Titling center channel up?

[musicguy]

What negative effects does tilting the center channel up have on the sound stage?

Is having a horizon vertically straight( at ear level) the best was to use this center channel or does tilting up a degree of two reduce the quality of sound stage?

I have been working on my center channel set up.

I plan on getting a horizon to match my towers. I will have to build a center channel stand since it is to big to fit into my tv stand. So I want to optimize my set up.

music guy

[Bruce Watson]

What negative effects does tilting the center channel up have on the sound stage?

I can't hear any negative effect of tilting the center channel up to point at my ears in my main listening position. I can hear negative effects of not doing this.

I was impressed by how dialog cleaned up by tilting up. Not that it was bad just pointing straight ahead plumb and level. But tilting up increased crispness and intelligibility a bit. Well worth doing IMHO.

When listening to music (a few 5.1 music bluray discs I've got) I can't tell any difference at all.

This could be just me of course, or my listening room. But there's absolutely no reason at all that you can't run the experiments yourself, in your room with your equipment, and find out what works (or doesn't work) for you. It's not like it takes much time or effort. Give it a shot and tell us what you hear.

[natetg57]

I agree, nothing wrong with tilting it up a few degrees

[N Boros]

You could opt for getting an acoustically transparent screen, to avoid any tilting at all if you are worried about it. But if you don’t do that, then you should definitely tilt it towards ear level. The ribbon tweeters have narrow dispersion vertically, which I think is actually a great thing.

[kelvinb]

I agree, nothing wrong with tilting it up a few degree (https://www.studypug.com/trigonometry-help/convert-between-degrees-and-radians)s

Same, I did the same thing as well should be fine.

[Brady]

I have mine on a low 13" high stand, with a 6 degree tilt. Works great.

[davef]

What negative effects does tilting the center channel up have on the sound stage?

Is having a horizon vertically straight( at ear level) the best was to use this center channel or does tilting up a degree of two reduce the quality of sound stage?

I have been working on my center channel set up.

I plan on getting a horizon to match my towers. I will have to build a center channel stand since it is to big to fit into my tv stand. So I want to optimize my set up.

music guy

Ideally, you want the ribbon tweeter to at ear-level. If it is below ear-level, than tilting upwards a few degrees is beneficial to overall high frequency accuracy. It really won't have an effect on the soundstage.

[Mose Harper]

Here's the stand I built for my Horizon. IIRC the height off the floor is something like 8" in the back to 12" in the front.

http://i66.tinypic.com/fz8703.jpg

I didn't bother painting it, just draped a yard of black velveteen over it so that it blends in with the wall of black velvet framing the screen behind it.

I have the angle of the Towers slightly adjusted too with the intention that a straight line out from all the tweeters intersects just slightly above my head. The reason being that the mid point of the projection screen is a bit above my eyeline, so I'm trying to anchor the sound at that height.

I've never had any issue whatsoever with 2 or 4 channel soundtracks. Sound in those cases always seems to be perfectly centered and coming from the screen.

When the soundtracks are primarily center channel (either 5.1 or 1.0 mono) it can be hit or miss as to whether the illusion of "screen" sound is achieved or not.
I was blaming this initially on the Horizon as I never had any complaints in this regard with the Sierra 2 as a center.

In the 18 months that I've owned it though, I've come to feel that it's as much how the material has been mastered as anything in terms of hardware. Some soundtracks come off as more boxy and localized. With others, the illusion of sound emanating from the screen is seamless.