Looking for a center speaker to complement vintage Advent Legacy fronts (1 Viewer)

[DaveVerdo]

I am upgrading my basement home theater reciever and want to get a new center speaker. The one I have is a Sony that came with a HTiB I got 10 years ago. I have been using vintage Advent Legacy Loudspeakers as my front mains and what to keep those. Nothing in my price range can replace these classics after I refoam the wooofers.

The Legacy has a 10" woofer and a 1" mylar dome tweeter. They have a wonderfull full sound with good bass. I also have a powered sub from the (HTiB).

I live in an area with little chance to listen to anything. My local Best Buy is small and the speaker demo station doesn't work.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[Wayne A. Pflughaupt]

I’d suggest getting a vintage Advent Mini or Baby to use as a center channel. They are smaller versions of the Legacy and as such will be a better timbre match than anything you’ll find at Best Buy. Not a problem to find them on ebay, but you’ll probably have to buy a pair of them. You could also use the same speakers for surrounds, too.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[DaveVerdo]

That is actually a great idea. Now the problem is finding onesin reasonable condition at the right price with shipping (or locally).

Thanks

 

[Jeff Phelps]

I have a set of the Advent Mini's. Be aware there was a sub that was sold with those speakers as part of a set. You could do what I have done which is to use two speakers for my center channel (if you have the right outputs on your receiver). In this case you could use two Mini's and the sub that came with them but it would take a separate amp to run them. I have a Denon receiver which does output every channel so that it can be ran from a separate amp. It gives me a lot of flexibility.

I've heard the Advents you have many times in the past. It's been a while. They are nice full range speakers with few drop off frequencies. But that doesn't mean they will play the LFE sounds that are included with modern surround sound. That LFE information (usually played by a sub) contains a lot of information below 100 hz. Movie makers love the rumbling sound of a strong low range speaker. I really don't think your Advents will play that well even though they are an excellent example of vintage speakers. I would get a powered sub to go with your setup. The sub that comes with the Mini's really isn't up to producing the kind of floor shaking sound that makes modern movies sound the way they do. Many people totally discount everything about Cerwin Vega but don't forget that movie theaters were designed to take advantage of the low range sound the D-9 CV's produce. They called them the Earthquake speakers for a reason. They were introduced to be used for the movie "Earthquake" and the whole idea was low range sound and lots of it. Don't get me wrong. I would not suggest those D-9 speakers for anything other than a sub (unhook the mid-range and tweeter drivers and you would have an excellent sub) but CV did make more sophisticated speakers (better imaging, much clearer) based on the D-9. The DX-9 was their best effort and until recently was really one of the few good speakers CV made. There were other similar speakers based on that design but they were essentally clones of the DX-9. I'm just saying all this to point out that movie sound has been made to take advantage of that type of speaker for a very long time. Entire theaters were built just to take advantage of the new kind of sound. That sound was very heavy on the low end - below 100 hz. So IMO you really would need a powered sub to get a better audio experience. That is if you want to create the type of sound Hollywood has put in their movies since Earthquake. All your truly great sound effects are going to use that low range sound. But if you have neighbors you may want to skip that whole sub thing because the sound will travel through walls. Heck it makes walls passive radiators if you put enough power behind a sub.

Those Advents you have are true classics. They were the "to die for" speakers for quite a while. But they were never designed to produce the sub level sounds we get in movies today. That's easily fixed with the right sub though. Actually the Baby Advents were the speakers everyone wanted but the ones you have are very similar in character. And they were popular too. People generally bought the Baby Advents because they were cheaper.