apple offers that I could afford and get the job done. Great question about the clarity of one center channel Vs two center channel Speakers. My thoughts on it, are that one works better than two. Lots of reasons why, all of which have to do with technical advancements in speaker design. A larger center channel is an interesting proposition. My center channel in this living room setup is pretty phenomenal. Not the best at this point, but like most Energy products the RC-LCR was ahead of it's time a couple decades ago, so while their gear is older it can still contend with best in class today, especially at a similar price point considering inflation today. In the used market $300 in Energy's will deliver sound that is quite good. I was really surprised at how good they actually are, which I found out after hooking up the Apple TV, which feeds a capable AVR a clear advantage with uncompressed sound... I mean wow. HUGE difference especially in the center channel where it's most critical. Thinking about it further, there are so many good brands of speakers that have come to market over the past 50 years. It's quite interesting to listen to old speakers on new equipment with modern source material like high res, etc. For example the living room surround sound system in this video, features my Energy RC Series. Those were considered mid high end back in the day, but believe it or not, they just come alive with the modern audio gear, like the Sony ZA1100ES Vs the NAD T757-V2 I've got that is also twenty years old. In other words, speakers have not changed a great deal in the past 20 years, certainly not at the rate of solid state electronics. Back in the day, when speakers sounded good... Well they only sound better hooked up to modern receiver or amplifier, playing uncompressed digital source material. Huge difference. If only all the folks from back then, who may not still be with us today, could hear their old speakers with modern gear! Stay tuned for more. Upcoming videos will be better and I've got dozens of topics and projects to delve into.
You know what's better than one center channel speaker or two center channel speakers? No center channel speakers. If you're okay with a small sweet spot and have decent fronts a phantom center channel will absolutely destroy even the best centers money can buy.
Thank you for watching and the comment! I've run stereo for my home theater and I've seen other comments elsewhere about eliminating the center channel. There have been times that a show or music is coming across in stereo, yet its phantom is so effective that the only way to know the center isn't on is by going right up to the center channel to determine if it's on or not. The downside to it, is that the effect seems to be more related to the source material than the speaker arrangement. I'm blessed to have matching speakers, quality audio gear, and decent rooms, so my opinion to date, is that it's better with the center channel overall. There are TV and Movie mixes which are done poorly which I think gives surround sound a stigma, but when done nicely it works out well. That being said, I would prefer a stereo mix over a surround mix on many movies and shows. If there were a better standard for recording it would be different, but here's what I've found: Older movies in stereo sound better with up-mix. Older movies in surround are hit or miss and some sound better down mixed, whereas others do okay in native surround. More modern shows and movies mixed in surround seem to be the most challenging, (those from roughly 2010 forward). They are hit or miss and some are just frustrating, while others sound sublime. My opinion is that it's usually not the surround sound and center channel speakers fault, but rather poor mixes, in which case I'd rather just hear it in stereo up mix vs a crummy 5.1 or 5.1.2 surround mix.
Thank u for watching and commenting. Yes for sure one good center channel, well placed, sounds better than two together, or multiple different front speakers playing the same channel.
Hi Pete and thanks for watching! The center channel speaker itself isn't to blame, because it's about as good as a mass market center channel gets, but the room layout, lack of sound treatment and low speaker position aren't optimal.
There are a few old receivers that have two outputs for it, that goes above the screen and one below. Can’t remember the make, but should be on Google.
@richardk8764 I wish they still did that. Older receivers also had center wide which was cool. A little spoiler alert, my next video I'm editing and will upload soon, is going back to a single center channel. Thanks for watching, commenting and look out for that next video to see how that project goes
You committed audio heresy!
They're waiting outside your house to take you to trial😂😂
I came back to your comment I like it so much. I’m glad you picked up on that little segment with the audiophile police. I knew it was a bit snarky, out of character for me, but I got a chuckle out of it. I’ve never personally had any issues with audiophiles, they’re into it at a whole different level respectfully so. But the stereotype (pun intended) is funny.
I have two Polk Audio S30 center channel. Sounds great. They are hooked to a two channel amp. I split the one output. From the receiver. 150 watts each.
Thanks for watching and the comment! I have a two channel amp, but it's tied up powering a DVC passive sub. know my Sony is rated to 6 ohms, but my center channel although nominal 8 ohms, will go down to 4 ohms at points, so I didn't want to smoke my center amp output by hooking them up in parallel without some resistance compensation.
I did It. Like you...someone says I'm Crazy...but I'm not...i just trust my ears!!! For voices Is AN Amazing choice...for music Just Need, sometimes, my subs.
I’ve been trying to find something explaining if I can hook up two bookshelf speakers as a center channel … I’m so nervous to make the attempt and damage my recover or the speakers … you’re a brave
Man.
Don't do it. But not for the reason you are probably thinking. Sure it might cook your receiver or amp, I really don't know. Even if it doesn't, two speakers playing the same signal is going to sound terrible. One good bookshelf speaker will work perfectly fine for a center channel. Just don't lie it on its side, keep it upright as the speaker designer intended.
I guess if you spaced the two speakers out in a traditional stereo layout configuration it could work. You might get better sound from different places in your room. It's still a goofy idea.
Interesting setup, i am connecting my speaker in series and i didnt have any problems , done this for 11 years, but i read more about adding the resistors ,, Thanks for the share :)
Thank you for watching and the comment! If you do ever try the parallel with resistors setup, let me know if it sounds different than what you're currently running.
Well I’ve purchased a 4 channel input 12 channel output zone designated controller with independent volume for each speaker. Handles the ohm coupling problem and you may double not only center but all other speakers. I’m adding 4 more channels to my 7.2 system thus ending up with 11.2. Creating an affordable surround hemisphere by making it a more amercing experience. Just saying.
That sounds very cool. I've got one with a stereo input and 4 pairs of speakers. I'm planning on using it for listening comparisons. I still haven't hooked it up but you gave me inspiration. Yours is a much bigger project. Let me know the outcome I've considered that myself, it's essentially very similar in principle to the way movie theaters handle less channels but still have it sound decent with a bunch of speakers, (many movies are still 5.1 and 7.1 but theaters have a few dozen speakers).
@@wattspeakers
Hi
Good to share these things and hopefully are helpful with what your after. With the “sound design” that’s being used for expansive audio it seemed that an affordable way to create a audio hemisphere or audio bubble if you will was the way to go. Having 11.2 will increase that experience and eliminate audio “dead zones” or “hot imagery” gets still have object based surrounding elements. And will increase the listening experience on CDs or whatever your music source is. BTW I’m using both direct frontand dipole sides and Quadpole for the ceiling. Have the ceiling ones left to install but playing the Ultra High Definition 4K of Bladerunner 2048 was a completely immersive experience last night.
Nice. But why not 2 bookshelf speackers ?
And maybe one above the TV and the other underneath...
My main system comprises of 2 identical sets of coaxial monitors. The inner set is right underneath the TV (mounted on a wall) on a TV stand, facing directly forwards and tilted slightly upwards. The second set is placed on speaker stands about 3 ft from the either end of the TV and TV stand and towed slightly inwards. I also have a Yamaha 8 inch subwoofer (it is surprisingly powerful, clean, and tight sounding) placed right between the 2 coaxial speakers on top of the TV stand which raises the subwoofer about 20" off the floor.
