Integrating Electrostatic Speakers into existing standard speaker home theater

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I bought some Acoustat Spectra 11s the other day my first set of electrostatics and I've set them up with a subwoofer successfully and with music they sound great. I want to integrate the rest of my older home theater system again (ive got a good quality Dali Center with a ribbon driver) but my rears are nothing special and im also wondering how good that centre channel is going to sound next to those electrostatics. I dont have the budget to get an electrostatic centre and I was wondering if anyone else had a similar situation and how they delt with it?
 
The ideal situation is matching all your speakers. The idea being that when you a sound is panned around the room it dosnt change. In most cases just matching the front three is all you need. In your situation use EQ and level to try to match the centre to left right. Since 90% of a movie mix has different content on the centre channel, the dialogue, then the left/ right the music, even this match is not that critical.
 
I dont have the budget to get an electrostatic centre and I was wondering if anyone else had a similar situation and how they delt with it?
Just my ignorant 2-cents, but ESLs ought to be precise enough and well-matched enough that no centre speaker is needed.

In HT and TV, the visual perception is so compelling, it hardly matters what you do with the sound except for ping-pong tournaments.

I recently read about the way the pinna changes the sound reaching your ear. Of course your hearing mechanism knows how to interpret this and use it in real settings. But recording engineers setting up the rear/ambient channels do not know (nor does anybody... might be an unsolvable concept).

B.
 
thanks guys I will try both with and without - at this stage I just had totally unhooked the rest of the home theatre appart from the sub(which im using in audio anyway) and yes I must say I did notice that the pinpointing of voices is very accurate with the ESLs much more than what I had before even with the centre channel (which is quite good with the ribbon driver and all) so I will try the 4.1 setup and see how that sounds my amp does have the centre channel on off function so I'll see :)
 
ESL can be made to work well for HT, but you absolutely need to be able to treat the room. And by 'treat' I mean a boatload of absorption for both rear-wave management as well as bass control. I've spent 18 years tuning my setup and looking back, it's a shame someone did not hit me over the head early on regarding acoustic management awareness ;)

As for center speakers, I'm a firm believer in them, so much so I had to DIY my own to get the results I wanted. And now that we have immersive audio (Atmos) here, I'm even more pleased with having a capable ESL center.
There is full build thread on my SL3XC over on the MartinLogan owners forum.

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And here are a couple of pics of the HT.

A view of the front of the room from the MLP:

Note: the 4:3 screen was kept as the center is 6' tall and a reasonable size 16:9 would not cover it. This is room goes full black, so it doesn't matter.

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A view of the rear of the room:

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FishEye lens view from the left front Monolith (you can see the right rear Atmos speaker, a JBL SCS8 coax)

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That last one also shows the DIY side-wall acoustic treatment that integrates ESL stator panels as decorative elements (here with the backlight on). Build thread.
 
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ESL can be made to work well for HT, but you absolutely need to be able to treat the room. ...
Jonathan - you certainly seem well informed on the subject. But I am puzzled about your post and want to ask in good faith.

Some ESL/music listeners (including me) have experimented with absorption behind the panels and found the sound worse - even though there is some abstract logic to doing so. Likewise, I've never heard that ESL panels (on music) need extreme room damping.

Also, as per discussion above, some of us find a good virtual image works really well by putting the image (such as it is when just virtual) in the right place (on the screen) while adding a middle speaker is less satisfactory (and not on the screen).

Something about HT that is different than music? I think so. ALL recordings are cooked in the control room and set for an intended playback environment (which sometimes might be earphones). It may be that HT soundtracks would sound great in a large movie house but awful in moderate sized houses. But there shouldn't be a difference with ESL versus cones.

B.
 
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Ben, I arrived at these conclusions after a huge amount of testing (documented in this massive thread) and a bunch of studying, including pouring over the Toole book on acoustics.

Most folks who just give absorption a quick try are jarred by the substantial change in sound from 'before'. One of the aspects of large planar dipoles is how they they engage the room, and if you find a good balance of speaker to room to listener ratios, it even has the effect of giving a large, soundstage, as you are listening to sound coming from multiple sources with varying delays.

But for me, I've found I like my ESL to more focused on being a sound reproducer than a sound 'generator'. That is, I mainly want to hear the front wave-launch and minimize the reflected contributions. For immersive (or positional) audio, this is a requirement, as the mix is managing the location of sounds, and should not be colored by ones speakers.

My system is heavily weighted to accurate audio, for both music and movies, but it has to get music right. I am into Progressive Rock, and Steven Wilson is my hero, so all his masterpieces in high-resolution 5.1 shine on my rig. And as a consequence, movies are pretty impressive as well, but that's secondary.

For both movies and multichannel music (and especially Atmos), having a real (and capable) center is key to preserving the soundstage when listening outside the MLP. But even for the MLP, having the energy from the center makes the front soundstage more complete.
 
Each of you may have your own opinion but I have found using Jriver media centre was one of the most cost effective upgrades I did to my system. It made a huge difference both with the sound and visuals and its only around the $50 its a bit fiddly but its worth looking at if you have not tried it-totally upgraded the sound of my system far better than a DVD player that I could have afforded did
 
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