Perlisten S7t Tower Speaker Review

[TLS Guy]

Thanks James four your usual thorough and fully documented review. I hope I will have an opportunity to hear these beasts. The design decisions made raise some interesting issues. First, and most obvious, the complexity of the design, including the number of drivers and the unconventional crossover topology, would clearly have been far easier to implement with an active dsp approach, and the results might well have been even better. The explanation is equally clear--active audiophile speakers just aren't very popular, a fact that keeps me in business but is probably irrational.

The much more complicated issue is that of controlled vertical directivity. Reducing floor and ceiling reflections in a controlled manner certainly has intuitive appeal, and I participated in an experiment with a local electrical engineer to see whether such a response pattern could be implemented in a tower version of my BMR using concepts borrowed from radar radiation theory, which was my friend's specialty. The approach required 7 drivers critically spaced and integrated drivers with asymmetrical crossover slopes, and differing output levels for the two sets of BMR midrange drivers. It could be that the theoretical basis was similar to that used by Perlisten, although as the picture below shows, no wave guide was involved. In addition to the "radar" crossover slopes used to control and restrict vertical directivity, I also developed a perfectly conventional crossover using garden-variety 4th order Linkwitz-Riley slopes with no particular consideration of vertical directivity, which was quite ragged given the layout of the drivers.

The Radar version of the tower pretty much hit the target radiation pattern, and the vertical dispersion was definitely narrower and more even than for the conventional crossover slopes. I thought the Radar version sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I thought the regular tower sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I just listened to Erin's very interesting interview with Floyd Toole, which touched on vertical dispersion issues. In uncharacteristic fashion, Floyd punted when it came to whether or not there were audible virtues to restricting vertical dispersion. He claimed that people are so used to hearing floor reflections in real life that listeners thought one of his speakers that limited floor bounce just sounded kind of weird. His remarks on ceiling reflections were less focused, but unlike his opinions concerning just about every other aspect of sound reproduction, Floyd just shrugged his shoulders on this one.

All of this isn't to throw any doubt on the quality of the Perlisten speaker. The measurements pretty much tell the story. But I don't think we're at the point where we can say with any certainty that Perlisten's attention to vertical directivity is an important contributor to James' enjoyment of the speakers. I think we all need to keep an open mind on this issue and recognize that the returns aren't in on this one yet.

I tend to agree with your views on this. I would say however that since Jo D'Appolito introduced his MTM configuration, I would say I have a preference for it, but not an exclusionary one. That configuration does favor horizontal dispersion over vertical. Speakers that significantly limit horizontal dispersion have never found favor with me. I tend to believe the main reason these speakers found favor with the reviewers, was because of their superb frequency response more than anything else.
The other big issue is getting the bass right. An uncontrolled high Q bass destroys the illusion. So a tight articulate bass, is mandatory for me. To some up, for me if a speaker has a good flat frequency response, with a good transients, wide and accurate horizontal dispersion, and a well defined articulate bass, it will be a winner.
The unfortunate fact is that so very few speakers have it all.

 

[shadyJ]

Thanks James four your usual thorough and fully documented review. I hope I will have an opportunity to hear these beasts. The design decisions made raise some interesting issues. First, and most obvious, the complexity of the design, including the number of drivers and the unconventional crossover topology, would clearly have been far easier to implement with an active dsp approach, and the results might well have been even better. The explanation is equally clear--active audiophile speakers just aren't very popular, a fact that keeps me in business but is probably irrational.

The much more complicated issue is that of controlled vertical directivity. Reducing floor and ceiling reflections in a controlled manner certainly has intuitive appeal, and I participated in an experiment with a local electrical engineer to see whether such a response pattern could be implemented in a tower version of my BMR using concepts borrowed from radar radiation theory, which was my friend's specialty. The approach required 7 drivers critically spaced and integrated drivers with asymmetrical crossover slopes, and differing output levels for the two sets of BMR midrange drivers. It could be that the theoretical basis was similar to that used by Perlisten, although as the picture below shows, no wave guide was involved. In addition to the "radar" crossover slopes used to control and restrict vertical directivity, I also developed a perfectly conventional crossover using garden-variety 4th order Linkwitz-Riley slopes with no particular consideration of vertical directivity, which was quite ragged given the layout of the drivers.