Needless to say, it sounds amazing. The stereo imaging is probably the best I have ever experienced. The hybrid tube preamp I use really brings out the HOLOGRAPHIC imaging.
Thanks for watching and the comment! That actually sounds pretty cool, no pun intended. I've been researching the hybrid tube amps and would like to try one.
I think since the speakers have bi-amp terminals, I would wire the LF in series and the HF in parallel. That I think would reduce the circuit path in the highs where I think it's more critical, and allow the amp to run higher impedance where it needs it most. Ended up adding a 2nd 7channel amp so I could have 14 channels lol. Being similar to you in that I diy speakers subs and so forth, a good amp, you just can't have enough to power projects. And I still pull my haflers out of the closet some times. Good investments with some cheap mods.
I ran 3 speaker center channel for years a Sony center and 2 Sony bookshelves,a Denon AVR powering center and center line out to Kenwood power amp to the bookshelves. Just had the gear laying around so I tried it and left it that way.
There is no carn of worms, its simple...comb filtering is going to be a terrible issue there and this cannot be argued
Carn of worms “ learn how to spell or make some sense. Comb filtering can always be dealt with
100% It will be an issue and using two center channels is typically a really dumb idea. That said, some people just don't notice such things and they'll be perfectly fine doing it. It still seems utterly pointless to me.
@mikescott5440 thanks for watching and the comment. I know some people have claimed success with more than one center channel, but personally I like one better. There's already so much going on, that adding another variable is a challenge. In my experience, a single decent center channel at ear level and the system properly calibrated sounds good enough to me. I'm pretty sure that even in huge movie theater setups they only run one center channel.
The system sounds very realistic. I've always read good about Energy speakers, and Sony is very musical in its' reproduction.
Thank you very much! It's ironic that you said it sounded "realistic", since I work on so many Realistic speakers lol. But truly I appreciate you watching the video and the compliment. I'll take it while i can get it.
My home theater system has evolved over the years, and began with a Vizio 5.1 soundbar, (which didn't sound half bad and was quite nice for a smaller room). It crapped out after a couple of years and the quest for better took root. Wow... Looking back, I started with an Energy Take Classic system, then got into their "CF" or Connoisseur series, which were pretty cool, but don't even compare to the RC series.
Energy Speakers are very good. Energy was a really good brand, or at least most of their products were. They had a few duds in there like any other speaker company, but the Energy RC Series is about as much bang for the buck as one can get for mid / high end Hi-Fi. The only thing they offered better was the Veritas and while I'd no doubt get me some if I could afford them, the RC or "Reference Connoisseur" series was likely their best mass market product and some actually preferred them over the Veritas because they're a little more warm sounding. The cabinets and finishes are basically flawless. The cabinets are thick, heavily braced, insulated thoroughly and sport some super fancy Kevlar Weave Woofers that have real phase plugs, (not attached to the cones). They're bass reflex and relatively compact considering how big they sound.
This home theater system is composed of the Energy RC-70's, RC LCR, RC-10's and RC Micro speakers for the Atmos works out really well for TV, Movies and Music. The Energy S 12.3 is wild, but really rounds out the package. I had 3 Energy 8" subs before I scored that big 'ol 12" mega watt beast and it easily out performs all three of them combined. I thought I might not have enough bass with one subwoofer, but that's not the case at all.
I really like the Sony Receivers too. They're mass market, but they are in my opinion the most consumer friendly, high quality affordable audio video receivers on the market. My NAD may sound a little sweeter, but I love how easy the Sony integrated with my Sony Bravia and Sony Blu-Ray player. So easy to use and it just works as expected. The "ES" series is a solid choice and the ZA1100ES that I chose, was because its minimalistic compared to their others. Its been referred to as the stripped down, big engine hot rod version. Not a lot of fancy bells and whistles, just what you need and then some... With plenty of clean power to back it up and personally I think it does a fantastic job with decoding multiple formats and upmixing stereo to near perfection. It's quite magical listening to music on it.
I have a smaller surround sound system as well, made of guess what... Yup more Energy and Sony stuff. It's in the Master Bedroom, and it's the little Sony DH550 with a Sony Bravia and Sony Blu-ray, with Energy RC Mini Left, Center, Right and a couple of RC Micro's for the rear surrounds. Dual Energy ESW C8 Subs rounds out two in 5.2 ;-) That system sounds really good in its own right, and honestly would work fine in the majority of living rooms.
I also had an Energy RVS and RVSS surround sound setup, that I gave to my in-laws. That was nice as well, (but very old school when they were first trying to make products for home theater). The RVS was a true MTM D'Appolito design and the rear surrounds were bipole, which sound pretty cool. I set that up for them with a Sony DH-790 Atmos receiver, one my 3 Energy CSW 8 subs, and a couple of little RC Micros for the upfiring speakers.
Thanks again for the comment and watching... Next up: The Realistic MC-1201 final tuning, (Zobels and Bass Reflex Ports)... We'll see what happens with that (rolling eyes).... Nah, I'm thinking they'll jamb actually and looking forward to putting the Real back in Realistic.
Well, actually as long as the two speakers are identical putting them in series doesn't cause any issues. Putting in a resistor however kinda does. You're creating a voltage divider that is linear on one side (the resistor) and non linear on the other (the speaker). Your "8 ohm speaker" is more likely about 6 ~ 7 ohms in the midrange with peaks at the resonance frequencies that could be 20 ohms or more, possibly a lot more. So at some frequencies your putting half or less than half the voltage across the speaker terminals and at other frequencies your putting maybe 75 or 80% of the voltage across the speaker terminals. You are thus significantly changing the frequency response of the speakers.
Putting them in series divides both the voltage and current in half so each speaker gets 1/4 power relative to what a single identical speaker would have gotten at the same volume setting. Their frequency response however will not be changed so as long as your amplifier has plenty of voltage capability to provide sufficient power into 16 ohms, the series connection is the best option. It doesn't change the behavior of the speaker whereas adding the resistor does. At some particular frequency, both speakers might be 7 ohms, at another frequency they are both 20 ohms... as long as they are identical, everything works out fine whereas the series resistor is never going to be identical to the speaker it's in series with. Maybe at one or two frequencies it will be but that's it!
Does your configuration cause comb filtering? Yes, that's all true, do you notice it... well maybe but probably not nearly as much as many people think. Would it measure poorly as you move the microphone across the room? If you could time window the measurement and see only the direct sound then yeah it probably would. You would really need to take the two speakers outdoors away from all reflections to do that and then yeah you could measure the comb filtering. In your room... you probably won't see the comb filtering in the measurement because you won't be able to isolate the direct sound from the reflected. Will your configuration provide a satisfying listening experience? Yeah, it probably will so don't pay too much attention to the naysayers.
