Sierra-1 center or bookshelf?

[rabbit]

Ignoring the space/aesthetics issues, would anyone like to comment on advantage/disadvantages of using a regular (vertical) sierra-1s as a center speaker vs. the horizontally configured sierra center?

The viewing distance is pretty close - about 8'. The speaker would be above or below a 50" screen that's approximately at eye-level.

[dmitchell]

If I had the space I would use a vertically oriented center channel just cause I think it looks cooler. I have the horizontal center and it sounds great, and obviously is perfectly matched.

[davef]

Ignoring the space/aesthetics issues, would anyone like to comment on advantage/disadvantages of using a regular (vertical) sierra-1s as a center speaker vs. the horizontally configured sierra center?

The viewing distance is pretty close - about 8'. The speaker would be above or below a 50" screen that's approximately at eye-level.

The advantage to using a vertical Sierra-1 center is that you will have a slightly wider horizontal listening window. At greater than 20 degrees off-axis, the response will remain more linear with vertical orientation. At a distance of 8' back, this translates to approximately 6 feet wide, or 3 feet to the left and 3 feet to the right of center. If you will have listeners sitting outside of this window, vertical orientation would be recommended, if it works for you aesthetically.

Hope this helps!

[rabbit]

The advantage to using a vertical Sierra-1 center is that you will have a slightly wider horizontal listening window. At greater than 20 degrees off-axis, the response will remain more linear with vertical orientation. At a distance of 8' back, this translates to approximately 6 feet wide, or 3 feet to the left and 3 feet to the right of center. If you will have listeners sitting outside of this window, vertical orientation would be recommended, if it works for you aesthetically.

Hope this helps!

Thank you, that is very helpful.

For me, 6 feet is probably enough for almost all occasions - I do have an odd seating arrangement that goes out to 45 degrees and more, but it'll be unusual for the room to be that full - in any case the viewers will be seeing a significantly distorted image out that far.

BTW, I can't find off-axis response graphs for the horizontal center... how different is it from the vertical sierra-1?

[azanon]

The "disadvantage" of the vertical center is pretty intuitive but I might as well mention it. You can't get the "center point" of a vertical center as close to the TV as a horizontal center (because, on average, the speaker would be physically further away from the TV) so, therefore, your dialog won't be as well anchored to the screen as the horizontal center. Since I know this comment might cause some confusion, let me give real numbers. You can get the center of a horizontally placed Sierra-1 3.75 inches from the edge of a TV (half Sierra-1's width). That should give pretty good anchoring of voice You can only get the center of a vertically placed Sierra-1 7.1 inches from a TV edge (half its height). Even abutting the edge, I'd be a bit worried about anchoring at 7.1 inches.

On the other hand, this could be slightly mitigated by the fact that as least you'd have the voice frequency centered (horizontally) with the TV with the vertical orientation of a non-MTM speaker like the Sierra-1. With horizontal placement, I'm not sure if it's the woofer or tweeter that'd be primarily outputting the voice frequencies (voice is about 80-260hzish?), but in either case, the voice would have to be very slightly "off-center" (granted only a couple of inches or so).