I have cut out 12 holes in my ceiling. I went from 2 speakers at 0°. Then 4 at +55° and -55°. Then 6 at +55°, 0°, -55° . (Based on recommendations from respected people on RUclips, Audioholics, Anthony Gremani , Home Theatre gurus etc.) Then I watched Techno Dad's atmos renderer videos. Which threw a spanner in the works. So, I decided to make six extra holes that are in line with the bed layer. Lots of moving speakers, and crawling around the loft, and recalibration, and listening, and moving speakers, and crawling around the loft, and listening, and recalibration... on and on it went. But..... I think Channa is right. So thanks, Techno Dad, many more man hours later, it sounds right. Guess it's time to start filling in those original holes.🙄
Wow! That's a lot of work...I applaud you for taking the time and energy to experiment and go with a setup based on what you have found to be the best setup. I'm glad I could help...I can't help you fill those holes though...
@@fonkenful I'm 37, so I have no excuse! But it's done now. (I'm glad I had the foresight to keep and label the drywall cutouts). There is now no evidence of the carnage that had taken place previously in that room. I guess it's a bit like a serial killer selling an apartment...
Honestly, Channa is 💯 correct on this...he is basically describing an Auro3D setup. It's better than the Dolby recommendation and still works fine for Atmos.
auro 3d basically uses old dolby layout.dolby ditched it bc it didnt work.just read guides for studio layout bc the normall consumer layou has compromises for normal living room.dont get why consumer guide is fucked up
@@bigben9056 The height layout works perfectly. In fact, the science says that the height layout is absolutely better than just Atmos "Top" channels alone. Wilfried van Balen of Auro did a ton of research on this fact and has freely shared this information. The Japanese TV corporation NHK has also done extensive research into immersive audio and height content (their format is older than Dolby's. They were giving demos way back in 2005) and their research came to the same conclusion as Wilfried did. Height is a superior position to Ceiling (Top-down). Now, Auro3D chose 30 degree height positioning and NHK chose 45 degree height positioning, but ultimately they are all mounted and processed as height channels. DTS:X and IMAX Enhanced also use height channel processing for its default 7.1.4 positions. In all these formats except Atmos, the Top/ceiling mounted channels are specifically for flyover effects directly above the audience. Most of the height effects are designed to come from above the front, side and rear soundstages (especially reflections and reverberations designed to mimic a specific acoustical space such as a cave or a spaceship etc) Seriously, google NHK 22.2 or Hamasaki 22.2. The results they came up with are interesting (and eye-opening)
Note position of speakers at 12:33 and 12:46 in the pro mixing room. Would it not be best to recreate that layout used in the studio to monitor the mix? Those speakers appear to fall within dolby instruction rather than following your suggestions here.
performance. but just to say - i followed the prime elevation manual where it said to "place ypur height speakers as close as possible to the ceiling" and this is where your atmos tester revealed the defects. due to them being close to the ceiling AND the sidewalls (like in the DAR) they caused a lot of echo and completely messed up the directionality of the sound. so i moved it down and closer together - i had my wife hold the speaker up while listening to your tester and then decided on the position. so i'd say yes on this proposal as a general guide but always.. test first!
you always want to be away from sidewalls, even with the front ear leval. I think the main princinble is keep them at the same palce as your ears just higher, which typically are as close to the screen edge as possible.
@@TechnoDad she appreciated the difference in sound as well.. worth all the blabbering during that time 😂😂 i'll be considering speaker on a stick next time (those parts doesnt seem to be easily available here)
You are RIGHT. I have placed four atmos in the four corners aligned with the floor speakers and the Atmos sounds are BEST. I have placed at 45º and when a sound is in FRONT TOP, they sound from that point, not towards me. The problem is that you say about these people chatting in forums that they think that are engineers or something else and place the diagrams of Dolby over all, and they cannot discute it. I go to the BEST mix sound editing room here in Spain and there isn´t any theather that will mimic that experience that I feel, and that was about 14 years ago!. And they have placed the speakers LIKE YOU SUGGEST. A lot of them, of course, because want to mimic a theater enviroment (more of 30 speakers for sure). Only when I add my humble four atmos speakers following my ideas, not the Dolby specs, I feel PART of that experience I sense. So YES, you are RIGHT, sir!
Dude, I had this same conversation talking to a buddy of mine when listening to demos. He wants me to set up his system and I was telling him why I recommend having the atmos speakers match the positions of the bed layer. He kept going back to the dolby charts and I kept explaining why the bed layer is so good at placing sound in the room and why having the top layer match that exactly would be best. Glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. Awesome video and keep up the good work man!
@@TechnoDad I wish you would have made this last year as now I have already drilled the holes and installed the speakers! What is your take on position of front left and right speakers? How far from the front wall should they be? Some people recommend 4 feet from the front wall, but that looks pretty funky, but it would be directly under my atmos speakers at that point. Should I move the fronts out 4 feet or cut new holes and move the atmos speakers?
I just bought a new set of seven speakers for my AVR/surround system. This video makes me want to try to use the older ones for height speakers now. I have a 10x12 living room and I have to use the 10 foot distance for the front to rear. I’m sitting about 8 feet away from the screen and have nothing but wall behind me. Except for a window that I don’t want to block. My A/V amp is a Yamaha RX-V683. I don’t know exactly what it is capable of really doing. Right now the front speakers are placed in a “V” formation from the center to the mains to the front presence speakers at about 7 feet high. These could be put higher since I have 9 foot ceilings. The two surround speakers are placed on the walls about 3 feet above and slightly behind me, in the rear corners of the room. I’m in the left corner of the room and there’s no other way to arrange the furniture. After watching this video, you have made me want to (at least) move the main speakers to the front corners of the room at ear level. This won’t be easy for the left side because I have to go up and around a door frame with a third thick gauge wire. I can’t really lower the surround speakers because a piece of furniture is in the way. If you can picture this layout, what do you think of it? And is it improvable? Like I said, no furniture can be moved to another location in this small house. Simply because there’s no room to put it anywhere else. Thanks for your opinion.
A reminder has been set ☺- You can do both by integrating design features so that they aid the sound and video, items in the room remain functional and also look nice and not like you are in a black coffin. I am glad you brought this subject up. Using common can get you results that deliver both, but of course if common sense was a currency we would all be rich. Love this video 👌
Its important to go through this thought process and fully understand what it is you are trying to accomplish before starting any kind of construction. I think the issue here is that people started building home theaters to include Atmos before we had all the information at hand. The first few years of Atmos installation was all basically beta-testing and experimemtation. The price of being an early adopter.
Very interesting and makes total sense. I have a 7.1.4 system in my living room, so full of compromises. I had to go for in ceiling speakers for my hight channels so need to bring them in closer to be able to get the best out of them. I’m assuming that if you are advocating putting speakers in the corners, it would be better to use bookshelf sized speakers angled to the listener?
Performance all day every day. Attractive theater style seating combined with awesome lighting definitely grasps my attention. But beautiful video on a large screen combined with immersive sound is what blows me away.
I just watched your video on my home theater system. I have six up firing speakers. My system pretty much followed your Atmos demo. Not exactly, but sounded pretty close. The sound seemed to go up the front wall and not towards me during those examples. The sound seemed to be pretty darn close to your demo so I'm pretty happy about that. I have a Nakamichi Dragon 11.4.6 home theater system and tuned my system with your Spatial Audio Calibration Tool as best I could. Made a real difference in how my system sounds so thank you for that tool kit! It may not be a perfect system, but the Atmos is way better than my Bose 900 Soundbar system it replaced. I think it has more to do with having more power to bounce those sounds off the ceiling better and having six speakers to do it with.
I totally agree with you. This is why I feel that in any given day Auro 3D is better than Dolby Atmos. The addition of an extra layer exponentially increases the intensity of immersion. I do reallt feel bad that Auro 3D doesn't get the credit it deserves. Dolby clearly has the edge through their aggressive marketing. Thank you for making this video, you have meticulously put together your careful observations.
13.2 does me , it took a while but base level are all at ear level once seated, my height speakers are all same level and the top speaker is above my seat and it blows me away.. 😊
Great information Techno Dad.I'm still using The Yamaha Rx 583 for 5.2.2. I went 4 channel in 1973/4 with 8 track tapes, anyone remember the 4 channel FM broadcast You needed 2 FM tuners.
Great video! Your focus was more on the height speakers, but what do you think about the main bed layer? Shouldn't our 5/7 bed layer speakers be setup in a box format as well than instead of what dolby recommends? I've never understood why our rear or surround speakers should be so close to us in atmos. I think the ideal is a square box room, you sit in the middle. Speakers in every corner, both at ear level and height level. Then a main center channel.
If you only have 5, the surrounds are intended (by Dolby) to be more beside you and only a little bit behind you. Maybe 110° to 120°. When you have 7.1, the side surrounds move go 90° and the rear surrounds move to around 150° in general, the front mains should be the front wall, the rear surrounds should be the rear boundry and the side-surrounds should be exactly halfway between them. You could set up a 5.1 like a Quadrophonic setup with the addition of a center channel, but the rear surrounds being that far back has some weird psychoacoustic effects. Thats one of the reasons the rear surrounds are not used often for sustained playback.
@@clintstuckey There is a rather square room of 8,1 x 7,2 meter x 2,55m height (or ratios of 3.18 x 2.82 x 1) in which there are no axial resonance modi below 182Hz, nor retromodi and also no other than axial modi below 165Hz
@@FURognar the general laws of acoustics regarding boundary reflectios and interference at listenig level always apply, meaning in 2.0 or surround the spakers need to be away from the walls quite a bit (min 5ms of 90cm/3ft; preferably 10-20ms or ven further into the room - law of ellipses). This was proven by Jeremy Kipnis in his Beta studio, together with having a subwoofer per speaker , distanced no further apart than half the distance of the cut-off wavelength (ie. never in the corners of the room)
Hmm, so yes, my back surround and sidesurrounds are not placed on ear level, why? Because it's my living room. Just not gonna happen. So it's not exactly how the artists intended it to be placed, but hey, it sounds 500x better than those goofy soundbars, and it's not the end of the world that your soundstage is some what lifted
Ow I totally agree with TD about height channels. I have just 2 height speakers, but they,re NOT in my ceiling but right above my front speakers. If I going to place back height surrounds they will be right above my back surrounds
Great work. I agree with your research. The theater room will be energized accurately with balanced sound. Especially, if the bed layer speakers still support the atmos speakers with sound. You will feel the helicopter all around you as it passes through. The sound will be on another level. This is part of the reason why home theaters sound much better than commercial theaters. The sound is in your face and you could feel it move around the room with impact. Commercial theaters doesn't give you the same experience.
