Quote Originally Posted by 02audionoob
Reading this thread prompts me to wonder...is this type of center design only for aesthetics?



In other words, is this a compromised design that would this actually be outperformed by an exact match of the front speakers, which look like this?

A damned good question. My understanding is that multi-speaker arrays limit amplitude a long the axis of the array: this being true, two woofers arranged horizontally would limit side to side dispersion -- not a good idea.

So again, if true, the sideways arrangement would be purely cosmetic and actually counter-functional.