Rethinking the center

wide view of the JBL speakers

View of the JBL center speaker without the grill, showing twin 5 inch  woofers

We have these wonderful speakers at the left and right front of the TV room, but I only have a simple JBL EC25 speaker doing center channel dialog duty. Its a nice enough 2-way design – a titanium tweeter and a pair of 5 inch woofers in a very nice beech finish cabinet – and it matches the shelf system very well.

view of the new crossover and drivers

Click the lower image to see it doublesize.

But sonically – there is a big leap between those two 5 inche woofies in the center, and the classic LE15s – 15 inch woofers in the monitors in the front corners. The monitors have 2420 compression drivers with horn for the midrange duty, and the 2405 “slot” tweeter for the Ultra high freq … That little titanium driver in the center doesn’t come close to the sound of those … so – I bought a pair of drivers and built a crossover network to match the mids and high end in the center. And it HAS improved the sound of dialog and music (well – TV show music – I still play regular music in 2 channel mode).
Now all I have to do is figure out what I’m going to use for a woofer in the center – and build a box to hold these components …