Great effort making the video, but after trying both options with front and rear heights, and in ceiling I prefer the home theater gurus option with in ceiling speakers. To me it was a big difference. 8’ wasn’t tall enough to noticed a good separation between base layer and front and rear height
First, I'm glad you found something that works well for you. You will hear more sound when a speaker is physically closer to you, no doubt. The tradeoff is less accurate positioning of height objects based on the Atmos renderer and coherence between the ear-level speakers and heights. Just like stereo imaging breaks when placed too close or too far, the same thing happens with height speakers.
Performance. Just 1 question. What about the angels everybody is talking about. Or just put the speakers on the richt spot and angle them to main listingposition?
Respect. Definitely something to try and see if the difference is big. To be clear, just for the bed layer, you'd move surround to the middle of room and surround back to the back corners?
With multiple rows, the speakers at home should be just above ear level so it's not blocked. My surrounds are actually just below ear level and some sounds still sound like they're over my head from the side surrounds (HRTF in the recorded sounds affects placement too). Most of these mixes are designed for the movie theater and their surrounds tend to be considerably above ear level anyway. So this notion that Atmos needs speakers at or below ear level is erroneous. You want separation between layers, but the layers don't have to be exactly at ear level. You do generally want to keep front/rear lower layer speakers relatively consistent with each other. If possible, LCR mains should be behind an audibly transparent screen. If not, you can employ a "dialog lift" mixer (Yamaha builds the feature into its AVRs) to simulate it with TVs and the like as well.
My system is a 5.1 at ear level, but I think you're correct. Multi channel music is also making similar advances as they are moving the sound stage around the room for some arrangements.
7.1.6 is the best, but when the space is limited you go with 5.1.4... in the case of limited funds and the 5.1.2 is the only option is bette ti have the 2 atmos channels as front high or on top of the main sitting position?
The official atmos layout gives me original Dolby Surround vibes, like just put some speakers there to give you a vague sensation of height, and sound coming from above, and your suggestion is more of the placing sound accurately exactly where it's encoded to live.
I have a 7.2.4 setup and I’ve had to move the furniture around which means that my surrounds left and right now have the top front left and right ceiling speakers directly above them. I was going to use the Dolby angles etc to move the ceiling speakers forward but after watching this video am I correct in that you are suggesting where they are now is the more logical position? Would save me cutting more holes!
I had a friend telling me about this concept while I was upgrading from a .2 overhead to a .4 and I thought it was very interesting. I then found your channel and downloaded your test video that had sounds going straight up and down from the base speakers and it clicked for me. I know have all four overhead speakers directly above the front and surround speakers and it sounds fantastic. Thanks for pushing this topic, it makes perfect sense. Now I have to redo my living room....half the fun right? Right guys?
@@bigben9056 Thats why you do 6 height channels. This guy is using SURROUND HEIGHTS and thus, have speakers close enough to put sounds directly overhead. Some Atmos processors will use Surround Heights with Atmos (Trinnov, Storm, D&M etc)
I go for performance. I don't mind seeing the speakers in my Living/Media Room. I just don't want a big screen & a projector. I think any Living Room could benefit from Acoustic Treatments. I will eventually get a Micro LED Display to put into my room with JTR Speakers system throughout.
Oh man!!! I did exactly what you said not to do. Although I’m extremely limited with my living room space and vaulted ceilings, and open concept. I did a 7.2.4 and my 4 heights are midway towards front/rear to seating position
I don't think the diagram contradicts itself at 10:06, yeah the seating position between the ear level speakers changed, but that does not matter because this diagram is meant to show the angles for the height speakers. And if we compare the height speakers relative to the seating position for the big diagram and the small one, they seem to be identical. It's not telling you where to place your seating position, that's what the large diagram is for, it's only meant to show the angles for the height speakers and their placement.
Watch the fireballs scene of Dungeons and Dragons near the end and tell me if it sounds right when the fireball hits the building up on the top left there.
Being a HT designer implies you will understand the formats and how to better get advantage of your clients budget/design to deliver these formats to the best of your ability. And experience does help a lot. If you are “hearing” your height speakers and they are very localizable as to “image” like what you describe in the helicopeter, maybe those speakers are not appropiate or too directional. I have installed ceiling speakers from TRIAD, JBL and others and some do that directional thing but the best dissapear and give a great sound bubble. Clients always point to the screen as source of sound, (or all around in surround mode) and that implies the same for Atmos objects that are created via software! Dolby has done a great job but of course rooms and speakers are so variable that stuff like what you describe happens.
I'm probably wrong, but I think for rear speakers I don't like direct radiating speakers but I like Dipole/Bipole speakers. Atmos speakers can be mounted at ceiling on upper wall with a slant speaker.
I think this concept works great but only if you have 10 to 12-ft ceilings. Someone like me with Atmos at 8 and 1/2 ft. It's hard to get enough separation between the side surrounds and if I were to have Atmos channels directly above on the walls.
I’m about trial and error. I won’t just assume one is better than the other, I would try them out. I’ve done that. So I would say, try it out and see what’s up.
I have a 7.2.6 system. The 6 height speakers are connected to a separate 6 channel emotiva basx amp. When I turn off the bed layer speakers and listen to just the height speakers, there really isn't much coming from the heights. I watched the bombing scene from Midway just before this reply and there are plenty of bullets whizzing by and another plane passing overhead but for the majority of the scene the heights are silent. Knowing what I know now, I think I can get the same results with a 7.2.4 system using in ceiling speakers that are located slightly in front and behind of my primary listening position. Don't skimp on side surround speakers, there is plenty of sound coming from these bed level speakers.
I want to preface I have Bachelors Degree in Live Sound Engineering, the principles of audio cover all areas of audio work. I agree with your video, I have a 7.1.4 currently, I have the option to add two more speakers with a pre-out, It was either Front Wide Pair or going middle height, to me it makes sense to copy the surround Left & right as they are right next to you, so if a heli is going straight up, doesnt matter where in the audio space it should go straight up and the speakers should accurately show that. I also want to say my speaker set up probably goes against every Dolby Atmos setup rule 🤣 I sit at my desk so Im foward of the middle, my height speakers are mounted to the wall in line with my L&R to keep consistancy when audio goes up, same with the rear heights. Your main set of speakers should be at listening height so the tweeter is ear level unless you have two tier seating then the listening location should be on axis to the tweeter. The big issue with ceiling speakers if they are coax or two way speakers, is the tweeter doesnt point towards the listener, so the whole unit need angling however there are models that are purposefuly designed with an angle built in. I would still line them up with the main left and right and put them closeish on the z plane to that location. Just make sure they are time aligned back to the Main speakers. When designing any speaker system, speaker location is extremely important otherwise you can run into standing waves or phase cancellation depending on the speaker and the room. Im not an expert by an means, but my degree really helps.
So I brought my copy of SACT to my friend's house. He's got 7.2.4. Mid and rear heights. He hates me now, confirmed he needs to go to .6 and get those front heights, which also means an upgrade to his AV receiver. BTW SACT is a great upgrade tool. The panning test of the bed layer, makes me want side surrounds.
No he doesn't "need" to go 6 heights because he currently has his 4 in a sub-optimal position. I have my 4 heights at -35 degrees and +35 degrees (or 55 and 125 using the Dolby diagram) and my Atmos sounds amazing. Going to 6 height might be a very marginal improvement but not worth the much extra cost and hassle of re-situating height speakers etc. Your friend just needs to position his 4 correctly and he should notice a huge improvement.
Very good points. Another thing that supports your argument, look at the speakers that come with upfiring atmos speakers like the Klipsch. Those speakers are built right over the bed layer speaker.
Well of course they are, where else would they be? That doesn't mean it's an optimal placement. Truth is, upfiring speakers aimed at the ceiling are a bad idea and a major compromise at best. It took me over a year of rearranging my ceiling mounted Atmos speakers and the most accurate sound I achieved was when all 4 speakers were in the main listening position area, 55° in front and 55° behind my listening position. When the main left and right speakers are spread too far apart it destroys the soundstage. The same principle applies to ceiling mounted Atmos speakers.
@D.L.W. I didn't say they were expected to be anywhere else. I said it supports his theory of where they should be placed. Everyone knows upfiring speakers are a compromise, but that doesn't change the idea of them being right over the bed layer, which is what this video was about. If you are happy with where you placed yours than great but the point of this video was about why they shouldn't be where you put them and I tend to agree with the video. By the way I have in ceiling speakers, I was making a point about his concept.
Totally agree with you. I installed 2 height speakers right above my front speakers. Speaker lay-out should be like the atmos renderer, its just as simple as that
So if I understood correctly. I dont have to worry about the 30 degree or 45 degree angles, just place the height speakers exactly above the bed layer and I should have a wonderful Atmos, Auro experience?
You have to keep it within that 30°-45° range because if you go too high, you lose the coherence between your ear-level speaker and the height speaker.
@@joentellhi Joe, so should I put my left channel and right channel 45 degrees off the MLP each? Just wondering if you and TD changed your setups to reflect 45 degree angles after making the spatial calibration toolkit given your findings about when something appears in the left or right channel. Just want to make sure my bedlayer is setup correctly before mirroring it with the heights.
