Central Channel or Subwoofer first? 5.1 and 5.1.2 Atmos

[mmarin]

Hi all,


At first sorry if my English is not that good but it is not my native language.

I am equipping myself to get a decent sound system. It takes time due to expense spreading (I buy an element about every 6 months). Today I have:
- Yamaha AV Receiver RX A880
- 2 front Diatone speaker DS201 - very old ones bought second hands and refurbished by myself – I know this may be considered as bookshelf speakers but it does the job in my opinion for the moment.
- 2 rear Dali Oberon 1
- Streamer able to do DDHD/Atmos (Nvidia Shield 2019) and of course streaming platform having atmos mixed music
(- for cinema, I have a BenQ W1070 projector, a bit old now)

The purpose of all of that is of course to have at the end a whole 5.1.2 to be able to use a real Atmos system especially nowadays that music mixing starts to use atmos (even on my 4.0 I can tell the difference and it sounds great with Atmos mixed music).

The ceiling speakers will wait a bit as I am renting my place for now, so the next element will be either a central channel (Dali Oberon Vokal) or a subwoofer (Dali E9-F).

As I am leaving in an apartment I tend to think that a central channel will be more relevant (cannot play loud bass anyway cause of the neighborhood). However, if I can see the benefit of having a central channel for Cinema, does somebody has an experience using atmos music with the central channel? Is the mixing good and is it worth getting a central channel over a subwoofer in this case if my priority is music?

Hope I have been clear enough.

Thank you all in advance!

 

[bigboss]

You've got to get a centre speaker before subwoofer. A subwoofer no doubt will make a massive difference to your movie watching experience, but a centre speaker is important for better dialogue intelligibility. I can't comment on Atmos music with centre channel.