what's a good center option for a Cabinet that has 20" wide shelves?

[Blingleberry]

I have one of those Salamander type cabinets that I like to tuck my center speaker in. It has a 20" shelf and is only 19" wide if you want to pull the speaker between the posts.

The speaker in there now is 21" and sits back a bit. An Horizon seems a little to big at 23" x 11. I could take the door off and lower the shelf. But the speaker would have to be 19" to come all the way forward.

Anyone use a Horizon in this kind of cabinet? What would be a better choice?

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[N Boros]

Regardless of the choice of center you want to pull it out as much as possible, so that the front face of the speaker is flush with the front face of the cabinent. Since the Horizon speaker is front ported, I don't think it would be a huge issue to put in in the cabinent. Ideally you would want to slightly angle it up with something like a doorstop or some other type of shim, so that the tweeter is firing at ear level. If this is not possible, it might be an issue, since it is low, but maybe someone else has some experience with this speaker specifically in a cabinet like this.

[Blingleberry]

I can angle it. I have some acoustic foam wedges I do that with. The prob is the horizon is a too wide to pull forward as is my current speaker. Maybe even the horizon's woofers would be partially behind the posts.

Just wondering what others have done as its a popular type of media cabinet.

[Todd WI]

I have a similar Salamander cabinet and went with a Sierra-2 center. It's a really good center speaker.

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Does your cabinet have 23" between the shelf in the left section and the shelf in the right section (mine doesn't)? If not, you'd have to sacrifice at least one of the shelves, assuming you could even squeeze the Horizon in between the posts in the first place. I think it would be tight, but maybe possible.

I'm suspicious of the placement of the Horizon. It appears you'd recessed at least 3" into the cabinet to get it behind the posts. And if you angled it up, then the top of the Horizon would be recessed 4-5".

I think a non-recessed Sierra-2 is a better choice than a recessed Horizon, but I'm curious what others think.

Todd

[sludgeogre]

There's no way a Horizon would fit in there, it's a monster. The non-recessed Sierra-2 that Todd posted is the best option, but it's rear ported so that might make it sound a little muffled I'd imagine. If Dave releases a Sierra Sat Center that would probably be the ultimate solution.

[N Boros]

If you can position the Horizon speaker like Todd WI has it, then by all means go for the Horizon. It would be better because it is front ported as opposed to rear ported. However, if you cannot and it would be recessed behind the bars, then it would just be better to go with the Sierra 1 or Sierra 2 (I don't think you mentioned if you want a ribbon tweeter or not). Dave did make port plugs for the Sierra 1, which you should probably use if you go that route. They can also be used for the Sierra 2, but I'm not sure Dave designed them for that speaker so the results might not be as good.

[Todd WI]

I think the word muffled could really give someone the wrong impression. I'm just not hearing anything I would describe as even a little bit muffled.

I don’t think the rear port on the Sierra-2 is much of a detriment for this cabinet. There's plenty of room for the speaker to "breath" with 10” depth behind the speaker and more than 40 sq. inches open to the front. That’s more than 13X the area of the port and the back of the cabinet is not air tight either. I doubt the tuning of the speaker is impacted. It's clear sounding, with no noticeable differences when something pans across the front three speakers (my LR Sierra-2s are on stands with lots of space around them).

[sludgeogre]

I think the word muffled could really give someone the wrong impression. I'm just not hearing anything I would describe as even a little bit muffled.

I don’t think the rear port on the Sierra-2 is much of a detriment for this cabinet. There's plenty of room for the speaker to "breath" with 10” depth behind the speaker and more than 40 sq. inches open to the front. That’s more than 13X the area of the port and the back of the cabinet is not air tight either. I doubt the tuning of the speaker is impacted. It's clear sounding, with no noticeable differences when something pans across the front three speakers (my LR Sierra-2s are on stands with lots of space around them).

That's good to hear. Didn't realize how much room it had behind it.

[Blingleberry]

Thx guys

The cabinet is 20" deep so there's a lot of room in there. Not that the sound has anywhere really to go, but it's far from air tight.

I'm still in shopping mode and could handle the towers or the sierra 2's. Just probably not a horizon center. But dialog detail is kind of what started me looking to upgrade in the first place. So I'm still thinking about how to get a little more than a Sierra 2 as a center.

I'm still doing some showrooms. I've heard some great small 2 ways speakers. Kind of shocked by how good some of them sound (Dynaudio Exite 18, Spendor SP3). But the good thing is I could probably be happy with smaller speakers, which would be a much nicer fit in my room.

[davef]

The low Q port tuning of the Sierra-2 provides for accurate transient accuracy with none of the more common bookshelf speaker bass boom (which is designed so that small speakers sound "big"). Because of this, the Sierra-2 can be placed very close to a wall or in an enclosure as described here with little to no audible performance degradation.