Center channels: why only horizontal arrays?

03-09-09: Dcrugby...
i'm getting a funny image in my head, though, with the way you've got "aesthetics" spelled there, Pmcneil - i'm seeing a bunch of buddhist monks watching movies on a nice home theater system, but it has a horizontal center channel because they've renounced the luxury and materialism of a vertical center channel...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Reminded me of this...

"Monastery Life"

A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.

He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.
The head monk, says, 'We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.'

He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery
where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked
vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go
by and nobody sees the old abbot .

So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall and wailing.
We missed theR!
We missed theR!
We missed theR!'
His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying
uncontrollably. The young monk asks the old abbot, 'What's wrong, father?'
With A choking voice, the old abbot replies,

'The word was...

CELEBRATE!!!'

Aesthetics. A vertical array will have better off-axis performance although you probably don't have seating far enough out.

A speaker with identical drivers, cross-overs, baffle width, and enclosure volume will provide the best match and not have anomalies where a sound track spreads music across the front 3 speakers.

Definately, matched is best. However, that's not always possible, especially with rare, or very expensive, or huge mains.

I wired two Klipsch RF-7's (modified horn crossovers) together in mono through my processor, flanking my 60" monitor. Each RF-7 gets dedicated amps from my Proceed AMP 5.

They are toed-in slightly and far and away exceed the sound of a single RC-7 on a stand below the screen (good for smaller rooms). It also looks much better.

Dual-centers in horizontal arrays is ideal with a large monitor in my 30 x 30 space. Realistic soundstage, spaciousness, and lots of clear headroom. Much improved in every way.

Rather, the RF-7's are positioned in the usual VERTICAL array flanking the monitor.

There are speaker companies that will not release a center speaker because they feel a horizontal speaker is too much of a comprimise over a vertical speaker. They also do not have enough room to make a proper vertical speaker for HT.