I'm upgrading my home theater set up from a HTIAB and just got an Onkyo 606. I need new Speaker and was looking at Polks but I have hit a stumbling point with the center. I have a 50" Kuro for day time viewing and a 133" screen that drops down in front of it for night time Projection (JVC- RS1). The TV and center speaker are on a BDI 8529 - Avion Series TV Stand which has a pull out "drawer" where the center sits. The who think is set up in a room that is 24' x 40" room. I was looking at Polk RTi 2008 series speakers with RTi A7 for the front speakers and center - CSi A6. The problem is the Csi A6 is a little too wide fro the BDI stands speaker drawer. So (finally) my question is could I swap out the CSi A4 (which would fit in the drawer) for the center and keep the RTi A7 towers and just re-run the Audacy to balance everything out or would that completely unbalance the set up?

I'm not much of an audio person so I look forward to some input.

Here is my opinion. the two center channel speakers have similar specs, with the CSI A6 with slightly better performance upper and lower end. Since I imagine they have similar tonal balance (same family of center channels) I would expect them to perform in a similar manner. (except of course the higher performance from the A6 than the A4)

That said, if you set the center to small, use it for dialogue you probably won't hear much of a difference.

Further, of course the A6 would sound better, but enough so to fret it, it doesn't look that way from the specs.

Relax and enjoy! I ended up with the lower end center channel for the same reason, not quite enough space. I'm not sorry and it sounds great!

ENJOY!

Thanks for the reply. Does it sound strange when things pan from one side to the other? does the sound drop off in the middle then come back up when it reaches the othe front? can the surround balance compesate for this?

Thanks for the reply. Does it sound strange when things pan from one side to the other? does the sound drop off in the middle then come back up when it reaches the othe front? can the surround balance compesate for this?

Even if your receiver has an auto calibration feature (which most of them do today), I would always recommend doing final calibrations using an SPL (sound pressure level) meter using the test tones from the receiver. This way you can get an exact same SPL from each speaker. In other words, all three (or five or seven) speakers will be playing at the same volume level. This helps compensate for sensativities of different speakers around the room.