The Radar version of the tower pretty much hit the target radiation pattern, and the vertical dispersion was definitely narrower and more even than for the conventional crossover slopes. I thought the Radar version sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I thought the regular tower sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I just listened to Erin's very interesting interview with Floyd Toole, which touched on vertical dispersion issues. In uncharacteristic fashion, Floyd punted when it came to whether or not there were audible virtues to restricting vertical dispersion. He claimed that people are so used to hearing floor reflections in real life that listeners thought one of his speakers that limited floor bounce just sounded kind of weird. His remarks on ceiling reflections were less focused, but unlike his opinions concerning just about every other aspect of sound reproduction, Floyd just shrugged his shoulders on this one.

All of this isn't to throw any doubt on the quality of the Perlisten speaker. The measurements pretty much tell the story. But I don't think we're at the point where we can say with any certainty that Perlisten's attention to vertical directivity is an important contributor to James' enjoyment of the speakers. I think we all need to keep an open mind on this issue and recognize that the returns aren't in on this one yet.View attachment 47823

Agreed, as far as I know, the definitive research in how vertical reflections affect the perceived sound quality doesn't really exist yet. Until it is, I would say the most advantageous thing to do is have a vertical directivity that is consistent, whether it be broad or narrow. With the S7ts, you really do get that, and it is unambiguous where the right listening height is. If you aren't far from the speaker, you can simply stand up, and most of the sound except for the bass disappears. One of the great things about them is how clear it is that you are listening at the correct height. That isn't to say it has a small sweet spot or really narrow vertical beam but rather when you are out of that area of full sound, it is readily obvious.

Another speaker that I liked which took a different tack is the RBH PM-8 which had a wide vertical dispersion but it was fairly even and didn't have big crossover nulls in the vertical off-axis. You could listen to that thing at a pretty high or low angle and it didn't change the sound character that much.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Just a followup:

Watching the first video, and I screencapped this specifically:

View attachment 47815

This, along with your assertion in the video about live recordings versus studio recordings et al, seem weird to me, because I have a pair of extremely narrow dispersion speakers (Belle Klipsch), and we listen to a ton of live recordings. Even my wife, who is a complete novice regarding acoustics and sound, finds it remarkable how immersive an experience it is listening on this system, "as though you're right there in the audience" is a frequent comment from her.

Granted, there are a lot of moving parts involved here, such as the fact that I do NOT toe the speakers inward to our primary listening space (an aesthetic choice I had to make to keep the peace) and the fact that this is a very, very live room, with glass sliders and tiled floor (though there is a carpet and the furniture is fabric), and I haven't treated it at all yet. The big advantage I have regarding treatment in this room is the utter lack of bass nulls, because the room is L-shaped and has numerous outcroppings and doorway/entry points that disrupt virtually all the parallel surfaces except floor/ceiling.

But I did find it interesting, anyway. Otherwise, it's a fascinating discussion.

These are well established phenomena backed up by lab experiments. Though apparently I had a typo. That second bullet point should say image placement is less distinct, not more.

But live recordings isn't the same thing as a symphony. I think you have to keep in mind what we are comparing here. it is not live vs studio. It is large natural acoustic recordings vs those which lack those large natural spatial cues.

For the most part, a speakers radiation pattern has no impact on apparently source width in an anechoic environment. We hear all speakers as essentially point sources. That is why evaluating speakers in an anechoic chamber tells you so little about its sound. Place it in a room with reflections however and the dispersion pattern dictates the ASW. This is a fact, not an opinion. The wider the dispersion, the greater the ASW.