@@joentellmy ceiling is 7.5 feet tall should I still worried about the angles. I am still not sure about how to implement technodad's suggestion. Because it appears I just have to copy my bed layer up above.
While I haven't tested my system and am nowhere near an expert like TD, I wanted to chime in a fair warning from my experience. I DO have my Atmos speakers up in the corners directly above my surrounds similar to the diagram here, and I can say I've almost NEVER gotten a true 'overhead' sound effect. So while this placement makes sense, there definitely is still a concept of angle and separation at play here. I think for my setup to have a true 'overhead' experience, I'd need them about two feet in on the ceiling - in line with my front mains. I'm not sure how y'all are getting an overhead effect with a corner mounted speaker that's far out from the MLP but it may not work for everyone.
How far back are your surround speakers? Surround speakers should be between 90 degrees and 110 degrees. You don't want to go too much further back than that. If you have 7 ear-level speakers (with Rear Surrounds as well as Sides) then you should try your best to put your surrounds at 90 degrees. At worst, put them at 100 degrees. You should be splitting the distance (equidistant) between the Front mains and the rear surrounds. If your surrounds are at around 100 degrees, mounting your side surrounds above them, you will have definitive overhead effects. There will be no question. Try the opening scene of Man of Steel, the part on Krypton. There are two moments when Kryptonian ships fly directly overhead and use their P.A. system. It should sound like a singular Voice of God channel directly above you. I am currently using Surround heights mounted at about 100 degrees and that images overhead perfectly. About 95% of how it sounded back when I had them mounted at 90 degrees directly overhead.
Aren't these issues he is talking about corrected with proper calibration and time alignment? Cause if top fronts are not above LR but slightly forward towards MLP then you time shift it so the sound comes out exactly at the moment when it comes from LCR. The speaker placement shouldn't be that of an issue. For example I have LR surrounds like 1 foot below ceiling. Most of the time it sounds right and not like going from ceiling. Maybe if you super focus on it then you pick it up but otherwise quite fine. The speakers are there to paint the image and they can create illusion line the sound is coming from different place then the speaker is located. I have C in the ceiling and angled towards MLP. Doesn't sound AT ALL like it's coming from the ceiling.
I completely agree. I am in the process of building my home theater, but currently I only have a 6.1 receiver and separate amps. Often I even turn off my center because I have such an amazing phantom center. This absolute proof that the same can happen with the height speakers. Heck even with just my two front towers playing some of the 8D tracks on RUclips, I can even hear height. Whenever I am ready to buy a new receiver, I will have pre-wires for ceiling speakers, but i will probably experiment with speaker placement and settings. Will you have any more info for settings/adjustments for the height channels? Or is it as intuitive as I'm thinking...? Thanks!
If you are going to experiment with height speakers, I would look at my Speaker on a Stick design to test out height speaker locations - ruclips.net/video/h7NWteMPO5A/видео.htmlsi=WD4m1phNIxrerZT9
Makes a lot of sense.. my room is too small for surround back so I have 2 klipsche atmos on the ceiling but very slightly forward of my surrounds. (After watching your video I am honestly wondering what I was thinking not having them in line with the surrounds) I don't have any on the front but can hook up another 2. I am now going to move my 2 atmos speakers to directly above my surrounds and hooking up another 2 above my front left and right. Today I will move my surrounds but need to get more speaker wire before I hook up my front left and right atmos. I got the speakers on another system upstairs which I am not using atm so I just need to get more speaker wire. Makes a lot of sense. I honestly feel I learned something from this video. True hard to take in new information when I always think I know best. I been making music since mid 80's and into home cinema since late 90's...yes when you needed nicam stereo to get a dolby suround signal. :)
Dumb question… Just to confirm, if you are doing a 5.1.4 setup you should do surround heights above your surround left and right speakers? Also, would a 5.1.6 work? There is no available back wall, but the ceiling does continue.
Well...that does make sense. However...when using surround height position, the way sounds are matrixed between the front height and rear height are not going to sound correct 100%. Maybe setting the rear height to top middle? That might work a bit better.
@@TechnoDad Thanks for the info, I appreciate it!... Maybe I can pick up some Monoprice THX satellites and try out some different positions (and position settings in AVR) before turning my ceiling/walls into Swiss cheese lol. Also, I could always repurpose the Monoprice THX satellites to garage speakers with a little sub.
@@synergyxx Ive found setting the tops to top front and top rear(not height) is what works best in 5.1.4, and placing the speakers about 2ft in front of and behind MLP and 20% of the room from the side walls to the MLP. This will put the MLP in an atmos bubble and will provide very good separation of atmos effects from fronts and surrounds while offering very good matrixing
Sound advice. We merge what we know from both disciplines into a new way of listening in a better immersive listening environment. With the added channel, do you need a processor to handle that or run the new channel in series with the front atmos?
Where do we place them? Ear level, yea that a given. A linear spacial plane that surrounds you. cool, knew that. As far as the helecopter lifiting off. the sound isn't linear, it doesn't go "straight up". Helecopter lifts off from 30' away to 30 feet. That helecopter is now 42' away, and if it's already at the front of the sound stage, it can't move forward in the sound stage so only option is to move backwards closer to you and more above to give you that "height" experience
I was using my two atmos speakers (in a 5.1.2 setup) at the very front height of the ceiling at an equidistant distance between them but I always felt that the sound coming from the top lacked spaciousness so what I did was to put them at the very top of each corners of the front wall and wow!, now the sound is more spacious and crisp, I didn't know what I was missing!, the crossover frequency is very important, in my case I set it to 150Hz since that's the recommended setting when the size of the speaker cone is 2.7 inches.
Hi, love your content! Does your opinion aboht height speaker placement change depending on the ceiling height of the room? For example, 6' vs 10' vs 15'? Looking at the Atmos box, can you guesstimate the room dimensions based on the screen size?
I haven't really thought about 15 foot ceilings. Obviously, a 6 foot ceiling would be pretty rough. I think 8 feet hight is a great place to put the speakers. My new Atmos mixing room has 10 foot ceilings, but I am placing the heights at 8 feet high.
That’s the reason why Dolby spec specifies angle not height above the main speakers. If angle is preserved it doesn’t matter how high is your ceiling - it will come from the specific point. I think showing a room/box shape is misleading. It should show the way auro3d shows a bubble. Then people can visualize why angles make sense - it’s not about corners in your space! Sound traveling to your front Atmos speaker is ok - it doesn’t mean it travels closer into your room if your ceiling is lower - it means it comes from that direction. So if it’s mixed to go up above the front soundstage it either will be mixed with front channels or spl will be lower than when coming from front speakers - mimicking greater distance of the object to you. If your room was square and your main listening position was in the middle it’s possible at certain ceiling height to have Atmos speakers directly over front and rear speakers whilst maintaining 45 degree to them. With Auro3d they say to put over main speakers - front and side surrounds but at the same time they say to have them at 30 degrees. This is not possible with all rooms at variable ceiling heights.
So would you say that the speaker layout for Dolby Atmos should be closer to Auro3D with speaker placement in corners facing down at 45°? Should they also be angled towards the listening position on the sidewalls and corners? Would like your input on that. I've been mulling over my Heights for a while now and looking for advice on where to put them and how best to proceed. I've always appreciated your no-nonsense input on performance versus aesthetic versus angles and following charts. Thanks, Techno Dad!
Makes so much sense… but realistically not getting more then 11 ch of amps so, I’ll have to make do with 4 atmos… but good to consider and know! I’m still quite a while away from making my theater though so, let’s see
Room shape and size will always take president in my opinion. I have a very small room but still manage a fully functional 7.2.6 setup. I have typical 7ch base layer setup, but heights are in between what you and Dolby advise. My FH's are above L&R, my MH's are roughly between LR & SLR, and finally RH's between SLR & SBLR, for me, this covers every angle and very enveloping, all.this in a 2.5m wide room by 5m long 😁👍
I don't see any receivers set up for 6 height speakers. I see 4 outputs, but not 6. How do you power the 5th and 6th speaker and make sure they're getting the correctly coded signal? Does this require a $20k receiver or what? Also, I had an Aperion audio 7.1 set up in my last house and was happy with their speakers. Are there any others out there on par with Aperion audio that I should take a look at? Thanks.
Moved speakers but moved them practically back where i had them..unless I am not fully understanding but I felt that the atmos speakers sound terrible in line with the surrounds. Having too close to the line of the surrounds you are hearing almost zero channel separation this way. Having the back atmos speakers literally above where you sit sounds absolutely incredible.
I would love to have a 7.1.6 system. Unfortunately my receiver can only handle 7.1.4 with an extra amp. Will be a while before I can get all the speakers but will see how it turns out at some point.
Hey Channa! Your video makes sense. I'm thinking the screen size compared to the room size is a factor, not so much the bed layer but the Atmos layer. I have a 100" screen, but my atmos speakers are out 2 to 3 feet past left/right of my screen. I may need to move my atmos speakers. For example, the atmos track for A Quiet Place when the moster moves down the basement stair case. The footsteps do not sound like they are coming from the top left of the screen, more like 2 feet out where i placed the speaker. So what I'm thinking is I'm going to have to move my atmos speakers in line with my screen because to me it just makes more sense. If I could fit a 150" to cover the wall then i think I would not have a problem. lol Great video Thanks man!
Agreed, in the context of a dedicated home theatre! Mimic the simulation software should give you the best results. For everyone else, it is a bit of a compromise. I use 5 bottom 4 top. Atmos and auro 3d. Pretty happy. I believe Atmos's intention is to try and translate that same point in space across multiple configurations. I don't know how well that is done, but I am sure it has some compromises. This is why Sony 360 stuff is said to translate better and why auro 3d is so good. As that middleware layer just translates into a more Likable result than the original compromise.