Would a little bit of room treatment help? Yeah but I don't think your room is an, "echo chamber", you do have some absorptive furniture that already helps but yeah putting up a few absorber panels would probably be a good idea. You can get them with art work on them so they just look like art and not an acoustic panel.
I subscribed to your channel because well... you do a lot of stuff with speakers! I've been designing/building speakers since the 1970's so it's definitely a passion of mine too. I don't do much with conventional box speakers anymore or with passive crossovers but these do have their place so there are occasions that I do. For the most part however I've done primarily active crossovers since the mid 1980's and mostly open baffle speakers since the mid 1990's.
Keep up the good work, I always enjoy watching other speaker guys working on neat projects!
Thanks so much for watching and subscribing, as well as the detailed comments!
Thank you for your common sense approach to the dual center channel setup. It's appreciated because while it's one thing to read, study, watch videos and so on, it's easy to get paralysis by analysis and so many audio experts implicitly do not recommend two center channel speakers. The reasons against it are likely completely true, but there's the elephant in the room which is simply that a person can hook up any amount of speakers and you'll still hear it. I mean... Consider a real movie theater with a professional sound system that costs, who only knows how much... Perhaps 100's of thousands, or possibly a few million dollars. I was in one of the emagine theaters a couple weeks ago, and there were literally about 70 speakers in there. I've watched the QSC theater tutorial videos and they pump mono, as few as two channels, 5.1, 7.1, 9.1, etc. through all those speakers, or as many channels as whatever they're showing was produced. Theater goes can still hear it and it sounds good regardless of how many channels they're playing through all those speakers. It's all distributed beautifully, but still there's multiple speakers playing in tandem.
Wow, building speakers in the 70's, you've been at it a long time as well. Very cool. Much respect to that.
I'm confused about the thoughts on putting resistors in series and the voltage divider constant on one side and not the other, and it causing frequency behavior issues, as well as it being better to run them in series without resistors. I'm pretty sure that what I'm demonstrating in the video is accurate but I'm curious about what you said.
The way I understand it, is that a resistor in series doesn't change anything, it just creates resistance, which sucks up energy and dissipates it as heat. Non inductive audio power resistors don't alter the frequencies either as far as I know. They do cut down power to the speaker, but that's pretty much it. And honestly it didn't change the SPL of the center channel. With two in parallel the center would have gotten louder, but with the two I setup the way I did, it was a zero sum. In other words, the Calibration still held true to the left and right speakers, just as it had with the single center channel.
There's a really good explanation that's much fancier than mine, at www.audioholics.com/loudspeaker-design/the-loudspeaker-crossover
On the topic of hooking up speakers in series, unless I misunderstood what you were saying, that is contrary to my understanding. When working with passive crossovers, it's not possible to send an unaltered signal from one speaker to another if they're hooked up in series because there's only one path to ground and each speaker assembly with its crossover and drivers in the path will cause an unequal signal at the negative. In other words, for the original center channel signal from the amp to get from one center channel speaker to the other, it would first pass through a number of components, inductors, capacitors, voice coils, etc. before reaching the second center channel speaker's positive terminal. There cannot be a direct short circuit at the binding posts, or else the amp would immediately go into protect mode and there would be no sound. It is possible to hook up the two center channels in parallel however. That's the only way to get equal signals to each of the two center channel speakers. That's how mine are hooked up, with the exception of the 8 ohm resistors in the path of each 8 ohm speaker. So, each center channel speaker is behaving as a 16 ohm speaker, but because I've got the two 16 ohm speakers hooked up to the receiver in parallel, it halves that, back down to 8 ohms. Essentially, what I've got is one huge 8 ohm center channel. But... I could be wrong, but like Monk says; I don't think so.
Let me know what you think. You've struck my curiosity.
Thanks again for watching and subscribing. I'm ready to start editing my next video, which will be the pair of Realistic MC-1201 RestoMod speakers I recently built. I changed them from sealed to ported and added Zobels. I'll do the comparison frequency tests too. I know they sound good, I think better than they did, and definitely better than the original stock speaker, but I still need to do the frequency test to see if I've changed the frequency response the way I intended to. It sounds like it, but I'll need to measure to make sure.
Stay tuned for that, it'll be uploaded by next week I hope. It's takes so much longer to film and edit than it does to make speakers!
@@wattspeakers You can’t think about current as first passing through the first speaker and arriving at the next somehow modified. Current is a flow that’s the same everywhere in the circuit it passes though. Two different speakers in series would cause issues exactly as you described, but two identical speakers will not. At any given frequency the identical speakers will have the same impedance in both magnitude and phase. Because they are the same, both are getting exactly half the supplied voltage independent of frequency.
Try this experiment, put two resistors in series, let’s say two 8 ohm resistors. Connect this series resistor pair to your amplifier and adjust it to, let’s say 2.83 v RMS across the resistors. Now measure the connection point between the two resistors. You will get 2.83/2 or about 1.4 v RMS. Now change to a different frequency and measure the midpoint voltage again. It’s still about 1.4v. If you have a tone generator run it up and down the dial from 20 Hz to 20 KHz and monitor the voltage. It will remain about 1.4 volts. Two resistors in series is a linear voltage divider, it divides voltage equally independent of frequency.
Now, try the same experiment with an 8 ohm resistor in series with a typical 8 ohm speaker. It doesn’t matter which comes first in the circuit. Measure the voltage at the midpoint again as you move the tone generator frequency from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. You will see the midpoint voltage change with frequency. This is because at one frequency, the speaker may actually be about 8 ohms but at another frequency your speaker may be 20 ohms. Your voltage divider just became 8 ohms in series with 20 ohms so the voltage is not split equally. This is a non linear voltage divider. (It is not frequency invariant)
Finally, put two identical speakers in series and repeat the experiment. At some frequency both speakers are 8 ohms and thus voltage is split equally. At some other frequency both are 20 ohms and thus voltage is still split equally. Two identical speakers in series is a linear voltage divider.
Crossover design is quite complex and requires advanced mathematics to calculate. Done incorrectly resonance circuits can be created due to interactions between capacitors, resistors, and inductors in the crossover. This can cause wild fluctuations in the impedance curve of the completed speaker that can dip below 2 ohms. Blind attempts to correct this can actually make it worse, adding a resistor in series with a hot tweeter can actually bring the total impedance even farther down instead of up. This can be very confusing because common sense would dictate that adding the series resistor would bring the impedance up but it can actually do the opposite due to the creation of resonance circuits that exist totally within the crossover, independent of the speaker impedance.
When I started in the 70’s we didn’t have the software we have today, so it wasn’t an easy task. Today, we have things like LspCAD to do the math for us. www.ijdata.com/ This is 800 Euro (about US$890) but there are some free crossover design packages. I have no experience with any of them so I can’t say how good they are, but I suspect they are accurate. There are also free measurement systems like REW but I also have no experience with it, I use one called ARTA. I think REW is probably a very good program but the “UMik” microphone typically used with it, not so much. I use an Earthworks M30 which is significantly superior but also significantly more expensive.