But something else comes along with this, the wider the dispersion, the higher the ASW, the lower the phantom object specificity. That is, it becomes harder to hear exactly where a phantom image is coming from. With a large orchestra in a symphonic hall, this is quite natural. If you look at David Griesinger's work on proximity, you will see this is a phenomena he finds to be true in symphonies too. But his work also raises an issue. He finds that the higher the proximity score the better someone perceives the quality of the performance. That means that the greater the direct to reflected sound ratio (caused by sitting with greater proximity to the source, among other things) the better we can delineate the instruments in the sound stage and prefer this. That suggests that overly reflective rooms with overly wide dispersion is not a good thing. It's a balancing act.

Again, that is what is true for a symphony.

Now lets look at the very loaded word "live performance" and think about most examples of this. A rock concert, like Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii. That's a live performance. Has nothing to do with the prior statement though. This is no different than a studio recording when it comes to acoustics. These live events are amplified and the recordings come off the mixing board. That means everything is direct mic feeds. Sometimes there have been events where extra micrphones in a Blumlein arrangement (or similar) are added to bring back the natural sound of being there, but even then, everyone there didn't hear the natural sound of the acoustics of that environment or those instruments. It was all artificially amplified. So there are no "real" acoustics to a live rock concert.

There have been some very cool attempts to fix this over the years, but it isn't common.

Jay Pritzker Pavilion - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and

LARES - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

These are designed to give a live amplified performance the natural sound if that performance were able to be performed inside a concert hall without amplification. It's a fairly accurate recreation of a phenomena that isn't actually possible.

In fact, the acoustic phenomena I talk about here are related to ideas that are correct and accurate for acoustics generally, but do not apply to most of what we hear. Most of what we hear is lousy. It's artificial. But keep in mind, something being acoustically lousy doesn't mean its emotionally lousy. A concert can have a great vibe to it with the musicians really feeling each other, their audience, and really putting on a great show. We can sense that and enjoy it. We can get an emotional reaction to it. It can make our hairs stand on end. But....That has nothing to do with acoustics.

Acoustics is a tricky business that a lot of folks don't really understand. Specifically psychoacoustics, a lot of folks don't fully understand how we hear what we hear and how that translates to what a sound reproduction system is doing. It really isn't all that intuitive. Reproduced music is generally highly artificial. What we hear is not a natural musical event. It makes it really hard to know how it is supposed to sound. The reason why a lot of researchers and audiophiles prized classical recordings were that they were the one kind of music where there was an obvious natural event to compare against. There existed a point of reference and it made sense. For me, it's about enjoyment, I just don't care. But I understand the issues well enough to at least talk about these differing goals.

For me, the artificial studio recordings often were engineered utilizing low reflection or reflection free environments and the spaciousness was largely added artificially if at all. Often, it wasn't added at all. That means that I don't find those recordings to sound as good to me (this is my subjective opinion) with wide dispersion speakers in a lively room. I prefer them reproduced in a dry room with controlled dispersion speakers. But not everyone agrees and there is no right or wrong to that.

 

[Kvn_Walker]

I tend to agree with your views on this. I would say however that since Jo D'Appolito introduced his MTM configuration, I would say I have a preference for it, but not an exclusionary one. That configuration does favor horizontal dispersion over vertical. Speakers that significantly limit horizontal dispersion have never found favor with me. I tend to believe the main reason these speakers found favor with the reviewers, was because of their superb frequency response more than anything else.
The other big issue is getting the bass right. An uncontrolled high Q bass destroys the illusion. So a tight articulate bass, is mandatory for me. To some up, for me if a speaker has a good flat frequency response, with a good transients, wide and accurate horizontal dispersion, and a well defined articulate bass, it will be a winner.
The unfortunate fact is that so very few speakers have it all.

I read a lot of speaker reviews and one thing’s for sure… you can pay a lot more and get a lot less.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

Thanks James four your usual thorough and fully documented review. I hope I will have an opportunity to hear these beasts. The design decisions made raise some interesting issues. First, and most obvious, the complexity of the design, including the number of drivers and the unconventional crossover topology, would clearly have been far easier to implement with an active dsp approach, and the results might well have been even better. The explanation is equally clear--active audiophile speakers just aren't very popular, a fact that keeps me in business but is probably irrational.

