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Centre Speaker>Stereo Receiver

T

twotone

pfm Member
Hi guys, I'm bought a new TV and don't really want to go down the AV road or even a Soundbar set up so I'm looking at being able to hook at centre speaker up to my Yamaha R-N803D receiver which I use a stereo set up for music.

The receiver has two sets of speaker terminals and both can be used at the same time although my speakers are only 4ohm so just wondering if this is possible as I'd like to have a decent centre speaker speaker for dialogue which is a bit pants at the moment ie the TV speakers are okay but dialogue is not great and with 2-0 stereo it's much the same so before I go down the AV/Soundbar road I thought I'd asked if it is possible to use the receiver in a 2+1 set up.

I'd like to have decent stereo for music and obviously for watching the TV/movies etc so if my suggestion isn't doable is there another way of doing this with a different stereo amp ie three channels rather than two?

My speakers are Elac BS-312s.

There's no pre-outs on the amp but there is a Subwoofer output.

Thanks

Tony
 
When I used a TV centrally placed between the main stereo speakers I never really encountered many issues with dialogue, sometimes I would have adjusted the TV volume to lock the dialogue to the screen, recently though I always check on the audio settings on the Netflix app as quite often the default is English 5.1, changing this to English Original or English 2.0 makes the sound from the TV speakers much better and the dialogue much clearer. Perhaps worth checking the audio settings on the TV as well.
 
@twotone I think you need a proper AV amp - one with outputs for 5 speakers (left, Center, right and two rear) and a sub, HDMI and optical inputs and outputs, and all the appropriate Dolby/Atmos etc. decoding. That way you will get the true centre dialogue track. I just have 3 channel for my TV/movies, using a Yamaha AV amp. The difference the centre channel and centre speaker make is huge imo. Soundtrack, particularly dialogue is much clearer, and me and the mrs dont have to fight to sit centrally as the centre speaker does its job. Plus most AV amps have facilities to get lip sync spot on, if that’s the sort of thing that you are fussy about. I dare say putting in some rears and a sub would make some movies yet more immersive, but just the 3 speakers makes watching movies much more enjoyable. We’ve now got our Apple TV box, a 4k Blu-ray player, and and Apple Mac all connected through the AV amp - excellent. I would just pick whatever last years model of one of the decent makes like Sony, Yamaha or Marantz that Richer Sounds or Amazon are selling cheap.
 
AndyU said:
@twotone I think you need a proper AV amp - one with outputs for 5 speakers (left, Center, right and two rear) and a sub, HDMI and optical inputs and outputs, and all the appropriate Dolby/Atmos etc. decoding. That way you will get the true centre dialogue track. I just have 3 channel for my TV/movies, using a Yamaha AV amp. The difference the centre channel and centre speaker make is huge imo. Soundtrack, particularly dialogue is much clearer, and me and the mrs dont have to fight to sit centrally as the centre speaker does its job. Plus most AV amps have facilities to get lip sync spot on, if that’s the sort of thing that you are fussy about. I dare say putting in some rears and a sub would make some movies yet more immersive, but just the 3 speakers makes watching movies much more enjoyable. We’ve now got our Apple TV box, a 4k Blu-ray player, and and Apple Mac all connected through the AV amp - excellent. I would just pick whatever last years model of one of the decent makes like Sony, Yamaha or Marantz that Richer Sounds or Amazon are selling cheap.
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Aye think that seems the best solution @AndyU thanks, do you listen to stereo music when your not watching TV/Movies with your AV amp I mean is it good enough for AV and Hifi/stereo and do you switch the centre channel off or do you have a separate set up for music?

Tony
 
twotone said:
Aye think that seems the best solution @AndyU thanks, do you listen to stereo music when your not watching TV/Movies with your AV amp I mean is it good enough for AV and Hifi/stereo and do you switch the centre channel off or do you have a separate set up for music?

Tony
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Hi. I’ve got a separate set up for music in my living room. Since HD and 4k tvs came out I learned that you need to sit pretty close to them to get the best and most immersive results, so we use a small room as our “tv/cinema” room. We’ve a 55” 4k tv and we sit maybe 5 feet away. It works really well for us. We go in, pull the blinds down so it’s dark, and properly watch a movie or an episode or two of whatever, really enjoyable, and that’s it, turn it off. My Tv amp is just about the cheapest I could get and it’s fine. It does have settings for straight through stereo, and sounds ok, but I’ve put my money into my hifi so that where I listen to music. In a different apartment I might do things differently of course, but this set up suits me where I am. One possible advantage of using the same system for your tv and your music is Dolby Atmos - Apple and various other streaming platforms are making a big deal of this, and a lot of music is getting remastered in Atmos. It may take off and be interesting; it may not. Who knows. But it could be interesting to you. Richer Sounds have AV receivers starting from £300 and they have a pretty decent returns policy, so you could try stuff out to find out what’s right for you.
 
