Jerrin,
I'm not really very good at posting impressions, so let me just say that I think everything sounds awesome. The best my own setup has ever sounded. Now, I wish I had the ears to discern all the differences, major and minor, along with the vocabulary to articulate exactly what I'm hearing, but I don't. So I'm not going to tell you that it sounds like somebody removed grandma's quilt comforter from over the speakers, or that the sound between instruments went to a darker shade of black. I wish that I could tell you that dialogue is so clear and precise that I now know exactly what the actors are thinking. But I can't. In the broader scheme, things just sound "the same." Doug Heffernan's voice sounds like Kevin James whether I'm watching in my theater or on the Vizio in the bedroom. But there's got to be some reason for going to all this trouble, right? Yes.
Probably the best thing I can say about the sound is something I think I posted somewhere on this board a few weeks ago. My wife and I watched Michael Keaton in Birdman immediately after eating at a bar with live music. The band was warming up as we left, but we left with that distinct "live experience" where you feel as much as hear the sound. Not necessarily because it's loud, but because the instruments seem to energize the air in the room. I don't know how to explain it, but you know what I mean. Watching the movie, the soundtrack that played as Michael Keaton walked around the theater had that same "live" quality." You could feel the fingers on strings, hear the breaths, just like the band was there in the room with us. I'd experienced that sort of thing before with the LS6. Years ago while watching Pan's Labyrinth, a gunshot in the left channel knocked my wife and me off the couch. As far as our ears knew, that bullet actually whizzed through the room. Now, everything doesn't have that quality. No matter the system, Meet the Browns is crap and I can't turn the channel fast enough. But watching movies, it's easy to get lost in the scene onscreen, and while I can enjoy the experience in other systems (even those in my own house), there's something about the scale in my big rig that just can't be matched, and the LS6 speakers are the main reason.
As for the LS-C, well . . . I had no particular problems with the center I was using, despite its dispersion problems. Dialogue was always pretty clear and it could "keep up," for the most part, with the mains. But I wanted a center to match those mains, for whatever added benefit that would give me. I had a friend wire it up for me last Thursday, and after an educational day for me, we were both excited to hook it up and have a go. Unfortunately, the center sounded like it was being pumped in through an old AM transistor radio. It seems that a connection had come lose from the network and it took out everything but the tweeter. Not the sound you want. My buddy came back and tracked the problem down this past Monday and we gave it another shot. Initially I was so focused on hearing any anomalies that all I could hear was the box. As in, no matter what was going on onscreen, I was hearing everything from the speaker. Thankfully, that was more a problem with my own perception than the speaker itself, which incidentally sounded fine. Later that night I watched a show on Netflix, and once my attention was on the story rather than the speaker, it acquitted itself well. It is smooth, dialogue is clear, but it is evident that the center has balls. Initially I thought that male voices were benefiting from a bit of extra heft, like everybody was doing a James Earl Jones impression, but I think some of that had to do with my focus on hearing "problems" and the fact that the center levels were a bit high. After those first impressions, I have not noticed that particular problem again while actually watching content, rather than listening for hiccups. In comparison to what I had before, I think the defining characteristic is smoothness. Unlike with my prior center, the sound does not change depending on my position, so I suppose that will make the front soundstage a bit more seamless. Not that it was a terrible problem before, but then again, I command the best seat.
I imagine that as time goes on, I'll hear things that I did not notice before, and that will make me smile. Frankly, I've rarely heard or seen changes that were night and day. Improvement has usually been measured in terms of what is missing -- for instance, digital artifacts in video that I'd just come to accept as being part of the picture are no longer there. With audio, there have been the big changes that come from adding speakers with more capability that are able to play louder or lower, but there have also been those subtle little things, a chord here or there, dialogue mumbled under the breath. The LS-C will be more the latter, I think, so that I will appreciate it more and more over time. Which is a good thing, because with it now added to the family, I think I've bought my last speaker.