The much more complicated issue is that of controlled vertical directivity. Reducing floor and ceiling reflections in a controlled manner certainly has intuitive appeal, and I participated in an experiment with a local electrical engineer to see whether such a response pattern could be implemented in a tower version of my BMR using concepts borrowed from radar radiation theory, which was my friend's specialty. The approach required 7 drivers critically spaced and integrated drivers with asymmetrical crossover slopes, and differing output levels for the two sets of BMR midrange drivers. It could be that the theoretical basis was similar to that used by Perlisten, although as the picture below shows, no wave guide was involved. In addition to the "radar" crossover slopes used to control and restrict vertical directivity, I also developed a perfectly conventional crossover using garden-variety 4th order Linkwitz-Riley slopes with no particular consideration of vertical directivity, which was quite ragged given the layout of the drivers.

The Radar version of the tower pretty much hit the target radiation pattern, and the vertical dispersion was definitely narrower and more even than for the conventional crossover slopes. I thought the Radar version sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I thought the regular tower sounded great--clear as a bell and very neutral. I just listened to Erin's very interesting interview with Floyd Toole, which touched on vertical dispersion issues. In uncharacteristic fashion, Floyd punted when it came to whether or not there were audible virtues to restricting vertical dispersion. He claimed that people are so used to hearing floor reflections in real life that listeners thought one of his speakers that limited floor bounce just sounded kind of weird. His remarks on ceiling reflections were less focused, but unlike his opinions concerning just about every other aspect of sound reproduction, Floyd just shrugged his shoulders on this one.

All of this isn't to throw any doubt on the quality of the Perlisten speaker. The measurements pretty much tell the story. But I don't think we're at the point where we can say with any certainty that Perlisten's attention to vertical directivity is an important contributor to James' enjoyment of the speakers. I think we all need to keep an open mind on this issue and recognize that the returns aren't in on this one yet.View attachment 47823

Everything you say is true Dennis. James asked me, while he was finishing up the review, for some of the research. All the research is really more inferential. Like we know that vertical reflections are detrimental to concert halls. That's been studied. We know why! But nobody ever studied small listening rooms and speakers. It's just a lot of conjecture. It makes sense that restricting the vertical dispersion while maintaining good horizontal dispersion (and the lateral reflections) will improve ASW and IACC, and that this should then be preferred. But there is a fair counterargument that I've even made. What if IACC rather quickly hits a limit and that all small residential rooms are basically maxed out. The literature supports this to a point. The preference and detection thresholds for IACC were all for IACC levels worse than what is ever found in a small residential room.

You know me, I tend to be in the controlled directivity camp. But you also know that I am more than capable of enjoying wide dispersion speakers too.

The active speaker issue is goofy in my opinion. Active systems are capable of doing a lot of interesting and worthwhile things that passive systems cannot. They are more efficient. Perlisten (and I am sure you go through this too) have to sort through a lot of crossover parts to find the one that has the right price and performance to avoid problems. But you want an inductor for a large 3-way speaker to use on a low-pass filter that won't dramatically add resistance and can handle big power (500-1000 watts RMS), good luck. They cost a fortune and usually have steel cores, which many don't want. Yet I just recently had a client that was looking at the Perlistens vs an Active speaker option. The active speaker option isn't better or worse, just different, but had some advantages for this individual. They wouldn't even consider it.

I would like to see Perlisten offer their in-wall custom install speaker line in a version that comes with either no crossover and a set of parameters to set inside a processor or passive waveguide/array crossover and no crossover on the highpass of that and midbass drivers to allow for active at that level. It may not make much difference, but with 32 channel processors and built in crossover and PEQ, why not. That is how companies like procella do it, so I think it makes a lot of sense if they want to compete in that market.

