The center channel is the single most important speaker in a home theater setup, period. It handles over 70% of the program information. Its not that voices won't sound right without one, but that the voices pretty much won't sound at all. The only time vocals will not come from the center is when someone off screen is talking and it will be handled by either (or both) of the front channels. It has always been my experience that the first thing a customer will upgrade is the center channel, and then the sub.
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Originally Posted by ubertuber
Ideally your center channel will be made to match your left and right speakers - that way when a sound pans across the room you won't be listening to a full dark sound on the left, then a tinny thin sound in the middle and back to the full sound on the right.
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I will elaborate on this point here. What he speaks of is called voice or timbre matching. This basically means that you want all your speakers to have the same basic sound or "voice." This is done by matching the crossover points in your speakers. For example, provided the Polk speakers sixate has are all in the same series, they are will be timbre matched.