Mismatched Centre and Fronts (3.1 setup)

[joshleb]

I've currently got a budget home cinema setup and I'm trying to slowly upgrade it.

I currently have Morduant Short M10 front speakers, I know they're cheap, but they're a good size and still sound ok.

My current centre speaker is a small yamaha one that came with my receiver package, so looking to replace it.

I'm looking at getting a better quality second hand speaker for it, but could there be issues of the centre overpowering from the front?
Or would just trimming it down from the amp sort this?

TLDR: What's the impact of better quality centre speaker compared to fronts.

[varsas]

It should be OK. Generally, you have speech from the middle and sound effects/music from the fronts so you don't notice too much when the fronts/centre have different tones. It's not ideal but it shouldn't be too bad, but yes you will have to carefully volume-match your centre, your AV reciever may have functionality to do that.

I would find some nice front speakers, that you plan to upgrade to later, and buy the centre to match those now. What's the option, but a mordunt short centre to match speakers you already want to change? If you are going second hand I personally like the Mission 75 series (so 751 or 752 fronts, 75c centre), 751 rear and 75as sub.

[GravelBen]

I've done similar over the years - budget setup, mostly second-hand bits, just having fun playing around with combinations when I find something that seems interesting (the details of my current mismatched 7.1 setup might cause amusement to some on here). I expect most receivers should have functionality to adjust speaker levels and sizes etc, my ~10 year old mid range Onkyo does if thats any sort of benchmark.

I'd say just try it and see how it goes, if you're buying second hand you can probably sell speakers on again at a similar price if you don't like them.

Edited by GravelBen on Tuesday 17th October 12:05

[JimbobVFR]

I've never seen an AV amp that didn't have level settings, it's part of the standard setup so levels won't be an issue.

What can be a disadvantage is the tone of the speaker. Sometimes a centre speaker can sound different even just playing the white noise test tones, any effects panning from left to right are going to sound wrong unless the front 3 speakers are at least tonally similar.

[MikeyC]

joshleb said:

I've currently got a budget home cinema setup and I'm trying to slowly upgrade it.

I currently have Morduant Short M10 front speakers, I know they're cheap, but they're a good size and still sound ok.

My current centre speaker is a small yamaha one that came with my receiver package, so looking to replace it.

I'm looking at getting a better quality second hand speaker for it, but could there be issues of the centre overpowering from the front?
Or would just trimming it down from the amp sort this?

TLDR: What's the impact of better quality centre speaker compared to fronts.

I wouldn't worry too much about mismatching, the fronts & centre do different things
Dialogue is nearly all though the centre speaker, so, if you're not happy with this aspect it's time to change
IMHO, the centre is the most important as it's invariably what you listen to most

If the centre is too loud, then yes, you'll need to turn it down a bit