Can I swap out a center channel speaker?

[MIKED33]

I have a Athena Micra 6 set-up and I've been pretty happy with it overall. My question is, is there anything specific I have to be wary of if I want to get a new center channel speaker for this system? Does it have to match the other speakers, Ohms and whatever means anything?? I'm pretty clueless in this respect.

I basically want to be able to hear dialogue a little better when watching dvds and thought a better center channel would do the trick. OR, would i be better served by tweaking my receiver to bump up the volume of my center channel over the rest of the speakers? i have an onkyo 504(?). also, would it help if i entered the listening distance for each speaker? i haven't done that.
any help is appreciated.
thanks.
mike

 

[Rob Babcock]

Well, certainly you'll want a model that's compatible with whatever's driving it. Many recievers don't like low impedance loads, so generally you'll want to stick with 6-8 ohm speakers. My advice would be to stick with the same brand; it's very important that the front three speakers be well voice matched. Although even different model lines by the same company sometimes sound different enough as to compromise the presentation. For example, my Monitor Audio Silver Center didn't match my Monitor Audio Gold Ref 20's closely enough to work with music, although it wasn't terrible with movies (not perfect, though).

 

[jcPanny]

Athena Center channel

I have an Athena Audition series center channel speaker (AS-C1.1), let me know if you are interested.

Replacing only the center channel should help with dialog, but for the best performance, you should consider bookshelf fornts that match the center channel. You could use the extra satellites for the surround back channels.

 

[j_garcia]

The Audition series is fairly close in timbre to the Micra package, so you should be able to use them without issue. I agree with what jcPanny said regarding switching to bookshelf speakers up front too.