Who turns center off when listening to music

@soix

when you’re at a live concert how do you prevent the strings on the left from bleeding over into the woodwinds on the right? Do you bring your own personal divider with you to make it sound more “right” to you? To each his own I guess.

No, at an orchestral concert there is no crosstalk. Each instrument is producing sound from it’s actual location, each producing a single stream of sound that crosses my head once. If the instrument is straight in front of me, the stream of sound from that instrument will hit each ear simultaneously with one pass.

With a stereo 2 speaker setup, if the instrument or singer is phantom imaged straight ahead of me, that means that each speaker is playing the same thing, which causes the sound stream to hit my head from two different angles at the same time. This causes two identical streams to have different arrival times at each ear, creating comb filtering that changes the tone. Never in the natural world would you hear two identical sounds hit your head from two different directions at the same time, which is why the phantom center illusion works. Our brain doesn’t know what to think of it so it positions it solidly in the center, but not without tonal compromise. There’s also a problem with the HRTF not matching a source coming from straight ahead. Sound that hits the head from an angle produces a different tonal response at the ear drum than sound coming from straight ahead. Since our brain thinks it’s coming from straight ahead, the tonality is confusing. I think for a lot of people this gets interpreted as a depth effect, and they like it. I read complaints that when center vocals are played through a center speaker they sound too forward to a lot of people.

Why do most high-end manufacturers ignore these issues with 2 speaker playback? There are many reasons, but I’ve read a lot of people complaining about the sound when these issues are corrected, so it seems there are generations that have adapted to the effect of crosstalk and expect it. With a lot of up-mixing algorithms there are settings such as "stereo wide" which allow the user to turn down the strength of the center channel or even turn it off when listening to music. When I listen to Dolby Atmos mixed music I often hear that the center channel is weak or completely turned off, with a phantom center being used from the two front left/right channels instead. Why do they do this? I think it’s listener preference from years of conditioning, as well as the fact that a lot of people are using a different kind of center channel that’s not optimized for music, and also because in a setup where the side channels are closer to the corners of the room, the center channel is in position in the room that is acoustically un-similar enough to the side channels that it creates a noticeable incongruity in the sound.

at an orchestral concert there is no crosstalk. Each instrument is producing sound from it’s actual location, each producing a single stream of sound that crosses my head once. If the instrument is straight in front of me, the stream of sound from that instrument will hit each ear simultaneously with one pass.

It’s physically impossible that the sound of a violin coming from the left hits your left and right ear simultaneously and is how we as humans can perceive depth and location of sound Plus, no instrument produces a “single stream” of sound — all instruments radiate sound in a 360 degree sound field that cannot be captured in a single stream. With your logic we should all just listen to one center speaker alone and be done with it. No thanks. But I suggest you bring your theory to the best speaker manufacturers and see if any of them bite. My guess, after they’re done laughing, will be a big fat NO. But by all means let us know how that goes. In the meantime I won’t hold my breath waiting to see center speakers make even one appearance at a high-end dealership or audio show — never gonna happen dude.  Oh yeah, and recordings aren’t made or mixed with a center speaker so why the hell would you wanna listen with one?  Whatevs.

@soix

But I suggest you bring your theory to the best speaker manufacturers and see if any of them bite. My guess, after they’re done laughing, will be a big fat NO.

PWK sucks??

OK, let’s go with that, what about the Toole? He has two center channels including a center height, another guy with a setup like mine (go figure)

The COB, PWK, the Toole, @asctim , the THX guy, and the Kota simply prefer the center channel (for music), get over it. The Toole’s layout is below:

https://www.thescreeningroomav.com/single-post/2019/03/06/The-Ultimate-Real-World-Home-Theater-and-Listening-Room

For me, when I used a AVR receiver, I would play music with what ever setting I wanted that sounded the best.  There are not rules.   It was fun for live performances to use all 5 channels or at least 3.1.  Usually though, just 2.1.   Now that I am just 2.1 (or actually 2.2) with no AVR, there is no center channel for music.  The imaging takes care of it all to present an audible soundstage.  

@kota1 Uh, maybe my math is off but that’s a surround system, not a 2-channel system.  I also don’t have a TV between my stereo speakers, but that’s me.  Maybe you should bring this thread to the Home Theater section where it’ll likely find a more receptive audience, and then you can discuss which preamp/processor sounds almost as good as a stereo preamp but at quadruple the cost.  Yay!