Pin point imaging isn't for everyone

"I’m a little curious about when they were aware of it though."

My recollection is that the other listeners didn’t confirm that they were aware of the sounds off to the sides being not as loud as they were used to. So I don’t think it was obvious. Must admit I did not notice it, but the guy who did is extremely observant and I would trust his ears more than my own.

"Having had a HT system with and without a center, the benefit of the center was much better than I had expected."

I’ve gotten mixed feedback on center channels.

I have several customers who started out with center channel speakers in their home theater systems, then they bought a pair of my controlled-pattern, strongly-toed-in speakers, and felt the sound quality (using phantom center mode) was better than when using the center channel, so they sold their center channel speakers. I presume this was because the center channel speaker did not sound as good as - and/or did not blend well with - the main speakers, and also because in this case the phantom center image remained fairly well centered even for off-centerline listeners. (These were not cheap center channel speakers being unseated - they cost more than one of my main speakers).

So IF the center channel speaker sounds as good as the left and right speakers, or close enough, it is probably a qualitative improvement. (As an aside, I have yet to hear a conventional sideways MTM speaker that I really enjoyed listening to.) But if the left and right speakers sound better and produce a solid center image from all the seats in the audience area, then adding a center channel speaker may not be a net improvement, with this exception:

IF there are listeners with a hearing imbalance (one ear hears better than the other), THEN a dedicated center channel speaker is needed to anchor the dialogue onscreen.

Over in the audio-only realm, one of my colleagues was using an extremely high quality trinaural processor to derive a center channel signal, and his center channel speaker was identical to his left and right speakers. He has since gone back to conventional stereo using speakers that pay a lot of attention to room interaction, in part because he finds the soundstage depth and sense of detachment from the speakers better with the stereo configuration, in this case at least.

So I think I appreciate the arguments for using a center channel and they are very compelling, but ime two-channel can, under some conditions, compete, with this caveat: Two channels cannot provide a reliable, solid center image for listeners with a significant hearing imbalance.

I have toyed with the idea of doing a somewhat unorthodox high-end center-channel speaker.  Probably not a good idea... unorthodox is a hard enough sell in the two-channel world. 

Duke

Instruments are always louder at the sides than in the center.

@erik_squires I’ve listened with attention regarding what you posted... for over two days now AND:

I am not hearing any of this across a wide range of randomly chosen as well as Roon Radio queued up tracks.

No issues whatsoever.

Two albums stood out in this evaluation. Calle 13’s ~reggaeton~ "Residente o Visitante" and the OST from "Slumdog Millionaire"

I mention the above two albums because each contains copious amounts of musical information on the Left, Right and Center with strong volume levels across.

All of my listening was 2Ch PCM Native.

@audiokinesis   Duke, thank you so much for your detailed posts. Very helpful!

You bet Duke. This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match. Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity. It seems harder to do with standard dynamic drivers. Their directivity changes continuously with frequency getting narrower as the frequency increases. Dispersion is not uniform and I would think this would cause problems.

@david_ten wrote: " Duke, thank you so much for your detailed posts. Very helpful!"

Thank you David, my nerdy tangents aren’t always welcome, very glad to hear you found these helpful!

@mijostyn wrote: "This is a major reason line source dipoles sound the way they do. They minimize reflected energy in a way no other type of speaker can match."

Imo line source dipoles have many things in their favor, and minimizing early reflections is certainly one of them. Imo their backwave energy is also uniquely beneficial.

First off, the backwave of a dipole is spectrally correct, which is a really good start. Then assuming the speakers are fairly far out into the room, the backwave can actually REDUCE the small-room signature I alluded to earlier! Let me explain:

The ear/brain system judges the size of a room by the time delay between the first-arrival sound and the "center of gravity" of the reflections. When we have a significant path-length-induced time delay on the arrival of the backwave energy, the ear/brain system interprets that as "we’re in a pretty big room". So less "small room signature" is super-imposed on the soundstage in the recording! Imo this is an example of "reflections done right".

(The highly counter-intuitive implication here is that MORE reflections [in this case the backwave energy], done "right", actually result in hearing LESS of the room you are in and MORE of the soundscape on the recording!)

Mijostyn again: "Horns can be made to do almost the same thing by controlling their directivity."

Yes! Horns can definitely reduce the amount of energy in the early reflections AND generate a spectrally-correct reverberant field, through uniform pattern control. (Imo gotta use the right kind of horn the right way to avoid audible colorations.)

I really like the liveliness of good horns but probably like the timbral richness and sense of immersion in the recording’s soundscape from a good dipole speaker even more. So my best horn systems have a rear-firing array dedicated to generating a spectrally-correct, relatively late-onset approximation of the backwave of a dipole speaker. There are still things that a good line-source dipole does better, but imo the additional "backwave" energy tightens the race in some areas.

Duke