How to choose a center speaker.

[classicrock]

I have a pair of Martin Logan Purity towers. Do I need to stay with ML's for a center (expensive) or are their other brands that will work good with them. What should I look for when shopping for a center?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Most people will recommend staying with the same brand and even same driver sizes for best "timbre matching" and all that good stuff.

Some people, on the other hand, think the Center speaker and especially the surround speakers are very over-rated, and can be substituted; they feel the most important speakers are the front Left & Right speakers anyway, and some just watch movies in 2.0.

Each side has a valid argument.

I think the most important thing is to make sure all speakers are level-matched to the reference 75dBC, and that the front 3 speakers are all accurate per frequency response measurements.

 

[3db]

I have a pair of Martin Logan Purity towers. Do I need to stay with ML's for a center (expensive) or are their other brands that will work good with them. What should I look for when shopping for a center?

For consistency with pans from left to right and right to left, it is best if you match your center with the l/r mains. Thats a rule of thumb.

 

[Pyrrho]

The ideal match is a speaker that is identical to the front right and left speakers. That way, when a sound pans across the front, its tonal qualities remain precisely the same (except, of course, for the effects of room acoustics due to the speakers not being in the same spot, but anything moving in your room would change in sound due to that and is not an unnatural sounding difference). Most people don't do that, and often go with something that is "voice matched", which typically uses the same tweeter and possibly the same midwoofer as the front right and left speakers. Some others don't mind the center tonally different, and so they select whatever they want to select.

Now, what you should do depends on what matters to you and what you like and what you can afford to do and what is possible to do.

Given the height of your front right and left speakers, you probably do not want another one in the middle, as then it would likely be blocking the TV or the TV would likely be too high. I personally would try whatever Martin Logan speaker it is that they recommend with that model. Otherwise, I would do without a center speaker entirely. But that is my preference, and you may feel differently.

In my case, I use identical speakers all around, and I will never even go back to using merely a "voice matched" center speaker, as I like perfect voice matching which is only obtained with identical speakers.