Center Channel designs...

[FirebirdTN]

I was just wondering, why you don't see a center channel with two drivers spaced really far apart? I know the obvious answer jumps out as "because of cancellations", but hear me out...

To make a long story short, I am a definately newbie when it comes to HT. But my limited personal experience has led me to despise horizontally placed MTMs. Its limitations in my mind make it least desirable for a center channel speaker (unless its placed vertically, then its advantages to me make it the *MOST* desireable center, ironic, huh?)

I know about the spacing issues of the midbass drivers, and cancellation issues when off-center, but my main question is why are these effects not noticable when listening off-axis to a pair of stereo speakers? Isn't it the same thing? If you have a matched set of stereo speakers, and your off axis, you don't seem to get the cancellations....at least I have never noticed it before.

So why don't they make a center channel speaker with say two widely spaced midbass drivers, with two widely spaced tweeters on top of them, or maybe just one in the middle out of the centerline of the midbass drivers? Kind of like a "boombox" arrangement-a stereo pair of speakers in one wide horizontal cabinet? Heck if needbe, they could enclose each "half" of the cabinet in separate enclosures so the drivers wouldn't interact with each other.

Just wondering...

-Alan

[leadbelly]

The truth is that many CC's and most DIY CC's you see on this forum are designed with appearance as the primary concern, and the rest of the design compromised so as not to affect the appearance. The point of the CC is to anchor voice to the center of the screen so a fullrange driver or a coax is by far the best starting point, but the car kids don't like the look of those

[LineSource]

The main reason for having a HT center channel is to lock the voices to the screen for listeners sitting outside of the stereo sweet spot. From my experience, some speaker beaming helps.

My best solution is to use a coaxial speaker built from a relatively large 12"-15" wide bandwidth woofer in a sealed box, crossed LR4-8 ~ 1,000-1,200 Hz to a low Fs tweeter mounted coaxially on a steel bar. Currently using a Lambda TD15S and Seas Millinneum tweeter. I mount this under the screen with a slight upward tilt.