2 vs. 4 woofers for Klipsch Center Channel?

[phillipsd85]

Greetings, fellow Speaker-nuts. Now that I've finally entered the surround sound world in the past few months, it might be time for an upgrade on my center channel. We currently have a 5.1 Klipsch setup in our home theater area:

Left & Right: RP-260F (the previous model of the current RP-6000F)
Center: RP-250C (the previous version of the current RP-500C)
Rear: RP-402S
Subwoofer: Miller & Kreisel Sound MX-200

The front & center channels all have (2) 5-1/4" woofers each. The rear channels have the smallest woofers (4") of all the channels, so logic would suggest to upgrade these to the RP-502S first to match the rest of the woofer sizes. But these were a Christmas gift, so I'll hang on to them for a bit longer. Plus, it's the first time we've had surround signal, so we're still pretty Wow-ed by it. What I'm not 100% satisfied with yet is the center channel. Can't quite put it into words, but it feels like something's missing. I've played with the crossover, even setting the level higher by almost 2dB. It almost sounds like it can't quite keep up. As someone told me recently, "You can never go too big on a center channel, since it carries 90% of the signal."

I'm wondering if there really is much of a difference in upgrading the center channel from a 2-woofer speaker to a 4-woofer? Crutchfield has the older model RP-450C with (4) 5-1/4" woofers for almost half the price of the current model.

 

[ryanosaur]

They are both relatively poor designs. You would be better off trying to get a single bookshelf speaker to use as your center channel.
Acoustically, the horizontal MTM design will always experience Lobing, or uneven horizontal dispersion due to the interference of the different drivers acting on the wavefronts emanating from the other drivers. What this means is you may here perfect dialog clarity at one seat, but not two feet away, but then again at 5’ off axis it will be back. (Those numbers are arbitrary, but the phenomena is real.)

 

[lovinthehd]

Might also consider speaker placement in the current setup....any room for improvement there first?

Adding more mid-woofers for what particularly? If you need more bottom end perhaps more/better subwoofage would be more effective?

 

[MDK210]

Well it's not 90% but I understand where you are coming from. Different thoughts on what people feel a center can do or whether you should run an MTM style vs bookshelf/floor speaker, etc. Personally I don't feel there are a lot of center channels that keep up with each companies top flagship models. Pay $10K for a L/R and spend $1K on a subpar center just seems wrong and will be the weakest point. If you have some strong speakers then take the center channel out to see if you like it. Spaced appropriately you can get a good phantom center or even better if what the company offers isn't so great. It's all personal preference so setup your current speakers the best way you can, add a center and if it sounds worse then remove it. Having no center is better than having an undeveloped or poorly placed one.