I have an older pair of Polk speakers and a Polk center channel. I would like to improve the center channel performance. Something that will be more pure to the voice output. I will be using a new Yamaha 663. Is the Infinity Beta C360 a good choice and what improvement can I expect? Any other choices in the $175-$220 range (street)?

I have an older pair of Polk speakers and a Polk center channel. I would like to improve the center channel performance. Something that will be more pure to the voice output. I will be using a new Yamaha 663. Is the Infinity Beta C360 a good choice and what improvement can I expect? Any other choices in the $175-$220 range (street)?

Something Polk. IMO, you don't want to ever mismatch the speaker brand (and alot of the time the line/series and version also) for the front 3 because you want to keep the soundstage as accurate as possible.

Using a different brand center channel can work, but is most times not recommended because you want a seamless sound signature across the front.....or what's referred to as "timbre matching".

That being said, for the last year and a half I was using an Infinity IL25c center channel with my Thiel CS1.6 speakers and was able to get an excellent sound up front that blended very well. The Infinity has metal drivers as does the Thiel and that may have had something to do with it.

I just replaced the Infinity (shameless plug - up for sale $100 obo mint) with a used Thiel SCS2 speaker......the SCS2 does sound a bit clearer (it should considering it was a much more expensive speaker), but I really don't notice a better timbre match as compared to the Infinity speaker.

Thank you guys very much. It seems that now I have a hard time understanding some dialog from the Polk center channel because the music drowns it out on some shows, like Toarchwood". Maybe the new Yamaha663 will help.

You could try turning up the gain to your center channel by a couple dB.

You could try turning up the gain to your center channel by a couple dB.

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