 

[bombadil]

sorry if i missed this, but where are these speakers manufactured?

 

[Matthew J Poes]

sorry if i missed this, but where are these speakers manufactured?

China. The company is based here. All design and engineering is here. But actual manufacturing is at the same facility Claridy has been using for all their other products.

 

[D Murphy]

I read a lot of speaker reviews and one thing’s for sure… you can pay a lot more and get a lot less.

True for a lot of things (except paper towels). Anyhow, if a brand new speaker company is going to invest a lot of resources in a risky project like this, I would expect them to ask for a decent return. I suspect that the basic design approach will filter down to less expensive versions, albeit with less output capability.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

True for a lot of things (except paper towels). Anyhow, if a brand new speaker company is going to invest a lot of resources in a risky project like this, I would expect them to ask for a decent return. I suspect that the basic design approach will filter down to less expensive versions, albeit with less output capability.

That is exactly what is happening.

Welcome

Perlisten Audio - The art of emotional connection and discovery through perceptual listening. American manufacturer featuring speakers, subwoofers, and in-wall speakers.

www.perlistenaudio.com

and much more is coming.

 

[D Murphy]

Everything you say is true Dennis. James asked me, while he was finishing up the review, for some of the research. All the research is really more inferential. Like we know that vertical reflections are detrimental to concert halls. That's been studied. ow companies like procella do it, so I think it makes a lot of sense if they want to compete in that market.

That's a very interesting point about concert halls, and it raises another complication. The reflections you hear in a concert hall or smaller concert venue emanate from pure direct sound from the instruments and voices. A recording of the event will already have that ambient information in the mix. Does it then follow that the same best-practice rules concerning good concert hall design apply to reflections from a sound source that already includes reflections? This was the key fallacy in Dr. Bose's design for the 901 speaker. He observed that most of the sound in a concert hall is reflected, not direct. I forget the exact ratio, but whatever it was he tried to replicate it with the number and positioning of all the little drivers in the front and rear baffle. The result was reflected sound getting reflected all around small living rooms, with results that varied from fun to bizarre.

 

[Movie2099]

Wonder how the JTR 215RT compares?

Different kind of speaker. Will not sound the same. But JTR's do kick ass.

 

[Matthew J Poes]

That's a very interesting point about concert halls, and it raises another complication. The reflections you hear in a concert hall or smaller concert venue emanate from pure direct sound from the instruments and voices. A recording of the event will already have that ambient information in the mix. Does it then follow that the same best-practice rules concerning good concert hall design apply to reflections from a sound source that already includes reflections? This was the key fallacy in Dr. Bose's design for the 901 speaker. He observed that most of the sound in a concert hall is reflected, not direct. I forget the exact ratio, but whatever it was he tried to replicate it with the number and positioning of all the little drivers in the front and rear baffle. The result was reflected sound getting reflected all around small living rooms, with results that varied from fun to bizarre.

I do think it's complicated. But here is the fallacy in assuming a recording already contains all the spatial information we need to accurately hear a recording performance. That this can be reproduced and understood in the same way if it all comes from 2 speakers with no reflections. I think you know that in this extreme, an anechoic chamber, we do not hear spaciousness and ASW is dramatically reduced. The sound of those reflections are there, but not the key indicators the brain needs to process them. That is because in the large venue, these reflections are coming from all around us and their direction does matter.

But every leading acoustician or acoustical physicist I have ever talked to has always warned the same thing, don't apply what we know to be true in large room acoustics to small rooms. Not because it isn't true, but because we know nobody did that research and there is good reason to believe it doesn't follow. Until its studied, its pure speculation. We know reflections matter, it isn't just what is in the recording. But there are clear differences between a large and small room and the goals of 2-channel sound reproduction and that of the original musical event.