AndyU said:
Hi. I’ve got a separate set up for music in my living room. Since HD and 4k tvs came out I learned that you need to sit pretty close to them to get the best and most immersive results, so we use a small room as our “tv/cinema” room. We’ve a 55” 4k tv and we sit maybe 5 feet away. It works really well for us. We go in, pull the blinds down so it’s dark, and properly watch a movie or an episode or two of whatever, really enjoyable, and that’s it, turn it off. My Tv amp is just about the cheapest I could get and it’s fine. It does have settings for straight through stereo, and sounds ok, but I’ve put my money into my hifi so that where I listen to music. In a different apartment I might do things differently of course, but this set up suits me where I am. One possible advantage of using the same system for your tv and your music is Dolby Atmos - Apple and various other streaming platforms are making a big deal of this, and a lot of music is getting remastered in Atmos. It may take off and be interesting; it may not. Who knows. But it could be interesting to you. Richer Sounds have AV receivers starting from £300 and they have a pretty decent returns policy, so you could try stuff out to find out what’s right for you.
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Thanks Andy, I'm trying to reduce box count to be honest.

I bought a 65" OLED Phillips smart TV (65OLED706) the other day and frankly I'm blown away by it, previous TV was a 46 " Panasonic Plasma @ 14 years old so the difference is like going from an old 1990s car to a top of the range all singing all dancing brand new model albeit that the TV is the base model ie cheapest:D

Anyway I'm find that I stream everything now, music, TV, radio and movies etc.

I have also just bought an Apple TV 4K second generation which is brilliant with the TV so I just want to dump the Yamaha receiver and stream everything via either a smart soundbar or I buy a sound bar for the TV and keep the Yamaha & speakers for music but that does seem a bit old fashioned now however I'm not keen on spending about £1500 on a soundbar if it's not really that good relative to the set up that I have just now.

I have a Bose mini wireless speaker that I stream music to from my phone or iPad and frankly the sound from this thing is outrageously good, it is tiny and cost about £120 my speakers and amp cost about £2k and okay they sound great but there really isn't an nearly £2k difference sound wise IMO.
 
twotone said:
Thanks Andy, I'm trying to reduce box count to be honest.

I bought a 65" OLED Phillips smart TV (65OLED706) the other day and frankly I'm blown away by it, previous TV was a 46 " Panasonic Plasma @ 14 years old so the difference is like going from an old 1990s car to a top of the range all singing all dancing brand new model albeit that the TV is the base model ie cheapest:D

Anyway I'm find that I stream everything now, music, TV, radio and movies etc.

I have also just bought an Apple TV 4K second generation which is brilliant with the TV so I just want to dump the Yamaha receiver and stream everything via either a smart soundbar or I buy a sound bar for the TV and keep the Yamaha & speakers for music but that does seem a bit old fashioned now however I'm not keen on spending about £1500 on a soundbar if it's not really that good relative to the set up that I have just now.

I have a Bose mini wireless speaker that I stream music to from my phone or iPad and frankly the sound from this thing is outrageously good, it is tiny and cost about £120 my speakers and amp cost about £2k and okay they sound great but there really isn't an nearly £2k difference sound wise IMO.
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I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure you could get much better value out of spending £1500 or a lot less on a good centre speaker and whatever AV box you need to tie it all together with your stereo and Apple TV. And possibly dump your existing 2 channel amp. Soundbars maybe better than the rubbish speakers built into TVs, but you can do a lot better.
 
Actually think I can hook the TV up to the digital input on the Yamaha or even my RPi but that’s still only two channels.

I’ll need to play around with things.

Thanks again.
 
twotone said:
Actually think I can hook the TV up to the digital input on the Yamaha or even my RPi but that’s still only two channels.

I’ll need to play around with things.

Thanks again.
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I can almost guarantee that will be possible, at least to your Yamaha. A long optical lead or phono lead for the s/pdif signal should do it. But make sure you poke around in your tv settings and tell it to output stereo rather than 5.1 or Atmos otherwise it will be wierd. And possibly experiment with toeing in your speakers to help clarify dialogue and get as good a central image as you can.
 
There maybe a way to wire to the center speaker so that it only plays non-stereo content. I know there’s a way to do the opposite. I think it’s called the “Hafler hookup”.
 
I had a hafler hook up in my teenage bedroom. 11ft long, less than 6ft wide. Has bed, wardrobe, bench, turntable, tiny little amp and 6 speakers. The two biggest were screwed to the ceiling and were homemade trapezoidal shaped things so the drive units beamed at my head. ELP sounded great on that set up.

but I don’t think there is a way to wire an inverse Hafler arrangement, to try just means everything is wired up in-phase.
 
JensenHealey said:
I had a hafler hook up in my teenage bedroom. 11ft long, less than 6ft wide. Has bed, wardrobe, bench, turntable, tiny little amp and 6 speakers. The two biggest were screwed to the ceiling and were homemade trapezoidal shaped things so the drive units beamed at my head. ELP sounded great on that set up.

but I don’t think there is a way to wire an inverse Hafler arrangement, to try just means everything is wired up in-phase.
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Thanks guys.

That Yamaha that I linked to is basically my own amp with AV stuff so I'm going to go for it don't think they do it in silver though.

There's a Denon approximately the same price and seemingly better but the Musiccast set up is good and I like Yamaha.

Elac do centre speakers so I'll like go down that road too plus I can use Yamaha sats via musiccast
 
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