Which Speaker System ?

Phantom center is great for the one who sits in the center line with the video screen , not so good for everyone else.

Bill

Makes sense

I received the Palladiums, P37F, last night.  I'm impressed!  Are they as good as my reference Magnepan 20.7's; no.  But they sound pretty darn good!  And they will work much better as an excellent home theater speaker.  

I only bought two of the rears (P27's).  Do you have a perference for 5.1 setup vs 7.1?  Perhaps I should get two additional rears.

If your serious about the center channel read no further.

After dicking around with hi-fi floor standers and similar but different bipolars (suck) and yet another for the center for 5.1 and relying on room correction to balance everything out. Even when a production is mixed in 5.1 most modern 7.1 receivers do a very good job of matrixing in the side channels. It's not often you hear of someone going back to 5.1. 

When I finally had a dedicated HT space I purchased a 7.1 receiver and settled on a pair of new, a pair of used, and a pair of demos, and a demo center channel Triangle Comets. The more sensitivity of the speakers design the better.

The dedicated space allowed me to more evenly space the speakers which used much less room correction. Within the first ten minutes of Master and Commander the importance of using exactly the same speakers at the same distance from the floor and as equally spaced as possible became stunningly apparent.

I have put together a couple of far less expensive 7.1 systems using Pioneer speakers in one and more recently Elac's in another with remarkable success. Keep in mind it's only TV.