2. home-theater
  3. 1186968472

Good sounding, small center speaker

I'm considering the Gallo or Orb speakers for a home theater speaker system, but I'm concerned that especially dialogue will sound a bit light or thin coming from such small speakers. Anyone have experience with either of these in an HT setup, and if so how do they do as center channels for movies. Can they do a credible job with movie dialogue, and how do they compare to larger center speakers you've heard?

As an alternative I'm thinking about avoiding the center speaker altogether and just running something like 4 Maggie MMGWs and using a phantom center and adding a HSU STF-2 or VTF-2 sub.

Any thoughts would be helpful, but I'm really looking for a small footprint speaker that can do a great job with movie dialogue so I don't feel like I'm hearing a "small" speaker. Thanks all.
soix

Showing 1 response by soix

soix OP
8,655 posts
 
Thanks for the input guys. Big help.

Sounds like the Maggies won't work for me since a lot of the time I'll be sitting off axis. I thought planars worked fine left to right but suffered in the vertical domain (i.e. if standing up). I think it was the 6 moons review that seemed to reinforce the off-axis behavior as a strength rather than a weakness. Limited dynamics would be an issue though.

Seems like there's some differing opinions on the Gallo/Orb design types. Might have to let my ears make that decision, or I might just run Paradigm Atoms all around (or maybe incorporate their center speaker which looks good to me since the mid lies beneath the tweeter, which I have found to be a superior setup for center channel duty).

Thanks again for all the help.
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