Hi Gman,
how far do you live from the city... I too live far from the city.. (45 Kms Away near tiruvallur)...
I have paired a different center speaker (Sonodyne Avant LCR 250) with my Sonus 2605 as fronts... The speaker simply surpassed the 2605... Only then, i understood how important it was to get the speaker from the same family...
For movies you def need a dedicated center channel... In the thread you are referring to, the FM had experimented a BS speaker in place of dedicated center channel speaker and found no difference... But he didn't mean other way....
For movies in my opinion, a sat + Sub combo (or) BS+Sub combo is very good than a large floor-stander....
Well, that was me who talked about the Myth about "dedicated" center channel
. What I meant to say was that the speakers that are marked as "dedicated center" channel, typical horizontal aligned M-T-M configurations usually doesn't sound super better for dialog than a typical T-M vertical configuration BS. The issue is that the horizontal configuration of a typical center channel speaker makes us believe that you get a better horizontal dispersion of sound. But studies have proved that the horizontal configuration has a very low horizontal off axis dispersion and in turn they have a much wider vertical off axis dispersion.
As Elangos said, I never meant that you don't need a center channel in your 5 channel setup. You MUST have a good sounding speaker for the center channel to really enjoy a 5.1 movie. The most important thing to note is the timbre matching between all the other speakers in your 5 channel setup. If not able to match all the 5, the front 3 speakers should have identical sonic characteristics. The ideal situation is to use the exact same speakers for all the three front channels L-C-R.
Well, I started with KEF Q300 for all my front channels and had to replace them with Klipsch Reference series because of lack of SPL from the KEFs to fill my HT room. When I got the Klipsch reference, I did get their M-T-M configuration center channel speaker because that speaker offered better efficiency. But given a choice and good budget, I would still recommend using the exact same speaker for front L-C-R.
If you look at high end THX-Certified speaker systems, they use identical speaker for the front L-C-R and di-pole/bi-pole configuration of the exact same drivers used for L-C-R for surrounds and rear. Again di-pole/bi-pole configuration for surrounds is again a very debatable topic. There is one school of though suggest using direct firing speakers for surrounds and rear channels instead of "diffuse" sounding di-pole/bi-pole.
I have tried both direct firing and bi-pole for surrounds and didn't find any day-night difference between their performance. For a nicely mixed 5.1 track, I didn't find any difference at all w.r.t to the ambient surround sound stage and both type of speakers gave me the perfect "in the movie" effect. I would give all the credits to the sound mixer for creating the wonderful "immerse" effect.
I would definitely recommend placing your surround speakers direct/bi-pole 2-3 feet above your ear level from the normal sitting position.
-John.