But what I keep seeing, is that as people start to take this apart and research it, we see more and more evidence that the rules do hold true, but things are also scaling. So my idea that we might have hit the maximum limit that matters could well be true and that is what needs to be studied. We hear tiny differences in RDT down to 0, so we know that continues to matter in small rooms. Recently a study out of the University of Washington found that adding diffusion to lateral reflections made the room sound larger, often much larger. That too holds true in large rooms, so the idea that it was still true in small rooms is an interesting finding. I had actually assumed it wouldn't hold true in small rooms and had been leery of using diffusers as first reflection treatments. I now feel differently.

There is a common approach in treating rooms that relies on this speculation that a small room can be made to behave like a big room, in terms of the psychoacoustic cues, and to make the room sound more realistic, we need to force it behave like a big room too. It's sometimes called the spatial enhancement or spatial support approach. That approach adds a mix of absorption and diffusion to establish a set of metrics that follow more what large rooms tend to be like (but on a smaller scale). A lot of lateral dissimilarity, large early delay time gap, heavily diffused later reflections with a gradual and even decay. This is what people like Peter D'Antonio and Anthony Grimani tend to do, and it's what I will do if someone asks for it. In my conversation with numerous experts about the merits of this approach (because there is no research that really gets at preference for such a room) the feeling was that its all sound theory based, in part, on research. That it makes sense to do this, even for multichannel, because inevitably we will listen to 2 channel or have scenarios where that spatial support is a good thing (it's also a nice room to spend time in generally).

I personally tend to still feel this isn't the right approach for all people in all scenarios and I don't think it works well, if at all, in very small rooms.

 

[D Murphy]

I do think it's complicated. But here is the fallacy in assuming a recording already contains all the spatial information we need to accurately hear a recording performance. That this can be reproduced and understood in the same way if it all comes from 2 speakers with no reflections. I think you know that in this extreme, an anechoic chamber, we do not hear spaciousness and ASW is dramatically reduced.

I personally tend to still feel this isn't the right approach for all people in all scenarios and I don't think it works well, if at all, in very small rooms.

I was ignoring the large vs small room complications simply to add another one. Although 2-channel stereo playback is certainly not a perfect mechanism for retrieving the ambient information in a recording, and it may take room reflections to enhance what does make it through the playback chain, the information is definitely there and probably changes the rules that apply in a live concert venue even ignoring the question of size. I wish all of this helped me design better speakers, but I remain in a confused stupor.

 

[TLS Guy]

That's a very interesting point about concert halls, and it raises another complication. The reflections you hear in a concert hall or smaller concert venue emanate from pure direct sound from the instruments and voices. A recording of the event will already have that ambient information in the mix. Does it then follow that the same best-practice rules concerning good concert hall design apply to reflections from a sound source that already includes reflections? This was the key fallacy in Dr. Bose's design for the 901 speaker. He observed that most of the sound in a concert hall is reflected, not direct. I forget the exact ratio, but whatever it was he tried to replicate it with the number and positioning of all the little drivers in the front and rear baffle. The result was reflected sound getting reflected all around small living rooms, with results that varied from fun to bizarre.

You raise a really good point here that I have always pondered. The limitation of two channel stereo is that the ahead sounds and reflections in the venue, are all coming from straight ahead. That severely limits the illusion right away.

I'm lucky as I have a room, with 11 very good speakers. When I built this new larger room I bought the Marantz AV7705, as I bought a 4K TV.
However the real revelation was the new Dolby upmixer. I have to say it is astonishingly good and really sorts out where sounds and reflections are coming from, from a two channel source. For instance in this recording below, the organ has a flute division on the right and the reed, comes from the division in front. To my astonishment, the upmixer sorts this all out with minimal crosstalk. The spatial arrangement is perfectly recorded like a discrete multichannel recording when it isn't.

I gave a lot of thought to how this room was constructed, and it is of itself a very good sounding room. For the first time ever with the use of the upmixer, the acoustic of the venue is imposed on the room, rather than the room imposing its acoustic. The system does have to be very carefully calibrated though. It takes very little to destroy the illusion. The simpler the mic technique the greater the realism. In Jonathan Scotts Organ Prom from RAH, you can clearly appreciate the reverberations from the dome above from the ceiling speakers. In fact to much so, that in the live broadcast I blew up a couple of my JW modules. So I had to replace them with the Mark Audio equivalents. So far they have taken the punishment.