OH MY GOD! Finally someone said it! Screw the artist's intent!!!!!! There have been times where we are all scratching our heads wondering what the "artist" was thinking allowing for sub-par audio tracks to be released in the first place. Now I'll go back and listen to the rest of the video😁
I was so happy when earth was flat, but Galileo messed up when he said that earth was not only round but also moves around the Sun, back them everybody was shocked. So I'm now. Nobody ever that I remember made such comment so simple and easy to understand. Thank you so much. Now like Galileo you messed up my live, because now I need two more speakers on the ceiling and another amp, as I said it was better when earth was flat. To think that this information was always there in front of my eyes yet I never saw it. You just clarified something that if we all pay attention we will finally here Dolby Atmos The Way it was intended to be. I have been an audiophile for over 50 years with my own self made home theater, therefore in this field nothing really amaze me but this time I am. I heard it from you. "Oly from the mind of Techno Dad"
I’ve got my seven base level speakers set at ear level around the room and removed the centre height speaker and have six height speakers above my base speakers position and it sounds pretty dam good 😮❤
I've got a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4/Auro-3D 13.1 setup running on my Denon X6700H and certainly know there is room for improvement in my living room. Though I can't easily make the speaker location change proposed here, I like the concept discussed!
Channa, I laid out 6 channels on the top. Two in the front, two in the center and two in the rear... all above the base layer speakers. I can't use all 6 on heights at once so I put a switch A/B/A+B. Currently, it is calibrated for top front and top rear. This just felt like a natural way to do, and I don't know the ABC of HT. I use an Integra DRX 8.4 btw.
@TechnoDad turns out the drx8.4 also can do 6 heights but has to sacrifice two base. It is basically a 11.4 with XLR I/Os and DLBC both of which are crucial for me.. Doesn't denon have only 11 channels? Or is it 13 processing?
I'd one day like to do 7.1.2 but currently I'm just rocking 5.1.2. I have my atmos speakers a little in front of me (maybe 50 to 45 degrees?). I couldn't do 90 degrees sadly due to a ceiling fan but I can say your calibration tool kit helped a ton.
Hey, Techno Dad, great video! I have no experience with Atmos at all and this episode brought me a lot closer to understanding, and almost answering my own questions. In this video you said you were discussing dedicated theater rooms and not living rooms because the latter had too many compromises. Amen! But before I turn off the lights and go home on this idea, I thought I’d ask your thoughts on my specific scenario and if decoding Atmos is “worth the squeeze” as they say. I have a 11x15x8 foot living room/ theater room with a ceiling mounted projector on the long end with the drop down screen 2ft from the front with an OLED tv about a foot from the wall, and a well calibrated 5.1 system using Paradigm reference LCR and paradigm in-wall surrounds in the back. The seating positions are on two couches along both sides of the 15’ wall, with the “MLP” about 40” from the rear wall. There is a row of three connected folding theater chairs from an old cinema along the back wall but that position is what it is. I just upgraded to a Yamaha A4A that can support 7.x.2 and decode Dolby Atmos. Right now I have it set up as bi-amped Left and Right 5.1. I could ceiling mount two paradigm CI Pro P80-A v2 or similar as the .2 Atmos heights… if it was worth it. In your experience, would it be worth all the drywall dust, fiberglass rash, and money, or do you think it’s a do it right or not at all situation? Do you think I’d gain anything resembling Atmos, or would I be better off sticking with an articulate 5.1 setup? Any thoughts would be deeply appreciated! Thanks!!
I use Plex via Nvidia Shield Pro. In my space I will pick DTS HD MA over TrueHD 7.1 Atmos any day!! My AVR upmixes DTS to Auro3D, and the difference is day and night. Of course every space is different. I have on wall speakers (height), not in ceiling (top).
Great video ! 7.1.6 is the way to go to make sure ourselves ready for rightly mixed content 👍🏼 And thanks for the efforts to make ‘the sound’ sounds the best Channa!
This explanation of speaker placement for atmos is fantastic. I have the normal open space living room in an apartment building. I would choose the Dolby render placement.
It would be very helpful if you had some images of your recommendations for placement for the speakers that anyone could see and understand I randomly found your videos searching for how to setup my new system however I have no idea what you’re saying but you sound like you know what you’re talking about
Very well said, and like you said, the problem is what the artist intended!! The real problem is the lack of standard in Dolby layouts, if you go to Dolby layouts, you got the classic Dolby overhead speakers layout, then you got the layout that is very similar to auro 3D, then you got the layout with speakers sitting above your main speakers but pointing to the ceiling (such a joke this layout but it is there if you want to use) so if you are an artist, what layout should you use?? Since every artist is different and is mixing using different rooms, and he or she can choose between 3 layouts to use, what you get for the end user is a layout that doenst have a standard and dont work on all situations, you can use the classic overhead or the more like auro 3d, some movies will work great with one, others will work great with the other, because basically some artists is mixing using one layout instead of the other. Audioholics did a video about this some time back, he even invited one famous mixig artist that was mixing a lot of famous movies, like Star Wars and something like that, the artist said that the correct way to listening to his mixing was the classic overhead speakers, now other famous artist is mixing other famous movies like Dune using a more like auro 3d setup, so thats it, you can choose if you want to have a perfect movie experience with Dune or Star Wars, or you can have two home theaters like Techno Dad have 🤣, all thanks to Dolby!!!
Yeah, it's a big PITA. I have seen so many different Atmos studio setups and a lot of them don't even follow the suggested speaker placements. They do tune the room using Dolby's Curvce, which will not give similar results. Tuning to a custom target curve in the studio and the home theater is what we need to do. I think if we matched the calibration method in the studio as that in the home theater, we will be able to have better translation from studio to home theater. Just so you know, that live stream you speak of was two hours they tried to prove me wrong, but that mixer guy wouldn't say I was wrong. I didn't watch it, but a viewer did and told me what was said. At the end of it, they just voted and said I was wrong. Where is the proof?
I am building a dedicated room in my custom home build. The room will be 18' wide and 23'-6" deep with 10' ceiling. I will have second row seating which will be 15" above the first row. I plan on a 11.4.6 setup using JBL Synthesis in-wall speakers and a Trinnov Altitude processor. How would you recommend placing the 6 ceiling mounted Atmos speakers in this type of configuration?
This helps quite a bit. My dedicated room is 13x12. I have 2 Emotiva in ceiling about 3' in front of my seating and was trying to avoid cutting more holes and running wires. Now I think I will add 2 above the TV up front and 2 behind my seating position. Oh, wait...13 channels, damn. Well, maybe I add 2 up front until I can up my channel count😅
@TechnoDad, I downloaded all of your demo tracks. Unfortunately, they didn't play on my Denon 4400H and Pany 820 but played on my Xbox One, and all tracks were great.
i got that and agree... and by watching i noticed, that i mounted everything like you said about 4 years ago😂 why did i do this? because i did not look at the atmos recommendation. i did it because that made the most sense to me. but what about angles of the top speaker. do you think they should all pointed to the MLP via pivoting ect. ? exept the middle tops?
I’ve been preaching a scaled down version of this for years - high performance, BUDGET 5.1.4 Atmos systems that can be built around an affordable 9.2 receiver ($500 or less) and 2 sets of Klipsch Reference Theater packs ($800 gets you 4 ear-level speakers, 4 height speakers, 2 subwoofers and a spare center channel speaker!) Performance is surprisingly good once the system is properly calibrated and installation is a breeze when you don’t have to mess with in-ceiling speakers. Home theater snobs consider it heresy - until they hear just how awesome it sounds.
I understand your theory, I thought about it myself, but putting all your speakers in corners where two or three walls meet is not gonna be great for sound. Unless, you have a bunch of small, sealed coaxial speakers crossed over at like 120 to 150 Hz and all at 45 degree angles like those little triangle shaped speakers that were around a while ago. I think this also depends on the width of your room and ceiling height. But I personally like having my front mains and ceiling speakers and rear surrounds all creating good stereo imaging, I even went as far as plugging my Atmos speakers that are on ceiling into my front left and right channels and playing music on them while adjusting the toe-in and location until I got a good stereo image. Of course I tested all of this on Dolby, Atmos and DTSX demo discs. The helicopter demo on the 2016 Dolby Atmos disc is a good one. I think you’re on to something with having a height speaker above every bed layer channel but I don’t think putting them in the corners is the best idea. Just my two cents. Love these conversations, I could talk about this for days… oh wait… I already do…
I think the effect that we talk a lot about the dolby atmos is that the sound engineers are less generous compared to surround sound because the surround we hear almost permanently compare to atmos.
Great perspective! Curious… if you have high-back chairs… Do you have front stage and rear stage at on same plane, but higher than optimal to allow rears greater clearance over chair backs or do you keep front stage optimal and raise the rears. Which is lesser of two evils? This video got me thinking.
Hi! Great question. I'm glad I can inspire some thought. I have the tweeters at 47" all around on the ear level. High back chairs do present a problem when it comes to hearing sounds from behind. You could raise them, but not too much as you don't want to disrupt that ear level plane too much.
I don’t think you need to make any apologies or excuses for anything you do! Everything you’ve put out is based on YOUR experience, it’s up to the consumer to use the info provided to educate themselves or interpret these videos into their own experience. 🎉
This issue with atmos is not everyone has a movie theater room setup, a movie room I would assume is very square, most home aren't built that way unless you custom built your house to include this
@@TechnoDad While that’s true, most builders have no clue how big to make the media rooms. Most are 12x12 or 11x10 etc. I just closed on a plan that has a 14x17 media room which I can work with. Would have preferred 14x22 ideally.
So, according to the 3D picture, the bed layer is placed at the floor? So, much lower than ear level? If so, are the speakers angled up toward the listening position?
Do you think placing the front and rear height speakers in the corners is more important than keeping them equidistant to the MLP? Also, if they are down firing in ceiling speakers and not aiming at the MLP, does that affect your findings or not?
@@TechnoDad Lol, ok. Let me be a bit more specific. MLP is at 2/3 room length. Would you recommend putting the front heights equidistant from MLP or back to the front wall?
