Importance of Center Channel in small room

To me the main reason for a center speaker is if you sit off to one side. Then the center speaker makes the dialogue seem to come out of the tv. Finding a center speaker that actually matches the fronts is not all that easy. My office is about the size of your room and I don't feel any need to get another speaker. I just feel like if you don't need it and you like the sound of your fronts by themselves, don't mess with it. Dan

I have a small room, 12x13. I use a center channel, mostly with three channel, hybrid SACD's. Most of the latter come from masters that were three channel mono. So, the hybrid is three mono channels. Miles/Blue is one of the disk's and and sounds great. I also use the center for other two channel stereo, using a VAS 1 preamp that has a center out.

You are right about the sound stage, I have the speakers, ProAc's 1sc, about a foot off the side walls.

Tweaking goes on.

Yes, even in a smaller room, the cc speaker does improve overall soundstage and imaging when it comes to playing music in surround sound or even 3 channel as for Tiger above. No question about it.

As I built my HT system over time (as funds allowed), the center channel was the last speaker I purchased. I was using the TV's speakers as the center channel for dialog and it wasn't bad. It worked. For music though, no good. I then went to small satellite type speaker for the center channel and that certainly improved the dialog for a while. Now I just recently upgraded to a full blown cc speaker (new B&W HTM61). Now the entire overall sound in music, movies, concert DVD's, and dialog has improved considerably. But that's the fun of it. Going one step at a time. For pure music, this HTM61 has greatly improved the soundstage, bass extension and punch, detail, vocals, and imaging of my system (Rotel A-V receiver). For movies, dialog is far superior now. So yes, it's important not only to have a cc speaker but the selection for your particular application is equally important.

Problems: with no center in your small (acoustically very difficut) room, you will have to sit smack dab in the middle of the room to get a Phantom center. If you don't, yo'll have dialogue collaps into one speaker - not connecting with your monitor/video immage. If you, on the otherhand, do sit in the middle of the room by yourself, you've now put yourself in a horrible acoustical spot in your room, yes! (that's where all the nasty peaks and dips in the frequency response is.)
In small 10 x 12'ish rooms, I'm alsmost always using two seat setup's, with the seats either in the 1/3 width and lenght dimmensions, or in the 1/3 width and 1/5th lenght dimmension (or, with smaller seats, maybe 2/5th and 3/5th width positions, depending).
These positions, in relation to proper speaker settings (in rectangular closed-in rooms), offer smoother frequency response, fundamentally.
So, if it were me, I'd give up on your center, so called, "sweet spot", and do dual seating arrangements - if it were me. And, I'd be DEFINITELY chosing a center speaker, yes.