So now all the venues sound different. Orchestra Hall sounds like it should as do the various opera houses.

This recent concert given by the Schubert Club by that Arteria String Quartet is a case in point. This was recoded with a coincident stereo mic.
The localization of the players is spot on. The result was just like being there.

I have to disagree with Gene though, about center spread. I do not use center spread. Turning that on completely collapses the 3D sound stage.

As I say, I am completely astonished by the accuracy of this Dolby upmixer. At least on this rig it gives by far the most realistic reproduction I have ever heard anywhere.

The sound has 3D imaging in front with good depth illusion and a sound stage wider than the room. In addition you really feel you are not in this room acoustically. I found this a massive surprise when I finished the final stages of the set up of this room. I thought the effects on movies would be fun for the family, especially the grandchildren. I never imagined it would make me rethink my whole approach to the reproduction of music in the home. I hardly ever listen to straight stereo in this room any more.

 

[Trebdp83]

I can understand center spread having an adverse effect on instrumental recordings. But, for those who enjoy two channel music with vocals and want to add an ambient effect with dolby surround, not using center spread results in vocals being focused to the center channel. Not advocating for using it or not, but without the feature one has to accept that vocals will be very center centric while trying to get ambient sounds from surround channels. But, to get back on topic, I might consider time sharing some Perlistens with some folks on the west coast.

 

[Paul Lane]

Looks like a winner..
But way too expensive..

 

[TLS Guy]

I can understand center spread having an adverse effect on instrumental recordings. But, for those who enjoy two channel music with vocals and want to add an ambient effect with dolby surround, not using center spread results in vocals being focused to the center channel. Not advocating for using it or not, but without the feature one has to accept that vocals will be very center centric while trying to get ambient sounds from surround channels. But, to get back on topic, I might consider time sharing some Perlistens with some folks on the west coast.

Well they aren't on my rig. On this rig, if you engage center spread, then it does all go to the center as you would expect, as that is really putting a mono signal to all three front speakers. At least on this rig there is excellent localization and imaging left right and center without center spread. No center spread gives the least centric reproduction on this rig. I suspect you have the center turned up too high.

 

[Trebdp83]

Actually, you would not expect it to be center centric if center spread is on. A two channel music track with vocals will have most if not all of the vocals steered to the center channel using dolby surround unless center spread is on so that those vocals can be spread out to the left and right channels. The process isn’t unlike that used in two channel stereo movie tracks. If your system somehow works in reverse then you would indeed want it set as you do.

 

[TLS Guy]

Actually, you would not expect it to be center centric if center spread is on. A two channel music track with vocals will have most if not all of the vocals steered to the center channel using dolby surround unless center spread is on so that those vocals can be spread out to the left and right channels. The process isn’t unlike that used in two channel stereo movie tracks. If your system somehow works in reverse then you would indeed want it set as you do.

If your speakers image accurately, then if you put the center channel to the left and right also, then you have the same signal split between three speakers instead of one. So if you left and right speakers have pin point center imaging, which mine do, then that signal put on the left and right speakers, has to go right back to the center and added back to the center channel. That has to be the way it would work. If I engage center spread the whole sound stage moves forward and all depth imaging is lost instantly. With the new upmixer, Dolby were initially correct to ditch the center spread.

 

[gene]

Well they aren't on my rig. On this rig, if you engage center spread, then it does all go to the center as you would expect, as that is really putting a mono signal to all three front speakers. At least on this rig there is excellent localization and imaging left right and center without center spread. No center spread gives the least centric reproduction on this rig. I suspect you have the center turned up too high.

Strange you experience this as it's exactly opposite of my findings and the purpose of center spread feature when upmixing 2CH music.