Yes!! 3 on the left and 3 on the top for a total of 6 on top and 6 on the bottom. BUT we should take it a step further and 6 in the middle, for a total of 19!!!!
You are absolutely spot on! Loved the video. Very experienced. It’s very true everything you have just said. I concur because I have the exact same experience as you . There is way too many videos out there, a lot of it doesn’t make sense.. lol
Most home theater preamps and receivers with Atmos are no more than 11.1. The height channels are front and rear with no provision for center height. No matter. Dolby Atmos is an object oriented system that adjusts to the number of speakers employed for proper imaging in that environment. In a home environment, speaker placement is important in order for the sound image to work and have proper mapping of objects in the sound field, but it need only be in a rather standard configuration. In a theater environment, you can hang as many as 64 speakers in order to place objects precisely where the mixer has placed them. For my setup, I'm employing a 9.2 speaker arrangement with upward firing L&R front height speakers to reflect off the ceiling. I don't have the rear height speakers employed but Atmos compensates with the arrangement I have in order to place sounds where they need to be. That's really the key here. Atmos is designed to create the proper sonic image even if you're using a sound bar. It won't be as good as having a theater with 64 speakers but it will sound as good as your equipment allows.
I did the layout according to the dolby specs 5.1.4 and it wasn't that immersive, then I placed the rear speakers exactly vertical to the rear heights channel and the sound was complete Immersive, do experiment before installing .
Hey T.D. What crossover point is recommended for atmos? Is there much bass, or even mid bass? Would having an 8” compared to a 6.5” make a huge difference? Maybe you could make a video discussing these.
![BRASIL vs. URUGUAY [1-1] | RESUMEN | ELIMINATORIAS SUDAMERICANAS | FECHA 12](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/-hWBAuxF1eY/mqdefault.jpg)
I have cut out 12 holes in my ceiling. I went from 2 speakers at 0°. Then 4 at +55° and -55°. Then 6 at +55°, 0°, -55° . (Based on recommendations from respected people on RUclips, Audioholics, Anthony Gremani , Home Theatre gurus etc.) Then I watched Techno Dad's atmos renderer videos. Which threw a spanner in the works.
So, I decided to make six extra holes that are in line with the bed layer. Lots of moving speakers, and crawling around the loft, and recalibration, and listening, and moving speakers, and crawling around the loft, and listening, and recalibration... on and on it went.
But..... I think Channa is right. So thanks, Techno Dad, many more man hours later, it sounds right. Guess it's time to start filling in those original holes.🙄
Wow! That's a lot of work...I applaud you for taking the time and energy to experiment and go with a setup based on what you have found to be the best setup. I'm glad I could help...I can't help you fill those holes though...
@@TechnoDad you probably could. But I don't want to find out what your day rate is!
@@Britishbandogge overhead drywall patching and skim coating is a young man’s game; I’m now at 72, so anything under 50 qualifies. 🤭
@@fonkenful I'm 37, so I have no excuse! But it's done now. (I'm glad I had the foresight to keep and label the drywall cutouts). There is now no evidence of the carnage that had taken place previously in that room. I guess it's a bit like a serial killer selling an apartment...
@@Britishbandogge Dexter Gordon and the art of home theatre install. 😵💫
Honestly, Channa is 💯 correct on this...he is basically describing an Auro3D setup. It's better than the Dolby recommendation and still works fine for Atmos.
Yep, pretty much!
auro 3d basically uses old dolby layout.dolby ditched it bc it didnt work.just read guides for studio layout bc the normall consumer layou has compromises for normal living room.dont get why consumer guide is fucked up
@@bigben9056 The height layout works perfectly. In fact, the science says that the height layout is absolutely better than just Atmos "Top" channels alone. Wilfried van Balen of Auro did a ton of research on this fact and has freely shared this information. The Japanese TV corporation NHK has also done extensive research into immersive audio and height content (their format is older than Dolby's. They were giving demos way back in 2005) and their research came to the same conclusion as Wilfried did. Height is a superior position to Ceiling (Top-down). Now, Auro3D chose 30 degree height positioning and NHK chose 45 degree height positioning, but ultimately they are all mounted and processed as height channels. DTS:X and IMAX Enhanced also use height channel processing for its default 7.1.4 positions. In all these formats except Atmos, the Top/ceiling mounted channels are specifically for flyover effects directly above the audience. Most of the height effects are designed to come from above the front, side and rear soundstages (especially reflections and reverberations designed to mimic a specific acoustical space such as a cave or a spaceship etc)
Seriously, google NHK 22.2 or Hamasaki 22.2. The results they came up with are interesting (and eye-opening)
Note position of speakers at 12:33 and 12:46 in the pro mixing room. Would it not be best to recreate that layout used in the studio to monitor the mix? Those speakers appear to fall within dolby instruction rather than following your suggestions here.
Any chance you can comment on the speaker layout in the mixing room?
This!
performance.
but just to say - i followed the prime elevation manual where it said to "place ypur height speakers as close as possible to the ceiling" and this is where your atmos tester revealed the defects. due to them being close to the ceiling AND the sidewalls (like in the DAR) they caused a lot of echo and completely messed up the directionality of the sound. so i moved it down and closer together - i had my wife hold the speaker up while listening to your tester and then decided on the position.
so i'd say yes on this proposal as a general guide but always.. test first!
you always want to be away from sidewalls, even with the front ear leval. I think the main princinble is keep them at the same palce as your ears just higher, which typically are as close to the screen edge as possible.
100%!! Test and listen. I hope she didn't have to hold them up for too long! LOL!
@@TechnoDad she appreciated the difference in sound as well.. worth all the blabbering during that time 😂😂
i'll be considering speaker on a stick next time (those parts doesnt seem to be easily available here)
The come closer "I don’t care" was personal 😂😂
HAHAHA!
@@TechnoDadcould even have some salty slang in there - it took me a long time to realize that “…at a rolling donut” was just a euphemism.
lol channeling your inner fresh hater jay there
@@angelajudetv Yup!
Loved it
You are RIGHT. I have placed four atmos in the four corners aligned with the floor speakers and the Atmos sounds are BEST. I have placed at 45º and when a sound is in FRONT TOP, they sound from that point, not towards me.
The problem is that you say about these people chatting in forums that they think that are engineers or something else and place the diagrams of Dolby over all, and they cannot discute it.
I go to the BEST mix sound editing room here in Spain and there isn´t any theather that will mimic that experience that I feel, and that was about 14 years ago!. And they have placed the speakers LIKE YOU SUGGEST. A lot of them, of course, because want to mimic a theater enviroment (more of 30 speakers for sure).
Only when I add my humble four atmos speakers following my ideas, not the Dolby specs, I feel PART of that experience I sense.
So YES, you are RIGHT, sir!
Dude, I had this same conversation talking to a buddy of mine when listening to demos. He wants me to set up his system and I was telling him why I recommend having the atmos speakers match the positions of the bed layer. He kept going back to the dolby charts and I kept explaining why the bed layer is so good at placing sound in the room and why having the top layer match that exactly would be best. Glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. Awesome video and keep up the good work man!
Ayyy! This is what I've known for the past year and I have been waiting to make this video. I'm so glad I did. Thank you for sharing!
@@TechnoDad I wish you would have made this last year as now I have already drilled the holes and installed the speakers! What is your take on position of front left and right speakers? How far from the front wall should they be? Some people recommend 4 feet from the front wall, but that looks pretty funky, but it would be directly under my atmos speakers at that point. Should I move the fronts out 4 feet or cut new holes and move the atmos speakers?
I just bought a new set of seven speakers for my AVR/surround system. This video makes me want to try to use the older ones for height speakers now. I have a 10x12 living room and I have to use the 10 foot distance for the front to rear. I’m sitting about 8 feet away from the screen and have nothing but wall behind me. Except for a window that I don’t want to block.
My A/V amp is a Yamaha RX-V683. I don’t know exactly what it is capable of really doing. Right now the front speakers are placed in a “V” formation from the center to the mains to the front presence speakers at about 7 feet high. These could be put higher since I have 9 foot ceilings. The two surround speakers are placed on the walls about 3 feet above and slightly behind me, in the rear corners of the room. I’m in the left corner of the room and there’s no other way to arrange the furniture.
After watching this video, you have made me want to (at least) move the main speakers to the front corners of the room at ear level. This won’t be easy for the left side because I have to go up and around a door frame with a third thick gauge wire.
I can’t really lower the surround speakers because a piece of furniture is in the way.
If you can picture this layout, what do you think of it? And is it improvable? Like I said, no furniture can be moved to another location in this small house. Simply because there’s no room to put it anywhere else. Thanks for your opinion.
A reminder has been set ☺- You can do both by integrating design features so that they aid the sound and video, items in the room remain functional and also look nice and not like you are in a black coffin. I am glad you brought this subject up. Using common can get you results that deliver both, but of course if common sense was a currency we would all be rich. Love this video 👌
Its important to go through this thought process and fully understand what it is you are trying to accomplish before starting any kind of construction.
I think the issue here is that people started building home theaters to include Atmos before we had all the information at hand. The first few years of Atmos installation was all basically beta-testing and experimemtation. The price of being an early adopter.
Very interesting and makes total sense. I have a 7.1.4 system in my living room, so full of compromises. I had to go for in ceiling speakers for my hight channels so need to bring them in closer to be able to get the best out of them. I’m assuming that if you are advocating putting speakers in the corners, it would be better to use bookshelf sized speakers angled to the listener?
would only seem sensible so ..what a waste of money i did ...is it time for some bigger speakers ?
Yes, Curtis, I would use a bookshelf speaker mounted high up on the front and rear wall.
Should you place them directly above front rear speakers - ceiling mount if necessary?
Performance all day every day. Attractive theater style seating combined with awesome lighting definitely grasps my attention. But beautiful video on a large screen combined with immersive sound is what blows me away.
Awesome!
