Hi James,
I bought a pair of CBT24 in September last year. I have a 5.1 home theater setup - for both stereo/surround music and movie with a fixed projector screen. The CBT24 replaced my previous conventional 2 tower speakers. The Pros list in your review captured perfectly how giddily ecstatic I have been with them: "Excellent.., Extraordinary.., Superb.., Remarkably smooth.."!
However, as you rightly pointed out, there's no center. And trying to match them with "...preferably one that can actually keep up with them" has been a frustrating experience. My existing center (which I used to like a lot) now just sounds, well, underwhelming. I have also tried a center from a respected brand with concentric design, but again, it just couldn't keep up.
So I did something that I never thought I would do - I removed the center and settled on a 4.1 configuration! Except for listening positions way to the side of the movie screen (92" diagonal), the phantom center works remarkably well.
I do want to explore having a CBT24 as a center. But not sure how it will work with overhead projector. If I used a drop down acoustic transparent screen, only part of the speakers is behind the screen - not sure if this will screw up the CBT characteristics. Perhaps a big enough screen that will "cover" all three CBT24 - and the screen will have to reach the floor? Anyway, appreciate if you or Don have any advise and comments on this.
What speaker configuration did you use for testing the movies? Do you add a CBT24 central?
Thanks again for the nice and informative review.
Glad to see you are enjoying your CBT24s as I did with mine!
Per your questions, as you say, the way in which you outline the possible use of a CBT24 as a center does negate a couple of their advantages, but I think it would probably still work OK and sound fine. If you used a screen that reached to the floor, that would work to solve that problem, but that might make for a sub-optimal viewing angle. Depending on your viewing position, that still might be doable though.
One interesting idea might be to take two CBT24 speakers, omit the base, and attach them at the bottom for a larger arc, and then use that horizontally. This way, the shading between the drivers will be consistent for that kind of use. Here is a pic of what I am talking about:
Of course, if you elevate that off the ground, you do get floor bounce, but that isn't the end of the world for the sound. And that would be one hell of a center, it would easily keep up with your left and right fronts. You would want an outboard two-channel amplifier for a center like that, and use a splitter on your center channel pre-out. Since you can not buy these things individually, you would have a spare CBT to do this with anyway. The caveat with a center like that would be it would have wide vertical dispersion, and not so wide horizontal dispersion. This might not be a bid deal because the response of the vertical dispersion of a CBT24 is so uniform, and the pasting it into a center like that makes it so wide that even though it won't shoot out sound at a wide angle, it will still cover a large area. I will see if I can rope Don in here to comment on this potentially dumb idea.
By the way, for my own surround sound listening, I just used my Infinity Primus p362 center. That isn't a big fancy center, but it is a real over-achiever as far as center speakers go. I have yet to see a center speaker that measures better.