The article in your link is a good article but a bit over simplified especially where they talk about adding a resistor in line with a tweeter. If you put it in the wrong place in the crossover it can create unexpected results. Directly in line with the tweeter is usually the wrong place, before the first series capacitor in the crossover is the right place.
You can do Zobel networks and I use to do that when I built more passive crossovers but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the simpler the better. I would sometimes create this very complex crossover to iron out the frequency response perfectly and the speaker would sound terrible. I would then strip it down to as few components as possible and still get a decent response and it would sound great! So keep it simple is the key.
These days I just go DSP active for almost everything and rarely use passive crossovers for anything. In the home theater I’m building now, the side surrounds do have passive crossovers but the L/R mains and center are all active. If you can do it, active is just an all around better way to go.
Dialogue sounds clear on my end, overall the dynamics sound good but the echo in the room is maddening. You need some room treatment starting with a rug or carpet and maybe some folded blankets over the leather seats/couch. And ending with some drapes.
Agreed the room needs some treatment. After my wife takes down the Xmas tree, I’m going to change things up in the room. The toughest part of that, is that my rear surround speakers are hard wired, so I’ll need to modify what I’ve got. We were considering moving the home theater setup to the basement and using a smaller system in the main living area. I’ve got a nice little surround setup that resides in our master bedroom, comprised of a smaller 5.2 Sony receiver, (I’ve also got a small 7.2 Sony), with Energy RC minis and a couple of 8” energy powered subs. In many respects the smaller system sounds better for average listening and watching shows and movies. That system also employs a wireless class D amp for the rears so no long runs of cable are needed.
Another setup I’ve wanted to try, but not purchased yet, is the JBL 5.1 sound bar with detachable wireless rear surrounds.
Thanks for watching, listening and the comment it’s very much appreciated thank you!
Absorption will act like an equalizer and take out much of the high frequencies way more so than the low ones. Diffraction will keep the same amount of energy and just put a few absorption products at the first reflection point. And one thing that I found to make a big difference in my 5.1.4 Atmos set up was to get all the floor speaker tweeters at the same level preferably ear level while seated, and have the mains same distance from the rear wall as the center or centers. Thanks for the video
I have 2 jbl es30 speakers that i was thinking of paring up to make one center speaker could one yust change the wiering and yous just one of the crossover filters?
Two Monitor Audio Studio CentralS....two rel t9x... Cambridge audio cxa60. Perfect match.
I did this with 2X MK150s running in-series and it’s been great. Mainly to keep the center on the same bed layer as my L and R meaning I have center playback on each side of my OLED with the L and R further out.
Matching speakers on the LCR and on the same plane will uplift playback incredibly on some many levels.
Thanks for watching and the comment. Running them in series isn't good, but the left and right of the screen positioning on the same plane as the left and right would work well I imagine.
Interesting experiment. I saw a comment, though, where you went back to one center. (I'm not surprised.) But hey, there's nothing wrong with trying new things.
I'm curious, though: Is that receiver not 4-ohm capable?
Thanks, yup I went back to one center, with better positioning, most recently setting it on 15 degree stands so its projecting more into the volumetric center of the room. Much clearer and better panning. The towers are so good matching that it's really hard to tell when the center is functioning with multi channel or if it's just stereo. The Sony receivers are only rated to 6 ohms. That's more appropriate for 8 ohm speakers because while they're "nominal" is 8 ohms, in practice they're likely operating in the 4 to 8 ohm range with variations in playback and demand.
Hello, 2 channel on top and bottom, it will need some testing. But 2 center side by side, no... Too much comb filtering with that setup. One day i will try 2 center, bottom and top, with DSP time allignement. This way, i think there will be less comb filtering because you don't move much your head up and down on the couch than side to side. That would be cool to test
Thanks for watching, commenting and I agree.
Klipsch r34c and 504c double channeled sounds absolutely amazing..I have this setup. More immersive sound. Playing music or movies sound much better.
About the intelligibility issue, I find when running 90db efficient speakers with excellent dynamics that loud portions of movie soundtrack, especially what I consider "old school Hollywood loud," play waay too loud. I actually run a compressor algorithm on VLC. I use a PC for my movies so it's super easy to run a compressor on VLC. This keeps low level audio intelligible without being drowned out or rattling the walls when the soundtrack gets loud.
Also keep in mind old school movie soundtracks often were mixed using either the really old Academy Curve or the House Curve. Either will benefit from from a Smile EQ. But newer soundtracks are recorded to play better on speakers with flat response curves.
If you have good speakers try some EQ. If you're speakers are too dynamic for casual viewing, use a compressor.
I remember when I first got into this hobby. The first thing I did was through out the center. The sound was too tiny compared to using the L & R mains as center. sounded sooo much better. IMO The problem with the center channel is not the speaker itself like so many say, it's that it's only one. They should at least start making them with two tweeters on the ends. I remember the Yamaha rxv 592 had dual center connection. They should have kept that feature.
Thank you for watching and the comment! Coincidentally I'm planning a video project where I swap out my multi speaker A/B class and instead run it in stereo with a decent D class amp. My theory is that the issue arises due to the mixing. Stereo seems to hold the imaging better, and I am feeling that the dialogue is clearer and seems more cohesive to the TV screen. Surround sound is super cool and I do enjoy it, but I'm interested to go back to plain old stereo and uncluttering the living room.
You do *not* want multiple tweeters separated like you're saying, since the signals will interfere with each other resulting in comb filtering. You want *one* high-frequency driver in the center, and best, aligned with the woofer. Thsts why audiophile HT systems will almost always have one center speaker in a vertical configuration. Ideally, this will be centered vertically and horizontally behind an acoustically transparent screen.
good video.. but if your avr or processor, only haves 1 center channel output.. its just the same sound! you would get the same, experience if you center was just longer and bigger. its basicly just spreading the sound more... so my choice, would be getting or making a bigger center.. and buy speakers with horns, their sound stage is just more clear
Thanks for the compliment and watching the video. Regarding your suggestion: Agreed. There's a follow up video to this one, where I go back to a single center. Two running together did sound "different", but for most content not in a good way.
I would try tipping one of the centers upsidedown so the angle is opposite of the other with the mid tweet mid.
I don't know if you tried having an all tower speaker set up even the center channel it sounds really awesome gives it a very wide range sound. And with the tower speaker as a center it sounds very natural like it's there but it's not there it's a very unique feeling you get but very nice
Interesting how you went about setting up a second center, I have two center's also and both are identical but I use external amplification so I use a Y-splitter cable from pre-pro going to amps and then off to each speaker and it works perfectly.
I watched alot of youtube videos and read alot of online forums and 99.9% of people say not to do it but in reality it works better than I expected. It may not suit everybody but if you want to try ---- go right ahead.
I had excellent audio from my single center channel so why did I want to try a second center >>>> well I had an idea one day so I just had to settle my curiosity and I am glad I did.
It's not a night and day difference but it does produce a bigger center image, I have the speakers below and above the TV.
Comb filtering is not an issue when sitting in your chair you only notice it as you stand up as your ears pass through the level of image being produced.
Was it worth trying >>> "YES".
