Use Center Channels for Side Surrounds?

brfd96

Thinking of getting two Polk CS2 Center Channel speakers to use for Side Surrounds and two Polk Monitor 40 Bookshelf speakers for the Rear Surrounds. Will the center channel units work for side surrounds?

Receiver - Yamaha RX-A1020 7.2channel w/110 Watts per channel
Polk Fronts - Monitor 70 Series II
Polk Center - CSI A6
Polk Subs - Two / PSW 505

dudeinaroom

sure, crap you could use them for all the speakers in your setup if you wanted to.

dorokusai

Yeah, agreed. I've seen many center channels used as surrounds or main for that matter. Keep in mind that they are designed differently and Polk uses a cascaded array so it's not the perfect choice but certainly not something that cannot work. Use what you got.

pearsall001

There's no law against it but there is a reason it's designed as a "Center" channel speaker. Not ideal but it will produce sound.

polkfarmboy

Center channels can cause the sound to lobby

BlueFox

polkfarmboy wrote: »

Center channels can cause the sound to lobby

??? What does that mean? I think that is the first time I have seen that term.

pearsall001

polkfarmboy wrote: »

Center channels can cause the sound to lobby

Huh????? please explain...inquiring minds want to know.

SDA1C

LOL! I always heard they made it sound coliseummy! I think he means the voice complimenting xovers in the average center channel speaker aren't optimum for side channels.

Face

He means, the dispersion from center speakers are generally poor due to the horizontal MTM layout. I tend to avoid that style center, or any speaker with that kind of driver orientation like the plague too. The sound may sound ok in one position, but can sound awful only a few feet away. Only well designed centers with a coaxial, vertical TM or MT in the center of a pair of woofers, and plain old TW mounted vertically don't have this issue.

pearsall001

Face wrote: »

He means, the dispersion from center speakers are generally poor due to the horizontal MTM layout. I tend to avoid that style center, or any speaker with that kind of driver orientation like the plague too. The sound may sound ok in one position, but can sound awful only a few feet away. Only well designed centers with a coaxial, vertical TM or MT in the center of a pair of woofers, and plain old TW mounted vertically don't have this issue.

Interesting take on the center speaker. I'm assuming here that some manuf do a much better job of design on their center speakers than others. I'm quite pleased with the KEF Q600 center & it's Uni-Q driver. There is no bad seat in the house. But I also believe that matching the whole front stage with identical speakers is the best scenerio but not the best fit for many rooms.

rooftop59

I guess the question is why not just get another pair of 40s or 30s? That would be cheaper. I have found that even good center channel like the cs400i are built to have a slight bump in the mid/upper-mid to bring out voices, and therefore very rarely are a perfect match as intended. When I have used the exact same bookshelf as a center it always a perfect tonal match, and has better dispersion. Even turned on its side I never had any problems. M&K and other brands use to make TWW speakers that could be used vertically or horizontally; it seems to me that that is the second best scenario to just being able to have three matched monitors/towers all vertical as intended.

So yea, i would just go with 2 pairs of m40s if you have the space...but the center will out out sound as the others have said...

polkfarmboy

Centre channels have one draw back and its called sound lobbying and this occurrence is a product of the cabinet designs. The sound inside the cab bounces around a bit so I would advise against

rooftop59

polkfarmboy wrote: »

Centre channels have one draw back and its called sound lobbying and this occurrence is a product of the cabinet designs. The sound inside the cab bounces around a bit so I would advise against

The problem here PFB is that the word is LOBING, not lobbying. You are not advocating for sound, but referring to "interference of the sound waves radiated from two sources, leading to an irregular off-axis response. That means that at some frequencies there will be peaks, and at others there will be troughs, varying depending on what angle you are at relative to the drivers." Here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_lobing

dorokusai

I was hoping that it was a given that the dispersion and lobing of a center channel used as a side surround was obvious here guys....but Face hit the nail on the head. No, it's not ideal. No, it's not going to be a suggestion for the most part but it can be used and I've seen and heard WAY WAY stranger setups than a center channel as a side surround. Let;s not go to crazy here.

FTGV

pearsall001 wrote: »

... I'm assuming here that some manuf do a much better job of design on their center speakers than others. I'm quite pleased with the KEF Q600 center & it's Uni-Q driver. There is no bad seat in the house. ..

Yes the coincidental drivers like the Uni -Q 's and SEAS coaxials are ideal for center channel duties.Since the tweeter and midrange are always in the same acoustical position regardless of listening axis there will be complete freedom from the lobing errors that plague typical MTM configurations.

brfd96

Thank you to everyone for responding to my question. I've gone way over budget on my Garage Mahal / Man Cave build and was trying to figure out a cheaper alternative to get enough speaker power into such a large space. You've convinced me that I should purchase real side surround speakers such as the F/Xi A6 and maybe some bookshelf units for rear surround.
Thanks Again
Dale

cowtrimmer

I would wait for some monitor 30 or 40's to go on sale and use those.

mantis

brfd96 wrote: »

Thinking of getting two Polk CS2 Center Channel speakers to use for Side Surrounds and two Polk Monitor 40 Bookshelf speakers for the Rear Surrounds. Will the center channel units work for side surrounds?

Receiver - Yamaha RX-A1020 7.2channel w/110 Watts per channel
Polk Fronts - Monitor 70 Series II
Polk Center - CSI A6
Polk Subs - Two / PSW 505

Why would you wanna do that? You know polk makes surround speakers right? That actually work for surround? That also can be wall mounted? Really dude , why try to reinvent the wheel when its been designed already? I'll never understand why I read threads like this where someone wants to use something other then what was designed for the job.

OK here's the deal
Companies like polk spend countless hours designing speakers for a purpose. They timbre match them so they all play nice together. They also design speakers for jobs like Center or surrounds. There are general purpose speakers like bookshelf , in wall , in ceiling that can be used for many different things . Floor standing speakers can be used for al kinds of duties.
I fully believe that people who want to build a theater system should first learn in general where and why certain speakers get used in certain places. Yes ideally it would be awesome to use the same exact speaker for all duties , I basically do that in my system as my center and surrounds are the exact same speaker but are designed as a L C R which one should read up on , how they are designed and what purpose they can serve in ones system. I could go further and replace my exact matching floor standing speakers with the same speaker as my center and surrounds and have a perfectly matched surround system. Actually I have thought of making this move may times and getting a pair of 2 channel speakers for my 2 channel listening.

Any speaker can make sound in any role , Christmas cards also make sound now a days.