You could ask a dozen professional reviewers, speaker designers, audio equipment engineers, and retail av sales guys their opinions on such matters, and you'll most likely end up with variance across the board. I believe this is true. In fact, I've been around all of these people, heard their opinions, advice, and theories for years. Yes, that's why we all end up with different gear, make different choices, etc. In fact when you talk about these matters directly to some engineers in this business, you'll most emphatically get some very very passionate, heavily biased recommendations and views, as if God himself had spoken on the matter! Yeah, some are that opinionated - and passionately so, in many circumstances! It's like their identity..it's who they are. So, yeah, do weigh through the advise, and find out for yourself, if you really want to know.
Basically, what's ultimately right is what's right for you in the end - considering all the differing variables we all experience in our homes/setups, varied tastes, biases, preferences others recommend,whatever.
I personally would always recommend to any audio enthusiest who's trying to figure things out, that they first start out with what they find as advice from typical pro reviewers, and try to dissect as much as possible, even following their examples, looking at their personal system choices, etc. (heck, you can always try emailing them and asking what they think!). Then it might be easier to find a foundation from which to work from. After that though, to find out what personally YOU THINK is best for your tastes, you ultimately need to try some options to see what you think. That's THE only way! Otherwise, no matter what any of us recommends, you still have to chose whether you like chocolate of vanilla, desert or no desert, or even dinning alone or with company. It's all personal, and what you like might not be my cup, etc.
That all said, there are still always lots of variables at play, some or many of which you may or may not be aware are at play when you make choices - in this case, center or no center. I mean, you could very well chose to match a "matching center" with your stereo mains, from the same manufacture, which might be recommended by them as "the right speaker", and it could end up being a poor performer as a center, say! It could happen. The tonality may or may not ultimately be a good match. But, say, dynamics could be weak, or other factors, including some other technical differences. Also the same, you could have 3 matching L/C/R's across the front to substitute, and not like have em set up well, or they may all be not so good in your setup, whatever. Or, another VERY COMMON mistake is misplacing your center, acoustically in your room, or in relation to your seating arrangement - getting say bad off-axis tonality, weak dynamics, etc, like as in bad frequency response and poor crossover integration with the sub, etc.
So, it's not always so straight forward.
Still, my experience, and I think this is shared almost unanimously around the professional system designer, speaker maker, and pro reviewers view-points on the matter, that getting as close to matching speaker all across the front is a critical foundational choice! I would never start recommending to someone, who's looking to improve their system, that they can either forgo a center (which has unanimously been accepted and recommended by pro's for years now - most of which have seen hundreds of systems intimately, and tried it all), or used a different brand of speaker - whether they feel it sounds "close" to the others or not!
Bottom line, with all due respect to opinions (hey, I just recommend options and look for buying signals, and offer what I feel is best based on needs and desires), is that if you can't experience some first hand systems, and try to work with someone on recommendations and options, then you gotta get in there and try some stuff yourself, one variable at a time, and then you'll start to learn some things. Otherwise, it's a journey.
All of that dissertation aside (lol) and I would say is that all you have to do is experiment with your options and see what you come up with. Then tell us what you found. Me, I'd likely end up with it back in, if you have a wide enough spread, with any sort of mult-seating setup.
good luck