Thank you for watching and commenting. I was reading your comment and thinking that your experience and outcome is identical to mine. The single Energy RC LCR is more than capable of being fine on its own. I had find a second one on eBay that was cosmetically in mint condition, matching the rest of my setup. The original LCR center I had / have is a little rough in the veneer and grille, but sounded fine on its own. I wanted to fill up the empty space and "try" it. I also find it to be better with two, but mainly just because it makes the center soundfield wider, which makes it pan more seamlessly, and each center's tweeter is directly on axis with my wife and I, which resulted in a cleaner dialogue for each of us. Plus, with two center channels, I can really crank it up with no weirdness, whereas when I pushed it too hard with one center channel, I could tell when it was getting sloppy.
If I get around to making a dedicated home theater I'll likely run separate amps, that's the way to go.
@@wattspeakers Your system must sound really good, I hope you are happy with it.
I do not have a dedicate theater room I use the lounge room.
I am using 3 external amps.
I have 18 bookshelf speakers and six 12" subs [12 speakers for surround and 6 speakers for LCR].
I have used a Y-splitter cable on all of the channels, so I basically have two speaker setups in my lounge room all working as one system. It all works just as it should, personally it sounds excellent.
It's a really BIG sound, I love it, I don't need to turn it up loud to produce a BIG sound.
By the way I live in Australia.
@@lorindamikaela Hello from America and thank you for watching as well as the comment! Wow, so you're running the equivalent of a HUGE 3.1 with an emphasis on the "1", with those 6 subwoofers!
When you say 6 x 12" for the subs, is that 12 inch driver size or cabinet size? I was thinking it might be the latter, based on the 18" bookshelves you mentioned.
Thank you for the compliment on my setup. I'm very grateful for everything the Lord has provided, all the blessings including the decadent ones like the home theater setup. It took a number of years to get to this point, but I continue to tweak and experiment. I've been through about 5 sets of speakers, several receivers, a few different TV's, not to mention all the cables and wiring. It's a lot.
That being said, I am happy with it, but not thrilled with the dual center channel setup and will likely change that first. I've not done any measuring, but on some hard to hear shows, (like Yellowstone where several of the lead male characters grumble a lot), it's not as clear as it was with a single center channel. With other shows and movies I don't have that problem, but I think there's some truth to the comb filtering effect when running two side by side. Danny at GR Research did a video where he talks about and measured a couple identical speakers together and the higher frequencies get wonky due to cancellation. I think that's what's going on, because it seems like we need to listen to it louder than usual to hear as well. It's surprising since we sit less than 12 feet away, but I'm guessing that much of that cancellation, or perhaps unintended compression is happening right in front of the baffles when the sound waves are first emitted from the drivers. It's certainly hooked up right, and the y splitter with the resistors is doing what it's supposed to, but honestly, I'll be switching it back to a single center channel very soon. I've got a box from Amazon still parked by the front door containing a studless wall mount for the TV. I want to get the center channel on a short stand on top of the entertainment center so it's closer to the same height as the left and rights, and surround speakers which are all at ear level.
Long term, I'm torn... I really think that pro styled home speakers would work immensely better for home theater. There's a few videos I did with an old pair of Realistic MC-1800 bookshelves and they incorporate a pro mid-bass driver and a horn loaded dome tweeter. They are ultra clear when it comes to vocals and dialogue. Perhaps because there's less reflections, or perhaps because that's an inherent part of the design for PA speakers. So... I'm thinking about building a DIY 5.1 setup with that philosophy.
Thanks again for watching and commenting! I'm really happy you visited the channel and invite you to watch some more content. I'll do some random ones with the home theater stuff, but mainly I'm just building cool old speakers.
@@wattspeakers It has taken 5 years to put my system together.
I have all my speakers custom made by a speaker company here in Australia.
All my speakers have black leather on the baffle.
The 12 surround bookshelf speakers use a 6.5" Satori woofer and weigh 10kg each
[22-23 lbs].
The 4 front left and right bookshelf speakers are even bigger and weigh 22kg [48lbs] each again with black leather but use a 7.5 Satori driver.
The six subs have black leather and they use a 12" driver.
Each center channel speaker weighs 25kg [55lbs] they are 38" wide 17" deep so they are very big.
Each center speaker uses dual 7.5" Satori woofers and dual 5.5" mids to match the front main speakers.
All the speakers use the Satori woofer which are fantastic.
It has taken a long time to save money and put this alot together but it has been worth it.
I'm the same as you the Lord has blessed me and I am very grateful to own what I have.
You can see my speakers on the company website.
The company owner liked them so much he put a photo of my front main speakers on his website.
The link >>> adelaidespeakers.com/monitors.html
Go down the page on the left hand side under the photo it has written >>>
"Blackwood with leather baffle (custom 600mm high).
Price is for the base model, of course custom made always demand a premium price.
I wanted to put together a system to last me until Jesus returns which is not too far away I think.
This is 2 center speakers with 8ohm ? Do you connect them like 2 speakers to one center channel output ?
Thanks for watching and the question! Yes these are two 8 ohm center channel speakers that are connected in parallel to one center channel output on my receiver, with a splitter y cable I made. The splitter cable has an 8 ohm resistor in front of each of the speakers, effectively creating one huge 8 ohm center channel.
@wattspeakers I want to connect 2 center channel like you for better image but I know I can't connect directly 2 speakers to one output. This can burn the speaker or receiver who knows.
@@yournightmare9999 not if you do it right which is the whole point of the video? why don't you just watch the video like the rest of us and not ask stupid questions. someone had to say it.
@@yournightmare9999 maybe you could try putting 2 identical center speakers in serries or do what this guy did in this video. me personally i would prefer to just get a bigger center speaker and add more power if i had an issue with my center speaker which i don't, as its loud and clear. i think i would rather mess around with dialogue lift than have 2 center speakers. but it's interesting and i have thought about what it would be like many times before but i don't think i would actually do it. i think i would actually rather a complete change of speaker if the speaker set, I was using didn't make and sell a larger matching center speaker to upgrade to.
@@wattspeakers8ohms when connected in parallel will go down to 4 ohms, placing 8ohms resistor infront of the speaker will bring it again to 8ohms even the connection is in parallel.? Im confused, i have Onkyo tx nr5100 which is capable of handling 4 to 16 ohms each channel , i am using Bose acoustimas 6 II with this receiver, im not happy with the center speaker and wanting to add one more separate center, how do i do this? Please help me,,,,a subscriber from philippines.
If you like it do it everybody’s saying shit about it. It’s not the same equipment not the same house set up or anything probably not the same air pressure different elevations so you have two Center channels if you want. What’s up? I have three tower speakers for left right and my Center. And it’s phenomenal.
I'll bet the three tower setup is very nice. Theoretically if I turned the center vertically it "could" make a difference, but this particular center channel actually measures almost identically regardless of position and axis.
why would you not just use a splitter on the center pre-output to a 2 ch power amp?
