ADS L620 mains in home theater - what matches for center and surrounds?

[mmohan]

Newbie here looking for advice.

Current setup is a hodge podge of speakers I inherited:
ADS L620s as mains
phantom center
Acoustic Research AR-2AX as surrounds
REL T/5x sub.
Yamaha receiver, 90wpc into 8Ω.
Room is 17x22' with 7'10" popcorn ceilings.

The system is functional but blurry, even after Audyssey. Biggest pain point is the phantom center - family sits off-axis and the imaging falls apart. I want to add a dedicated center channel, and ideally sort out the surrounds at the same time.

Looks like the L420 and L520 are likely candidates since they appear to share the same tweeter family as the L620. But curious if I can widen the search. The L710s are ubiquitous, so perhaps I get those as the mains, and move the L620 to surround duties?

All of this is a stopgap meant to tide us over for a few years while I save for a proper system, so keeping the costs low is ideal. Any advice is appreciated!

 

[rickb119]

Unfortunately, imaging is going to fall apart with pretty much any speaker, when sitting off axis.

I've owned the L620's, and was personally not impressed with them. They were OK for music, but their lack of midrange was unacceptable for TV audio. However, a dedicated center may indeed take care of that, and either the L420 or (preferably) the L520 should work fine. You might look/post on this thread for your center speaker.

https://audiokarma.org/forums/threads/orphan-speaker-bingo.914694/

I've also owned, and loved the L710's, and only sold them when I acquired a pair of KEF 104/2's.