Planning system upgrades while driving along yesterday (as I do ) and came to thinking about centre channel positions. Eventually I'd like to have a motorised indash screen in place of my current air vents, which would leave minimum options for centre channel mounting.

Was thinking about having centre channel up rear vision mirror is ie roof, speaker, mirror. Any feedback on how this would affect staging/imaging, etc? I figure having the centre channel up high with the splits down low would drag the stage right to the middle of the dash.

Any ideas?

What if you moved your Head unit down the the compartment it is sitting on, then have the screen coming from where your head unit is currently.
You would then be able to utilize the space in the airvents for the centre channel.
I dont know why but the idea of a centre channel up high doesn't sound right. Of course i may be wrong.

I haven't had much experience with centre channels in cars but i also think putting the centre speaker up high (rear view mirror) is not a good idea. I would try and install it in the centre vents.

my thoughts on the CC are to keep the speakers close to the screen to avoid yet another 'separation' dilemma.

so i figure 'next to' the screen and 'infront' would be ideal.

but i'm not sure how easy that is for your car.

t-bro obviously does well with his centre speaker down lower, although it's not setup for multimedia. but the principal of aiming it upwards to meet the same sweetspot as his splits works.

the other dilemma is trying to fit a decent sized speaker in the dash. i've not auditioned the centre speakers marketed by the namebrands, but they look small, so i wouldn't expect much bass/lower midrange from them. or quality treble for that matter.

so basically, i agree with the comments thus far, and consider mounting any CC speaker lower.

good luck

shiny, what size midrange are you using for your CC??

it's a dyn 3" midrange (MD140/2). quoted freq response is 500Hz-6kHz. and will be matched with a dyn tweet, running 2-way active.

would be nice to instead run the 5.7" dyn woofer (MW150) for lower response, but not enough room.

will be good to hook it all up and see how it sounds.

the baskets on the 5.7 dyns are huge...i'd love to see one custom mounted up on the dash though

i like you're idea of a 2way setup on the dash shiny, i'd never really thought of going about it like that, i always thought either ambient tweets or a small (like 4") good quality 2way co-axe were the only options

i'm not sure about having it up high either, as i think it would cause too much seperation...really the only way to find out is experimentation though...bring out the blu-tac!!

Humm, back to the drawing board I guess. At least I have time on my hands, like 1-2 years worth

worthwhile to plan it out properly and explore the possibilities.

i've just bought some morel hybrid 4" splits, and will use a woofer/tweeter for a compact 2-way centre channel. should be good, offering a broad bandwidth from midbass up to treble.

For movies, your centre channel should always be as close as possible to the screen.

Since the centre channel is the primary driver used for dialogue in a movie, having the speaker close to the screen improves imaging because you want it to sound like the characters' voices are coming from the screen. (this is why home audio centre channels are always placed right above or below the screen.)

Also, the centre channel doesn't need to have much bass extension because the range of the human voice is usually above about 300hz. (This is why centre channel speakers rarely utilize woofers larger than 5" or 6".)

i experimented extensively with centre speaker locations when designing my dolby prologic II system

basically, you want the centre speaker to be exactly in-between the L/R drivers (obviously) but also on the same visual plane as the L/R drivers. for example, in my own system, if you look at all three front speakers, you could draw an imaginary line across the speakers and it would 'cut' through the cones of all three, ie, they're all level with each other. this tends to work well, and your welcome to have a listen at the next meet.

you can lower or raise the speaker a little from here, if you have to, and if the speakers are working well in terms of arrival times, the centre image will still appear higher than the physical speaker - which is very cool my centre image actually appears to come out of the headunit, which for the multimedia setup you described, would be ideal, as that would be where your monitor is

but if you raise the centre speaker too much (like ontop of the dash) you can noticably accentuate the 'rainbow' effect, which is not good. the centre image will be too high, and the left and right corners of the soundfield will be quite low in comparison. it will sound like there are three speakers infront of you (i.e. fake) and blending will become harder to achieve.

so in short, keep the centre speaker around about the same level as the L&R drivers

any other q's please ask, multi-channel systems are fun

[ December 31, 2002, 12:38: Message edited by: T-Bro ]

i run a jaycar 4 inch two way speaker in the centre of my dash in my car. but that pretty useless info to a calais owner as my car is a ye olde sigma!

i agree with shiny here in that having a tweet as a centre speaker is a total waste. you need cone area and i think a 4 inch is pretty much ideal for a car centre. as shiny pointed out, most of these centre speakers the manufacturers promote look to tiny to do a good job. i spent a bit of time carving a enclosure in the top of my dash. its located at the very front edge next for the windcreen and its hieght is only 3 inches or so above the line of my tweets, which are mounted in the top of the doors next to the dash.

i hate to sound like a bragger, but its by far the best centre speaker set up i have ever heard in a car, and i heard a lot of cars when i was doing sq judging.

i guess the old saying applies here, if your gunna do it, do it properly. i pulled the entire dash out of my car to set this centre up. had the dash panel recovered after i cut the hole in it and went to some effort building a small enclosure for it so the rear wave wouldnt be heard thru the air vents or anything like that.

hmmm. maybe ill scan some picks of it and post them. i took a few snaps of the install as i did it.

Humm, I have a set of Jaycar 4" Co-Ax and a spare amp lying around, might be time for some experimentation

Pictures would be good. Anyone else with centre channels and pics?...