Love the handle! Thanks for watching and the question! Truth be told, I have an extra amp or three that I could have used to go from the center channel pre out jack, but didn't want to hassle with turning on a separate amp... Lazy I know. I love eARC and just using one remote, so the thought of worrying about the amp auto on, or pressing the on button didn't thrill me. Just thinking about it, I can hear my wife: "something is wrong with the stereo"... But seriously, yours is a great idea and that would have been a more audiophile approach to it.
I have jbl stage A190 set up and have 1 center speaker vertical on the wall next to the tv, i want to get another jbl center speaker for the other side but only have enough ports on my avr reciever for 1, can i use surround L/R for these or use 1 center speaker port and 1 surround, would that work
Thank you for watching and commenting. That is a fantastic question and may deserve a video in the future! Personally I am back to running one center channel speaker instead of two center channels... HOWEVER, if I were to take another crack at two center channels, I would use a separate amp for the center channel. It requires that you find an amplifier that has auto on/off, ( for example I've got Audio Source AMP100 that turns on when it senses an input signal, then goes into standby if there's no signal). Or, you can turn on the amp separately, or have a trigger setup, (I've not experimented with them myself, but they seem straight forward. Back to the hookup, your original question: The AVR will need "pre-outs" (common on mid to high end AVR's). The center channel speaker binding posts are not used, instead of connecting the center speaker(s) to the receiver for power and signal, the center channel speaker(s) are connected to the external amp.
The amp is interconnected with the AVR's center channel pre-out, (a single RCA jack), to the external amplifier's pre-in jacks, (two RCA jacks left and right, via an RCA Y Adapter or "splitter" consisting of a cord with one RCA male and two RCA males on the opposite end). Depending on the amplifier, you could hookup 1 to 4 additional center speak speakers... Considering it has a mono/bridged setting for one speaker, and A/B stereo channels.
Once the external amp is setup and center speaker(s) connected, set the amplifier volume (I usually start at the 12 o'clock position). Then run your normal auto calibration routine via the AVR. And there you go! Easy.
Hi wattsspeakers thanks for this information. My avr reciever has no "pre outs" I have the denon AVR-X1700H
Very nice job, if you're like me you'll have to make a cover for the Wii now, It sticks out like a sore thumb 🙂
Thanks for watching and the comment! Ironically I was thinking the same exact thing! A black vinyl decal carefully applied might work too. Now if only I could camouflage the Rock Band Drum set.
Did you tell us if the sound was way better or the same?
Thanks for watching and commenting! Excellent observation. I really didn't want to say whether it was better or not. Truth be told, it sounded "different", and in certain respects fuller, unfortunately after watching many movies and shows, I ultimately felt that it degraded the intelligibility. I went back to a single center channel and raised it up another foot which cleaned it up some also. I really believe that center channel issues might be caused mostly by poor mixing, especially the stuff that gets compressed for streaming. Poorly designed center channels or improper speaker positioning just exacerbates the problem.
if the receiver have an amp out for the center, just add a power amp. class d can take 4 ohms all day. even 2 ohms for some models. and the center have clean power that can go loud, which is great as it is the most important speaker. if the receiver have assignable channels and the setup supports it, one can probably also go that route
Thank you for watching and the suggestions! Unfortunately the Sony receiver's assignable channels are limited. They've got 2 outputs that can be utilized for Bi-Amp front left right, or surround rear left right, (for 7.1), or 2 height channels, (Atmos), or Zone B (for stereo in a separate room).
My original intent was to try and use a separate amp with the center pre-out as you mentioned, but it's an extra piece of equipment that is more complex to setup, turn on and off, cost more, etc. The beauty of the setup is my wife and grandkids can use it without any hassle or things not working as expected. Everything syncs and is controlled by the TV remote only, which is super handy. Just turn on the TV and the rest of it just comes to life and works.
It should have enough power to drive the two centers, as it's ratings suggest anyway. I'm guessing it should be in the area of 50-70 Watts on the center channel at 8 ohms.
The splitter I made was less than $15, and so far, so good. Honestly it seems like it's working better than I expected. We've watched several shows and a couple of movies. It was a definite improvement over just the one center channel.
I know it's technically not recommended to run two centers, and I've got no way to measure polar patterns, but it's certainly clear and plenty loud. It seems to pan left and right much more seamlessly now.
I think I got lucky... Maybe the combo of the type of center channel speakers, or the fact that we're sitting smack dab on axis with them, but they sound cool together. I've wandered into the kitchen and elsewhere and haven't noticed any weird behavior being off axis.
One day I'd like to build a home theater in the basement, and trim down the equipment in the living room, but that's a long way off.
Thanks again for watching!
@@wattspeakers glad it worked out for you. if it sounds better ..it is better:) gaining vocal clarity and enough power without sounding stressed is certainly more important then some potential theoretic drawback
I think you had originally planned to put one 8 ohm 100 watt resistor in series with each 8 ohm speaker resulting in 2 separate 16 ohm loads that would then be joined in parallel to end up with a resulting 8 ohm load. BUT… The way you soldered the resistors, you created a 4 ohm 200 watt resistor and put that in series with the 4 ohm speaker load (two 8 ohm speakers in parallel) The end result is the same, but you could have just used one resistor instead.
@@MikeSowsunThank you for taking your time to watch my video and the insightful question which I'm glad you asked. So, yes the reason for the parallel connection is if two loudspeaker assemblies including the internal crossovers, are hooked in series, it affects the second speaker in that daisy chain. For example: if doing it the way you mentioned, what happens is the first speaker plays kind of normal, the second speaker's character would be altered by the crossover and drivers ahead of it. The second speaker would essentially have been crossed over twice, in addition to any fluctuations from the coils in the drivers from the first speaker.
Let's say for simplicity I attempt to illustrate this with words:
The first 3 way loudspeaker with the positive cable from the amp connected to the positive terminal... This speaker will play almost as intended, although since the negative terminal is hooked up from that speaker to the second speaker's positive terminal, (in series), the second speaker is fed what's left over after all that filtering and the added inductance from the voice coils in the first speaker cabinet. The second speaker in the daisy chain is already at a disadvantage because it's not being fed a full frequency signal potential. It's instead forced to operate on the negative return which has the full signal that's been divided low pass/mid and high pass. In other words, that signal has already passed through not only the crossover from the first speaker cabinet, but also the 5 separate coils driver coils with this particular LCR. Like any inductor ahead of a driver, this creates predominantly a low pass feed to the second speaker. In addition and complicating that issue even more, is the first speaker's inductance out has yet more filtering to go through and 5 more driver's coils creating additional deviation. The first speaker may sound half way decent, but the second speaker in the series setup will suffer.
In essence, the way I connected it should result in two speakers playing identically as designed. This does increase comb filtering however since both speakers are reproducing the exact same frequencies simultaneously. The way you mentioned doing it, may actually have less comb filtering because it's like having two completely different sounding speakers attempting to reproduce the source signal.
Your method may work better to mitigate comb filtering, at the expense of the speaker's tonal quality being... Let's say "different".
Daisy chaining speaker cabinets in series is actually more suited to PA speakers which aren't going to cause a noticeable difference at a festival for example, where efficiency and coverage are paramount vs home theater, where accuracy and off axis wide dispersion drivers are utilized.
