Favorite Center??

I've heard great sounds from the Thiel PowerPoint and the Martin-Logan Cinema (baby brother to the Theater). The latter, unfortunately, may be out of your price point.

In both cases, all other speakers in the system are of the same design, from the same company, and are carefully matched to provide a very coherent, seamless sound.

With the Thiel PowerPoints in particuler, ALL five speakers are identical! They can be wall-, ceiling, or floor mounted. They literally disappear to give a great illusion of live experience. They also produce surprisingly loud sound despite their diminutive size. A truly interesting design concept.

I had a problem similar to yours trying to strike a compromise between stereo music and 5.1 movie sound. I cannot emphasize enough that if you like movies, it is essential that all three front speakers—at least—are from the same company to ensure similar tonal quality (similar design and drivers) and seamless blending. If you want to upgrade your stereo sound while retaining good movie sound, you must at least upgrade all three front speakers.

At one time I used my audio speakers (Wilson Watts & Puppies) as the front left and right speakers for my video system with various center speakers. The results were consistently disappointing. During dialogs, whenever the actor turns his/her head or moves across the scene, it sometimes sounded like he/she suddenly caught a cold or had a sex-change operation in the middle of the sentence. Very disconcerting.

Since it was impractical for me to use a Watt center channel, I ended up separating my audio from my video system. I used all Celestion speakers for video with great success. You case is not as drastic. You just need to upgrade all three front speakers to get better stereo sound (and the rear speakers too if you can afford it).

If you are willing to replace the Axiom speakers, there is a huge choice out there for good movie speakers that will also make pretty good music speakers. All you need is...money.