I just watched your video on my home theater system. I have six up firing speakers. My system pretty much followed your Atmos demo. Not exactly, but sounded pretty close. The sound seemed to go up the front wall and not towards me during those examples. The sound seemed to be pretty darn close to your demo so I'm pretty happy about that. I have a Nakamichi Dragon 11.4.6 home theater system and tuned my system with your Spatial Audio Calibration Tool as best I could. Made a real difference in how my system sounds so thank you for that tool kit! It may not be a perfect system, but the Atmos is way better than my Bose 900 Soundbar system it replaced. I think it has more to do with having more power to bounce those sounds off the ceiling better and having six speakers to do it with.
I totally agree with you. This is why I feel that in any given day Auro 3D is better than Dolby Atmos. The addition of an extra layer exponentially increases the intensity of immersion. I do reallt feel bad that Auro 3D doesn't get the credit it deserves. Dolby clearly has the edge through their aggressive marketing. Thank you for making this video, you have meticulously put together your careful observations.
13.2 does me , it took a while but base level are all at ear level once seated, my height speakers are all same level and the top speaker is above my seat and it blows me away.. 😊
Nice!!!
good to hear other people are having an elevated experience with this setup (pun intended)
Top speaker? Like voice of God channel? What speaker placement are you using, exactly?
Great information Techno Dad.I'm still using The Yamaha Rx 583 for 5.2.2. I went 4 channel in 1973/4 with 8 track tapes, anyone remember the 4 channel FM broadcast You needed 2 FM tuners.
Toby!!! Keep rocking that Yamaha…until the wheels fall off.
Great video! Your focus was more on the height speakers, but what do you think about the main bed layer? Shouldn't our 5/7 bed layer speakers be setup in a box format as well than instead of what dolby recommends? I've never understood why our rear or surround speakers should be so close to us in atmos.
I think the ideal is a square box room, you sit in the middle. Speakers in every corner, both at ear level and height level. Then a main center channel.
If you only have 5, the surrounds are intended (by Dolby) to be more beside you and only a little bit behind you. Maybe 110° to 120°. When you have 7.1, the side surrounds move go 90° and the rear surrounds move to around 150° in general, the front mains should be the front wall, the rear surrounds should be the rear boundry and the side-surrounds should be exactly halfway between them.
You could set up a 5.1 like a Quadrophonic setup with the addition of a center channel, but the rear surrounds being that far back has some weird psychoacoustic effects. Thats one of the reasons the rear surrounds are not used often for sustained playback.
Also acoustically you REALLY don’t want a square room with all equal sides.
Yes! I think it would be great to have the front L & R and Rear L & R in the corners.
@@clintstuckey There is a rather square room of 8,1 x 7,2 meter x 2,55m height (or ratios of 3.18 x 2.82 x 1) in which there are no axial resonance modi below 182Hz, nor retromodi and also no other than axial modi below 165Hz
@@FURognar the general laws of acoustics regarding boundary reflectios and interference at listenig level always apply, meaning in 2.0 or surround the spakers need to be away from the walls quite a bit (min 5ms of 90cm/3ft; preferably 10-20ms or ven further into the room - law of ellipses). This was proven by Jeremy Kipnis in his Beta studio, together with having a subwoofer per speaker , distanced no further apart than half the distance of the cut-off wavelength (ie. never in the corners of the room)
Hmm, so yes, my back surround and sidesurrounds are not placed on ear level, why? Because it's my living room. Just not gonna happen. So it's not exactly how the artists intended it to be placed, but hey, it sounds 500x better than those goofy soundbars, and it's not the end of the world that your soundstage is some what lifted
Ow I totally agree with TD about height channels. I have just 2 height speakers, but they,re NOT in my ceiling but right above my front speakers. If I going to place back height surrounds they will be right above my back surrounds
Living rooms are pretty rough. I know mine in the last home was a tough place to put an Atmos setup, but I was able to get 5.1.4.
the whole intendtion here is for you to do whatever means necessary to do it correctly. what is wrong with you?
@@TechnoDadso in a 5.1.4 were your height above your base speakers?
I believe thats what hes saying, mirroring the speakers!@@randolphsettgast12
Great work. I agree with your research. The theater room will be energized accurately with balanced sound. Especially, if the bed layer speakers still support the atmos speakers with sound. You will feel the helicopter all around you as it passes through. The sound will be on another level. This is part of the reason why home theaters sound much better than commercial theaters. The sound is in your face and you could feel it move around the room with impact. Commercial theaters doesn't give you the same experience.
Great effort making the video, but after trying both options with front and rear heights, and in ceiling I prefer the home theater gurus option with in ceiling speakers. To me it was a big difference. 8’ wasn’t tall enough to noticed a good separation between base layer and front and rear height
First, I'm glad you found something that works well for you.
You will hear more sound when a speaker is physically closer to you, no doubt. The tradeoff is less accurate positioning of height objects based on the Atmos renderer and coherence between the ear-level speakers and heights. Just like stereo imaging breaks when placed too close or too far, the same thing happens with height speakers.
Performance. Just 1 question. What about the angels everybody is talking about. Or just put the speakers on the richt spot and angle them to main listingposition?
If I wanted to roll with angles, I would do 30 degrees up for front heights and the same on the other end, 30 degrees up from the rear surrounds.
Respect. Definitely something to try and see if the difference is big. To be clear, just for the bed layer, you'd move surround to the middle of room and surround back to the back corners?
I put the side surrounds on the sides of the MLP and surround back to the back corners. Keep the speakers in line though…
With multiple rows, the speakers at home should be just above ear level so it's not blocked. My surrounds are actually just below ear level and some sounds still sound like they're over my head from the side surrounds (HRTF in the recorded sounds affects placement too). Most of these mixes are designed for the movie theater and their surrounds tend to be considerably above ear level anyway. So this notion that Atmos needs speakers at or below ear level is erroneous. You want separation between layers, but the layers don't have to be exactly at ear level. You do generally want to keep front/rear lower layer speakers relatively consistent with each other. If possible, LCR mains should be behind an audibly transparent screen. If not, you can employ a "dialog lift" mixer (Yamaha builds the feature into its AVRs) to simulate it with TVs and the like as well.
My system is a 5.1 at ear level, but I think you're correct. Multi channel music is also making similar advances as they are moving the sound stage around the room for some arrangements.
Thanks!
I have a family/living room and I do not have any options for a dedicated home theater. It is what it is. 😊
7.1.6 is the best, but when the space is limited you go with 5.1.4... in the case of limited funds and the 5.1.2 is the only option is bette ti have the 2 atmos channels as front high or on top of the main sitting position?
The official atmos layout gives me original Dolby Surround vibes, like just put some speakers there to give you a vague sensation of height, and sound coming from above, and your suggestion is more of the placing sound accurately exactly where it's encoded to live.
I have a 7.2.4 setup and I’ve had to move the furniture around which means that my surrounds left and right now have the top front left and right ceiling speakers directly above them. I was going to use the Dolby angles etc to move the ceiling speakers forward but after watching this video am I correct in that you are suggesting where they are now is the more logical position? Would save me cutting more holes!
I had a friend telling me about this concept while I was upgrading from a .2 overhead to a .4 and I thought it was very interesting. I then found your channel and downloaded your test video that had sounds going straight up and down from the base speakers and it clicked for me. I know have all four overhead speakers directly above the front and surround speakers and it sounds fantastic. Thanks for pushing this topic, it makes perfect sense. Now I have to redo my living room....half the fun right? Right guys?
so you dont have overhead effects and bad separation.remember to aim all speakers.damn people dont understand how human ears pick up sounds from above
@@bigben9056 Thats why you do 6 height channels. This guy is using SURROUND HEIGHTS and thus, have speakers close enough to put sounds directly overhead. Some Atmos processors will use Surround Heights with Atmos (Trinnov, Storm, D&M etc)
I go for performance. I don't mind seeing the speakers in my Living/Media Room. I just don't want a big screen & a projector. I think any Living Room could benefit from Acoustic Treatments. I will eventually get a Micro LED Display to put into my room with JTR Speakers system throughout.
Wow! Those are some big speakers!
Oh man!!! I did exactly what you said not to do. Although I’m extremely limited with my living room space and vaulted ceilings, and open concept. I did a 7.2.4 and my 4 heights are midway towards front/rear to seating position
I don't think the diagram contradicts itself at 10:06, yeah the seating position between the ear level speakers changed, but that does not matter because this diagram is meant to show the angles for the height speakers. And if we compare the height speakers relative to the seating position for the big diagram and the small one, they seem to be identical. It's not telling you where to place your seating position, that's what the large diagram is for, it's only meant to show the angles for the height speakers and their placement.
Watch the fireballs scene of Dungeons and Dragons near the end and tell me if it sounds right when the fireball hits the building up on the top left there.
My 4K Copy of that is at my old house...maybe I can stream it? I'll have to see.
good movie
Being a HT designer implies you will understand the formats and how to better get advantage of your clients budget/design to deliver these formats to the best of your ability. And experience does help a lot.
If you are “hearing” your height speakers and they are very localizable as to “image” like what you describe in the helicopeter, maybe those speakers are not appropiate or too directional.
I have installed ceiling speakers from TRIAD, JBL and others and some do that directional thing but the best dissapear and give a great sound bubble. Clients always point to the screen as source of sound, (or all around in surround mode) and that implies the same for Atmos objects that are created via software! Dolby has done a great job but of course rooms and speakers are so variable that stuff like what you describe happens.
Finally!! I've been waiting for a video like this forever. Amazingly simple and logical topic. Thanks, Channa! 🍻
Thank you! I've been "trying" to make this for a year now...I guess it was the right time...
@@TechnoDad - Absolutely! Thank you, sir! 🍻
I agree. This is the best video you've made, period 😊. Great summary!
@@isak6626 Thank you so much!
I'm probably wrong, but I think for rear speakers I don't like direct radiating speakers but I like Dipole/Bipole speakers. Atmos speakers can be mounted at ceiling on upper wall with a slant speaker.
I had bipolar as surrounds for quite some time.