Even at theaters equipped with a myriad of identical speakers (I counted forty full range speakers at my local theater not including subs), those have hardware and software to distribute the various source material over all those speakers... regardless if the commercials are in stereo and the movie is in 5.1, or 7.4.2 they aren't in series they're wired in parallel and the signal is distributed amongst the 40+ speakers. Of course in a theater with horns determining the coverage area of higher frequencies, the chance of comb filtering to be noticeably audible is diminished.
That's all my opinion and pseudo science that I've come up with over the years, and I could be wrong, but that's why the channel is called the world according to Todd lol.
I do a center spread with AVR3600H. Everyone is happy.
Interesting test and experiment.
Have you tried plugging the ports on the center?
Hi Chris thanks for watching and the comment. I have tried plugging the ports, but it doesn't sound too good. Energy made dedicated aperiodic speakers, like the 3.1e and 4.1e, but the RC speakers were all purpose built bass reflex designs with the exception of the "micro" which are sealed.
I just had an idea 💡 what if you took two center speakers and placed one chest level and another on top above the ear lever same distance as the bottom one. Would that work 😂 I promise you I’m not high just a thought. It would make a phantom center with out that harsh noise directly hitting your ears .
I've heard people say that it works, but honestly after trying two center channels, I don't think there's a good way to address the destructive interference of two identical sound sources. Maybe it would work better if two entirely different speakers with characteristics were so different it was not difficult to tell there's interference, but it might sound worse too.
Not sure there's an easy answer to the perfect center channel and so much of it depends on the mixing, that even when it's thought to be perfect, something will sound awful, (usually the super cool movie you have company over to watch). Yes it's a tough one to get right. I would say more focus on room treatment and a really nice center channel with ear level positioning is about the most one could ask for.
I run a smaller HT in our master bedroom, compromised of Energy RC Minis all at ear level and it sounds very good. Not as big and bold as my home theater in the living room, but in many ways it sounds clearer.
good one. i have been considering multiple centre channels as well. WOuldnt it be fine if we connect 2 8 ohm speaker in series and connect to an amp (if it supports 4ohm load)?
Thanks for watching and the great question! If your receiver / amp is rated to 4 ohms, you "should" be able to hook up the two 8 ohm speakers in parallel, (you could use a simple biwire speaker splitter cable). Some older amps and receivers have a switch to go from 8 ohm to 4 ohms so I'm not sure if one of those would work or not. The receiver and amps that go down to 4 ohms without a physical or software switch would be perfect. The only thing to keep in mind is some speakers while rated as 8 ohms, might go way lower in certain frequency ranges. Your amp would let you know there's a problem by going into protect mode if that's the case.
You don't want to hook them up in series, (with the positive hooked up on one speaker, and the negative on the other with a jumper in-between).
I'll give you a spoiler alert to a video I'm editing currently and will publish soon... I went back to a single center channel and raised it up so it's better positioned. Two Center channels side by side like I had definitely looked cool but after a couple weeks and enough various shows and movies we watched, just didn't sound quite right. One over and the other under TV, or on the left or right of the TV may not behave that way or might not be as obvious, but two together does impact the sound quality.
Watch for that video, it'll be out soon.
@@wattspeakers : Appreciate you taking time to reply. Looking forward to the new video.
Yup I have 2 centre channels speakers... they are called L and R.
What is the center channels frequency response at various angles even slightly off axis? In other words, what are your horizontal and vertical dispersion measurements like? Center speakers are extremely difficult for engineers to get right.
Thanks for watching and your question! Honestly, I've not checked in the room response, but I've got the Dayton Omnimic and DVD that handles all the channels, so that's something I want to do.
As far as less amateur response and review, there's a bunch of stuff to read on the RC series, (most of it good), but Sound & Vision has good breakdowns of the ones I've got.
www.soundandvision.com/content/energy-reference-connoisseur-rc-70-surround-speaker-system-measurements
For the RC LCR, I'd copy and paste what they said but it's a lot, with a bunch of graphs. If I understood the assessment correctly, it measured pretty good.
Horizontal position: The responses at 15-degrees and 30-degrees off-axis, show curves that are relatively close to the averaged on-axis response. The vertical off-axis response of the RC-LCR follows the on-axis average almost perfectly, making the vertical seating height relatively non-critical.
Vertical orientation: off-axis response proved to be relatively free of serious dips and peaks even at the maximum measured off-axis angle of 60-degrees.
Thanks again for watching!
The flux capacitor is giving too much power to warp drive Captain 😂
Two Htm6 bowers&wilkins 🎉🎉🎉
I see the Wife Acceptance Factor has been thrown out the window.
I’ve been blessed with a woman who loves sound as much as I do, but understands what it takes to get that sound! I feel a little pride in that. I’d guess there’s plenty of guys who would love a system like I’ve got in the living room, but it takes up some real estate for sure, something not all wives are down with. No matter how much marketing hype there is for any particular small compact systems like sound bars, there’s simply no way to achieve the same effect from those. Will they sound nice and suffice? Sure. I didn’t even start building out my surround system until my $150 Vizio 5.1 went on the fritz, but it was fine for the living room. What I’ve got now in there, is just stupid big for the room. Sony ZA1100ES, with a full array of high end Energy speakers is ludicrous in that room by any standard.
A friend of mine has 2 centers,but he has one above the tv and one below.The sound is way more immersive.
Hi Brett, thanks for watching and commenting! I've tried it that way in the past with a different setup I had, and it sounded good, immersive as you said. I was going to try that again, except several months back I fixed all the holes I made in the wall from experimenting with various brackets, mounts, and so on. One day perhaps I'll get around to building a proper home theater in the basement.
front high speakers with dialogue lift would do the trick Aswell, sounds cool. I tried it the other day with my set up and it puts some of the center channel info into the front height channels and sounds kind of cool. i prefer front heights and Yamaha sound modes over atoms with front up firing. something for anyone with up firing atoms speakers to look into is whether or not they can set up front height for Atmos instead of front up firing because front height sounds way way better. i had a newer atoms receiver and a pair of new up firing Atmos speakers sitting on top of my front towers and i didn't really like it much, but now i have a older 2014 model Yamaha receiver with front height speakers and it sounds excellent. I'm not sure why Atmos even come up with the idea of up firing speakers when we have had front height speakers long before Atmos and they sound way better than up firing speakers. so the way i look at it is that up firing speakers are a scam because all you have to do it sit something tall on top of your tower speakers and then sit a couple of normal back speakers on top of that and you have front height speakers that sound a million times better than up firing atmos. to be honest a 5.1 receiver with atoms and virtual speakers sounds similar to having up firing speakers so you don't even need up firing speakers really. for me its front height speakers all the way otherwise put them in the ceiling i guess if you want proper Atmos but I'm happy with front height with old school Yamaha sound modes it's much more immersive than actual Atmos with up firing speakers.
Klipsch r34c and 504c double channeled sounds absolutely amazing..I have this setup. More immersive sound. Playing music or movies sound much better.
