Choosing A Good Centre Speaker:

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The Centre Speaker:

Apart from the subwoofer, the lynchpin of the Home Theatre System is the centre speaker. You can do a simple experiment, and disconnect the front left and right speaker, and audition. You may find that it does not affect the whole experience much! However, if you remove the centre speaker, the entire experience collapses.

When you are in the hunt for a new HT system, choose one that has a good centre speaker. And size does matter. How does it produce a male baritone voice? This is a good litmus test, and you should bring a good soundtrack or disc that specifically does that.

The movie: "The Grand Hotel Budapest" does this very well. It's a dialogue driven movie, and you should try and close your eyes, then try to make out the various voices, and see if they truly resemble the voices of who they are supposed to be. Then try a BBC radio using the built in tuner, and see if you enjoy the quality of the voice. The other disc that does well on this was mentioned before: The start of the "Transformers 1" when the voiceover of Optimus comes in.

When you buy a new AV amp, if the internal amps of the amp are not top shelf, you may want to consider adding a good power amp to help bring that centre speaker to life.
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 I have no financial interest or other interests in any of the items / events I write about.

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