I think this concept works great but only if you have 10 to 12-ft ceilings. Someone like me with Atmos at 8 and 1/2 ft. It's hard to get enough separation between the side surrounds and if I were to have Atmos channels directly above on the walls.
I’m about trial and error. I won’t just assume one is better than the other, I would try them out. I’ve done that. So I would say, try it out and see what’s up.
I have a 7.2.6 system. The 6 height speakers are connected to a separate 6 channel emotiva basx amp. When I turn off the bed layer speakers and listen to just the height speakers, there really isn't much coming from the heights. I watched the bombing scene from Midway just before this reply and there are plenty of bullets whizzing by and another plane passing overhead but for the majority of the scene the heights are silent. Knowing what I know now, I think I can get the same results with a 7.2.4 system using in ceiling speakers that are located slightly in front and behind of my primary listening position. Don't skimp on side surround speakers, there is plenty of sound coming from these bed level speakers.
Have you heard any of my Atmos mixes, Mike? I think you may enjoy them. Here's the newest one - bit.ly/OMKNEWSGDARAtmos
Do you have the volume of the heights cranked up high enough? Try the "Riddles in the Dark" scene from the Hobbit..
The world is a sphere and Atmos is a cuboid. Got it. And hot damn, that extreme close-up STILL looked 4K crispy. Gotta love that FX3, baby! 😄
Ayyy! Yeah, that with the 35mm GM lens is pretty sharp…but even if it wasn’t…”I wouldn’t care…”
This is a superb video, thank you. I have wondered about doing this and tomorrow I am moving my four heights to above my main and rear speakers.
I want to preface I have Bachelors Degree in Live Sound Engineering, the principles of audio cover all areas of audio work. I agree with your video, I have a 7.1.4 currently, I have the option to add two more speakers with a pre-out, It was either Front Wide Pair or going middle height, to me it makes sense to copy the surround Left & right as they are right next to you, so if a heli is going straight up, doesnt matter where in the audio space it should go straight up and the speakers should accurately show that. I also want to say my speaker set up probably goes against every Dolby Atmos setup rule 🤣 I sit at my desk so Im foward of the middle, my height speakers are mounted to the wall in line with my L&R to keep consistancy when audio goes up, same with the rear heights. Your main set of speakers should be at listening height so the tweeter is ear level unless you have two tier seating then the listening location should be on axis to the tweeter. The big issue with ceiling speakers if they are coax or two way speakers, is the tweeter doesnt point towards the listener, so the whole unit need angling however there are models that are purposefuly designed with an angle built in. I would still line them up with the main left and right and put them closeish on the z plane to that location. Just make sure they are time aligned back to the Main speakers. When designing any speaker system, speaker location is extremely important otherwise you can run into standing waves or phase cancellation depending on the speaker and the room. Im not an expert by an means, but my degree really helps.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience!
So I brought my copy of SACT to my friend's house. He's got 7.2.4. Mid and rear heights. He hates me now, confirmed he needs to go to .6 and get those front heights, which also means an upgrade to his AV receiver. BTW SACT is a great upgrade tool. The panning test of the bed layer, makes me want side surrounds.
No he doesn't "need" to go 6 heights because he currently has his 4 in a sub-optimal position. I have my 4 heights at -35 degrees and +35 degrees (or 55 and 125 using the Dolby diagram) and my Atmos sounds amazing. Going to 6 height might be a very marginal improvement but not worth the much extra cost and hassle of re-situating height speakers etc. Your friend just needs to position his 4 correctly and he should notice a huge improvement.
Yeah, 6 height channels is hard to do and the AVR is pricey.
Very good points. Another thing that supports your argument, look at the speakers that come with upfiring atmos speakers like the Klipsch. Those speakers are built right over the bed layer speaker.
Well of course they are, where else would they be? That doesn't mean it's an optimal placement. Truth is, upfiring speakers aimed at the ceiling are a bad idea and a major compromise at best. It took me over a year of rearranging my ceiling mounted Atmos speakers and the most accurate sound I achieved was when all 4 speakers were in the main listening position area, 55° in front and 55° behind my listening position. When the main left and right speakers are spread too far apart it destroys the soundstage. The same principle applies to ceiling mounted Atmos speakers.
@D.L.W. I didn't say they were expected to be anywhere else. I said it supports his theory of where they should be placed. Everyone knows upfiring speakers are a compromise, but that doesn't change the idea of them being right over the bed layer, which is what this video was about. If you are happy with where you placed yours than great but the point of this video was about why they shouldn't be where you put them and I tend to agree with the video. By the way I have in ceiling speakers, I was making a point about his concept.
Totally agree with you. I installed 2 height speakers right above my front speakers. Speaker lay-out should be like the atmos renderer, its just as simple as that
Woot woot! I've been saying this for years. Thank you for watching.
So if I understood correctly. I dont have to worry about the 30 degree or 45 degree angles, just place the height speakers exactly above the bed layer and I should have a wonderful Atmos, Auro experience?
You have to keep it within that 30°-45° range because if you go too high, you lose the coherence between your ear-level speaker and the height speaker.
@@joentellhi Joe, so should I put my left channel and right channel 45 degrees off the MLP each? Just wondering if you and TD changed your setups to reflect 45 degree angles after making the spatial calibration toolkit given your findings about when something appears in the left or right channel.
Just want to make sure my bedlayer is setup correctly before mirroring it with the heights.
@@joentellmy ceiling is 7.5 feet tall should I still worried about the angles. I am still not sure about how to implement technodad's suggestion. Because it appears I just have to copy my bed layer up above.
While I haven't tested my system and am nowhere near an expert like TD, I wanted to chime in a fair warning from my experience. I DO have my Atmos speakers up in the corners directly above my surrounds similar to the diagram here, and I can say I've almost NEVER gotten a true 'overhead' sound effect. So while this placement makes sense, there definitely is still a concept of angle and separation at play here. I think for my setup to have a true 'overhead' experience, I'd need them about two feet in on the ceiling - in line with my front mains. I'm not sure how y'all are getting an overhead effect with a corner mounted speaker that's far out from the MLP but it may not work for everyone.
How far back are your surround speakers? Surround speakers should be between 90 degrees and 110 degrees. You don't want to go too much further back than that. If you have 7 ear-level speakers (with Rear Surrounds as well as Sides) then you should try your best to put your surrounds at 90 degrees. At worst, put them at 100 degrees. You should be splitting the distance (equidistant) between the Front mains and the rear surrounds.
If your surrounds are at around 100 degrees, mounting your side surrounds above them, you will have definitive overhead effects. There will be no question.
Try the opening scene of Man of Steel, the part on Krypton. There are two moments when Kryptonian ships fly directly overhead and use their P.A. system. It should sound like a singular Voice of God channel directly above you. I am currently using Surround heights mounted at about 100 degrees and that images overhead perfectly. About 95% of how it sounded back when I had them mounted at 90 degrees directly overhead.
Aren't these issues he is talking about corrected with proper calibration and time alignment? Cause if top fronts are not above LR but slightly forward towards MLP then you time shift it so the sound comes out exactly at the moment when it comes from LCR. The speaker placement shouldn't be that of an issue. For example I have LR surrounds like 1 foot below ceiling. Most of the time it sounds right and not like going from ceiling. Maybe if you super focus on it then you pick it up but otherwise quite fine. The speakers are there to paint the image and they can create illusion line the sound is coming from different place then the speaker is located. I have C in the ceiling and angled towards MLP. Doesn't sound AT ALL like it's coming from the ceiling.
You is da man TD. I will remember this stuff when I get my room.
Thank you Timothy!!
@@TechnoDad you're welcome
I completely agree. I am in the process of building my home theater, but currently I only have a 6.1 receiver and separate amps. Often I even turn off my center because I have such an amazing phantom center. This absolute proof that the same can happen with the height speakers. Heck even with just my two front towers playing some of the 8D tracks on RUclips, I can even hear height. Whenever I am ready to buy a new receiver, I will have pre-wires for ceiling speakers, but i will probably experiment with speaker placement and settings. Will you have any more info for settings/adjustments for the height channels? Or is it as intuitive as I'm thinking...? Thanks!
If you are going to experiment with height speakers, I would look at my Speaker on a Stick design to test out height speaker locations - ruclips.net/video/h7NWteMPO5A/видео.htmlsi=WD4m1phNIxrerZT9
Makes a lot of sense.. my room is too small for surround back so I have 2 klipsche atmos on the ceiling but very slightly forward of my surrounds. (After watching your video I am honestly wondering what I was thinking not having them in line with the surrounds) I don't have any on the front but can hook up another 2. I am now going to move my 2 atmos speakers to directly above my surrounds and hooking up another 2 above my front left and right. Today I will move my surrounds but need to get more speaker wire before I hook up my front left and right atmos. I got the speakers on another system upstairs which I am not using atm so I just need to get more speaker wire. Makes a lot of sense. I honestly feel I learned something from this video. True hard to take in new information when I always think I know best. I been making music since mid 80's and into home cinema since late 90's...yes when you needed nicam stereo to get a dolby suround signal. :)
Dumb question… Just to confirm, if you are doing a 5.1.4 setup you should do surround heights above your surround left and right speakers? Also, would a 5.1.6 work? There is no available back wall, but the ceiling does continue.
I'm in the same position.
Well...that does make sense. However...when using surround height position, the way sounds are matrixed between the front height and rear height are not going to sound correct 100%. Maybe setting the rear height to top middle? That might work a bit better.
@@TechnoDad Thanks for the info, I appreciate it!... Maybe I can pick up some Monoprice THX satellites and try out some different positions (and position settings in AVR) before turning my ceiling/walls into Swiss cheese lol. Also, I could always repurpose the Monoprice THX satellites to garage speakers with a little sub.
@@synergyxx Ive found setting the tops to top front and top rear(not height) is what works best in 5.1.4, and placing the speakers about 2ft in front of and behind MLP and 20% of the room from the side walls to the MLP. This will put the MLP in an atmos bubble and will provide very good separation of atmos effects from fronts and surrounds while offering very good matrixing
Sound advice. We merge what we know from both disciplines into a new way of listening in a better immersive listening environment. With the added channel, do you need a processor to handle that or run the new channel in series with the front atmos?