Seems you like you have an underperforming center channel, to go along with your echo chamber of a room. Your room acoustics are probably not conducive to clear dialogue; another center isn't the answer but to each their own. I guess.
Thank you for watching and the comments! I am more inclined to think the room and lack of treatment is more of a problem than the speakers. Here's some info on the speakers www.soundandvision.com/content/energy-reference-connoisseur-rc-70-surround-speaker-system-measurements
At one point I had it set up better, using the big area in it's rectangle fashion so the left side wasn't wide open like it is now, and it sounded better that way, and I might do that again, but it's a ton of work moving that setup around, moving the furniture, etc.
In person it sounds dang good in spite of the echo chamber, (reflections are inherent with any home setup). My wife and I need to get some curtains, stuff on the walls, area rug, etc. Some sound treatment would be cool too. It may be a project I tackle in the future, but honestly we'd rather get all that out of the living room, just use a 5.1 sound bar again, (I've had my eyes on the JBL with the detachable surround speakers), and I eventually want to build a home theater in the basement and set it up more appropriately. For now, the second center channel seems to have met my desire for producing a fuller center soundstage and better panning from left to right. Haven't really had much issue with dialogue, even with just the one center channel, but now with two it's even clearer.
100000000% agree @squared80
I didn't like how you ended the video. You were supposed to test it with your wife to see if it sounded better but all you showed was sound demos of music in atmos that got compressed by RUclips and played on my stereo office media speakers. Not very informative.
I read in another comment it was less clear and you went back to one center speaker.
I was going to suggest getting a larger center speaker and put it a level higher under the TV. You would only need to raise the TV less than a foot, so it would still be at a good level.
I got an SVS Prime Center speaker and I also boost the center channel on my AV receiver 6db to hear audio speech more clearly. It's only medium priced at around $400.
I also don't think you needed the crossover on the bouncy Atmos speakers so high. I would adjust it 120, instead of 180Hz. I have my large front speaker at 60Hz I think and the center and 2 surrounds at 80Hz.
Thank you for watching and commenting! So... I think this latest video will clear it up. Apple TV 4K Gen 3 Sound Quality Review Dolby Atmos LPCM - WATT Podcast #2 April 14, 2024
ruclips.net/video/yj0GMEBidO0/видео.html
That is the follow-up to the one with my wife, and actually has the single center channel closer to ear height, which made an audible improvement in the center channel playback.
With regards to the ratio of sound playback and informative information is very dependent on the project I'm doing, but the rhythm is a work in progress, so I appreciate that constructive criticism, thank you that helps me a great deal and think I've got a solution to it.
I am glad that you mentioned that you listened over office speakers. I knew that decent sound was an issue because thus far I have only recorded on my cell phone that I'm filming with. From this point forward any sound demonstration will still be live with me as I experience it, but the sound from the speakers will be recorded with a nice stereo mic good up to 120 db. That way, it will enhance the listening experience overall for viewers listening over nice headphones, or like you over office speakers or folks with their handheld devices. That being said, as a newbie RUclipsr I'm impressed at how well just a regular cell phone does for recording and videoing, AND even edited and published over it. Additionally from this point forward I will be using better hardware and software. Instead of doing it all over the phone, I’ll be doing the editing with legit stuff. I recently switched from android, so this is my first experience with Apple products. I have gone several years without any serious computing power so I equipped myself with pretty much everything Apple offers that I could afford and get the job done.
Great question about the clarity of one center channel Vs two center channel Speakers. My thoughts on it, are that one works better than two. Lots of reasons why, all of which have to do with technical advancements in speaker design.
A larger center channel is an interesting proposition. My center channel in this living room setup is pretty phenomenal. Not the best at this point, but like most Energy products the RC-LCR was ahead of it's time a couple decades ago, so while their gear is older it can still contend with best in class today, especially at a similar price point considering inflation today. In the used market $300 in Energy's will deliver sound that is quite good. I was really surprised at how good they actually are, which I found out after hooking up the Apple TV, which feeds a capable AVR a clear advantage with uncompressed sound... I mean wow. HUGE difference especially in the center channel where it's most critical.
Thinking about it further, there are so many good brands of speakers that have come to market over the past 50 years. It's quite interesting to listen to old speakers on new equipment with modern source material like high res, etc. For example the living room surround sound system in this video, features my Energy RC Series. Those were considered mid high end back in the day, but believe it or not, they just come alive with the modern audio gear, like the Sony ZA1100ES Vs the NAD T757-V2 I've got that is also twenty years old. In other words, speakers have not changed a great deal in the past 20 years, certainly not at the rate of solid state electronics. Back in the day, when speakers sounded good... Well they only sound better hooked up to modern receiver or amplifier, playing uncompressed digital source material. Huge difference. If only all the folks from back then, who may not still be with us today, could hear their old speakers with modern gear!
Stay tuned for more. Upcoming videos will be better and I've got dozens of topics and projects to delve into.
You know what's better than one center channel speaker or two center channel speakers? No center channel speakers. If you're okay with a small sweet spot and have decent fronts a phantom center channel will absolutely destroy even the best centers money can buy.
Thank you for watching and the comment! I've run stereo for my home theater and I've seen other comments elsewhere about eliminating the center channel. There have been times that a show or music is coming across in stereo, yet its phantom is so effective that the only way to know the center isn't on is by going right up to the center channel to determine if it's on or not.
The downside to it, is that the effect seems to be more related to the source material than the speaker arrangement. I'm blessed to have matching speakers, quality audio gear, and decent rooms, so my opinion to date, is that it's better with the center channel overall. There are TV and Movie mixes which are done poorly which I think gives surround sound a stigma, but when done nicely it works out well. That being said, I would prefer a stereo mix over a surround mix on many movies and shows. If there were a better standard for recording it would be different, but here's what I've found:
Older movies in stereo sound better with up-mix. Older movies in surround are hit or miss and some sound better down mixed, whereas others do okay in native surround.
More modern shows and movies mixed in surround seem to be the most challenging, (those from roughly 2010 forward). They are hit or miss and some are just frustrating, while others sound sublime.
My opinion is that it's usually not the surround sound and center channel speakers fault, but rather poor mixes, in which case I'd rather just hear it in stereo up mix vs a crummy 5.1 or 5.1.2 surround mix.
No, I would think that sounds like a person has 2 mouths. It's better to spend twice as much on 1 better speaker.
Thank u for watching and commenting. Yes for sure one good center channel, well placed, sounds better than two together, or multiple different front speakers playing the same channel.
I’m sorry if u have a correct center u shouldn’t to need 2
I have a 2nd center and its awesome😊
Hi Pete and thanks for watching! The center channel speaker itself isn't to blame, because it's about as good as a mass market center channel gets, but the room layout, lack of sound treatment and low speaker position aren't optimal.
There are a few old receivers that have two outputs for it, that goes above the screen and one below. Can’t remember the make, but should be on Google.
@richardk8764 I wish they still did that. Older receivers also had center wide which was cool. A little spoiler alert, my next video I'm editing and will upload soon, is going back to a single center channel. Thanks for watching, commenting and look out for that next video to see how that project goes