Thanx! I'll see if I can find one to audition, locally; I have always liked KEF speakers ; they always sounded smooth to me...
Enjoy!
You are not alone. I have to ask. How does your rig sound without a center channel? I ask as I have come to the conclusion a lot of centers do more harm than good.
The center speaker is the hardest speaker of all to design properly in my view. I think most are thrown together without much thought and the results sound like it.
The secret of a good center is non resonant bass and above all acoustic coherency.
The ideal arrangement for a center in my view is one based around a good coaxial driver.
That is what I designed in my AV room. That is why KEF is a good choice.
The next best solution is a three way with tweeter above the mid. However there is a caveat, for optimal results the mid needs to cover the whole speech discrimination band. That means a crossover at 400 Hz and 3.5KHz or better 4KHz. Unfortunately mids that can do that, are far and few between. My center in the great room does that using a Morel Mid that can meet my specification.
We now have good dome mids available from Madisound who can supply the VOLT dome midranges from the UK.
My family room system has no center, but the speakers use the Dynaudio D76 unfortunately NLA with cross at 400Hz and 4KHz. All of the systems have clear natural speech and I have never had to boost the center on the two systems with centers.
One last observation is the the great room system with the speakers fairly close together sounds virtually identical whether the center is used or just right and left. I have blind tested my wife and she can tell no difference whatsoever.
The reason for such widespread poor performance of centers is a sever lack of coaxial and good midrange drivers to choose from. In addition a horizontal MTM is a non starter in my view and will always be way sub optimal.
