Hi there,
I have managed to score 2x Yamaha RX-V665 receivers and 2x Canton 490 GLE's, 6x Canton 430 GLE's and 2x Canton GLE 455 for an incredibly low price. One receiver takes care of my PC while the other is used for my living room.
The one in the office uses 4 Canton 430's and one 455 in combination with a Yamaha NS-SW500 10" subwoofer.
I set them up using an analog connection, bypassing the receivers internal processor altogether, because it was the only way to get it to work properly with my Creative X-Fi card in 5.1 surround mode. Bass is crossed over at 70Hz, which sounds pretty good on both the 430's and the 455.
My home theater is pretty much identical, except for the main speakers, which are the much larger 3.5 way Canton GLE 490's.
The receiver was calibrated using YPAO, which gave me a pretty accurate and even sound field, with the appropriate distances and levels set, bare for the low-pass crossover, where YPAO decided it was best to use all speakers as "LARGE" and use the sub-woofer as a dedicated 0.1 speaker.
Now I'm pretty sure that my own custom setting, mainly setting the speakers to "SMALL" and choosing an appropriate crossover sounded better. I experimented with different settings for a while and landed on "60Hz" as a good setting for music (The 490's sound much better at 60 then at 80Hz).
The only thing I'm now worried about is the fact that the center channel can't get quite so low, as it quickly rolls of at around 80hz, where the 430 satellites manage to extend their range to the low 70's before losing more than 5dB.
Ideally I would crossover my speakers quite differently, namely
490= 40Hz (officially rated down to 20Hz, they drop off at about 40Hz)
430= 70Hz (officially rated down to 38Hz, they drop off at about 70Hz...)
455= 80Hz (Officially rated down to 33Hz, they drop off at about 80Hz...)
But alas, my receiver seems unable to do so, as it can only apply a single crossover for all speakers, either 60 or 80Hz (and not 70Hz).
So I came up with a different idea.
I've been reading up on center-speakers (F.I.: http://theaudiocritic.com/plog/index.ph ... 8&blogId=1) and most sources seem to agree that the typical horizontal center 2.5 channel speaker, in my case the GLE 455, sounds slightly worse than a normal 2 way bookshelf with a slightly larger woofer.
What if I were to use two of my 430 bookshelves as the center speakers for both systems? They both have 7" drivers, which would land me a lower frequency response extension, allowing me to crossover at 60hz without worrying too much about lost audio ranges. I could then use the 455 center speakers as surrounds for either the PC or home theater system, where their absolute frequency range is less of an issue. (The center speaker for me is far more important than the surrounds on either system, as most dialogue and movie critical information is played back continuously on the center speaker, where the surrounds are mostly used for ambient effects and musical extension).
So there you go. I'm hoping someone here can shed some light on what would be the best option for my conundrum.