Where do we place them? Ear level, yea that a given. A linear spacial plane that surrounds you. cool, knew that. As far as the helecopter lifiting off. the sound isn't linear, it doesn't go "straight up". Helecopter lifts off from 30' away to 30 feet. That helecopter is now 42' away, and if it's already at the front of the sound stage, it can't move forward in the sound stage so only option is to move backwards closer to you and more above to give you that "height" experience
I was using my two atmos speakers (in a 5.1.2 setup) at the very front height of the ceiling at an equidistant distance between them but I always felt that the sound coming from the top lacked spaciousness so what I did was to put them at the very top of each corners of the front wall and wow!, now the sound is more spacious and crisp, I didn't know what I was missing!, the crossover frequency is very important, in my case I set it to 150Hz since that's the recommended setting when the size of the speaker cone is 2.7 inches.
Sounds like you've got it dialed in!
@@TechnoDad I did!, in due time I will show you my humble speaker setup 👍🏼
Hi, love your content! Does your opinion aboht height speaker placement change depending on the ceiling height of the room? For example, 6' vs 10' vs 15'? Looking at the Atmos box, can you guesstimate the room dimensions based on the screen size?
I haven't really thought about 15 foot ceilings. Obviously, a 6 foot ceiling would be pretty rough. I think 8 feet hight is a great place to put the speakers. My new Atmos mixing room has 10 foot ceilings, but I am placing the heights at 8 feet high.
That’s the reason why Dolby spec specifies angle not height above the main speakers. If angle is preserved it doesn’t matter how high is your ceiling - it will come from the specific point.
I think showing a room/box shape is misleading. It should show the way auro3d shows a bubble. Then people can visualize why angles make sense - it’s not about corners in your space! Sound traveling to your front Atmos speaker is ok - it doesn’t mean it travels closer into your room if your ceiling is lower - it means it comes from that direction. So if it’s mixed to go up above the front soundstage it either will be mixed with front channels or spl will be lower than when coming from front speakers - mimicking greater distance of the object to you. If your room was square and your main listening position was in the middle it’s possible at certain ceiling height to have Atmos speakers directly over front and rear speakers whilst maintaining 45 degree to them.
With Auro3d they say to put over main speakers - front and side surrounds but at the same time they say to have them at 30 degrees. This is not possible with all rooms at variable ceiling heights.
So would you say that the speaker layout for Dolby Atmos should be closer to Auro3D with speaker placement in corners facing down at 45°? Should they also be angled towards the listening position on the sidewalls and corners? Would like your input on that. I've been mulling over my Heights for a while now and looking for advice on where to put them and how best to proceed. I've always appreciated your no-nonsense input on performance versus aesthetic versus angles and following charts. Thanks, Techno Dad!
Makes so much sense… but realistically not getting more then 11 ch of amps so, I’ll have to make do with 4 atmos… but good to consider and know! I’m still quite a while away from making my theater though so, let’s see
So you’re saying if you do a 5.1 setup the ideal setup would be 5.1.4 where as if you did a 7.1 setup the ideal would be 7.1.6 correct
Yes, precisely!
I have 5.2.4 system 👌🏽
Room shape and size will always take president in my opinion. I have a very small room but still manage a fully functional 7.2.6 setup. I have typical 7ch base layer setup, but heights are in between what you and Dolby advise. My FH's are above L&R, my MH's are roughly between LR & SLR, and finally RH's between SLR & SBLR, for me, this covers every angle and very enveloping, all.this in a 2.5m wide room by 5m long 😁👍
I don't see any receivers set up for 6 height speakers. I see 4 outputs, but not 6. How do you power the 5th and 6th speaker and make sure they're getting the correctly coded signal?
Does this require a $20k receiver or what? Also, I had an Aperion audio 7.1 set up in my last house and was happy with their speakers. Are there any others out there on par with Aperion audio that I should take a look at? Thanks.
Moved speakers but moved them practically back where i had them..unless I am not fully understanding but I felt that the atmos speakers sound terrible in line with the surrounds. Having too close to the line of the surrounds you are hearing almost zero channel separation this way. Having the back atmos speakers literally above where you sit sounds absolutely incredible.
May be your ceiling is not that tall?
I would love to have a 7.1.6 system. Unfortunately my receiver can only handle 7.1.4 with an extra amp. Will be a while before I can get all the speakers but will see how it turns out at some point.
Yeah, they are pricey...but the Denon X6700H has dropped in price. That's the one I use for 7.1.6 - amzn.to/3VOLZsG
@@TechnoDad Thanks very much
Hey Channa!
Your video makes sense. I'm thinking the screen size compared to the room size is a factor, not so much the bed layer but the Atmos layer. I have a 100" screen, but my atmos speakers are out 2 to 3 feet past left/right of my screen.
I may need to move my atmos speakers.
For example, the atmos track for A Quiet Place when the moster moves down the basement stair case. The footsteps do not sound like they are coming from the top left of the screen, more like 2 feet out where i placed the speaker.
So what I'm thinking is I'm going to have to move my atmos speakers in line with my screen because to me it just makes more sense.
If I could fit a 150" to cover the wall then i think I would not have a problem. lol
Great video
Thanks man!
Yes, I can totally imagine what you are saying here. It's one of those things.
Agreed, in the context of a dedicated home theatre!
Mimic the simulation software should give you the best results.
For everyone else, it is a bit of a compromise. I use 5 bottom 4 top. Atmos and auro 3d. Pretty happy.
I believe Atmos's intention is to try and translate that same point in space across multiple configurations.
I don't know how well that is done, but I am sure it has some compromises.
This is why Sony 360 stuff is said to translate better and why auro 3d is so good.
As that middleware layer just translates into a more Likable result than the original compromise.
I recently had a demo of Sony 360 on a speaker array with 9 up front and four in the back. It was quite impressive!
OH MY GOD! Finally someone said it! Screw the artist's intent!!!!!! There have been times where we are all scratching our heads wondering what the "artist" was thinking allowing for sub-par audio tracks to be released in the first place. Now I'll go back and listen to the rest of the video😁
Hah! People don't know who the damn artist is these days! LOL!
I was so happy when earth was flat, but Galileo messed up when he said that earth was not only round but also moves around the Sun, back them everybody was shocked. So I'm now. Nobody ever that I remember made such comment so simple and easy to understand. Thank you so much. Now like Galileo you messed up my live, because now I need two more speakers on the ceiling and another amp, as I said it was better when earth was flat. To think that this information was always there in front of my eyes yet I never saw it. You just clarified something that if we all pay attention we will finally here Dolby Atmos The Way it was intended to be. I have been an audiophile for over 50 years with my own self made home theater, therefore in this field nothing really amaze me but this time I am. I heard it from you. "Oly from the mind of Techno Dad"
This was the greatest comment of this video. Thank you, Felix!
@TechnoDad interesting take, what should be those speakers? In -ceiling facing down? Atmos speakers at an angle towards the MLP?
I’ve got my seven base level speakers set at ear level around the room and removed the centre height speaker and have six height speakers above my base speakers position and it sounds pretty dam good 😮❤
I've got a Dolby Atmos 7.1.4/Auro-3D 13.1 setup running on my Denon X6700H and certainly know there is room for improvement in my living room. Though I can't easily make the speaker location change proposed here, I like the concept discussed!
Thank you for sharing! Have you tried my Speaker on a Stick to test it out - ruclips.net/video/h7NWteMPO5A/видео.html
Thank you this was very informative. Is. Logical extension to this line of thought that we should have a center rear speaker as well?
Channa, I laid out 6 channels on the top. Two in the front, two in the center and two in the rear... all above the base layer speakers. I can't use all 6 on heights at once so I put a switch A/B/A+B. Currently, it is calibrated for top front and top rear. This just felt like a natural way to do, and I don't know the ABC of HT. I use an Integra DRX 8.4 btw.
Word! Well, the Denon X6700H is down in price - amzn.to/3VPQQJU
@TechnoDad turns out the drx8.4 also can do 6 heights but has to sacrifice two base. It is basically a 11.4 with XLR I/Os and DLBC both of which are crucial for me.. Doesn't denon have only 11 channels? Or is it 13 processing?
@@stackoverflow8260 The Denon X6700H processes 13 channels and powers 11.
I'd one day like to do 7.1.2 but currently I'm just rocking 5.1.2. I have my atmos speakers a little in front of me (maybe 50 to 45 degrees?). I couldn't do 90 degrees sadly due to a ceiling fan but I can say your calibration tool kit helped a ton.
Hey, Techno Dad, great video! I have no experience with Atmos at all and this episode brought me a lot closer to understanding, and almost answering my own questions.
In this video you said you were discussing dedicated theater rooms and not living rooms because the latter had too many compromises. Amen! But before I turn off the lights and go home on this idea, I thought I’d ask your thoughts on my specific scenario and if decoding Atmos is “worth the squeeze” as they say.
I have a 11x15x8 foot living room/ theater room with a ceiling mounted projector on the long end with the drop down screen 2ft from the front with an OLED tv about a foot from the wall, and a well calibrated 5.1 system using Paradigm reference LCR and paradigm in-wall surrounds in the back. The seating positions are on two couches along both sides of the 15’ wall, with the “MLP” about 40” from the rear wall. There is a row of three connected folding theater chairs from an old cinema along the back wall but that position is what it is. I just upgraded to a Yamaha A4A that can support 7.x.2 and decode Dolby Atmos. Right now I have it set up as bi-amped Left and Right 5.1. I could ceiling mount two paradigm CI Pro P80-A v2 or similar as the .2 Atmos heights… if it was worth it.
In your experience, would it be worth all the drywall dust, fiberglass rash, and money, or do you think it’s a do it right or not at all situation? Do you think I’d gain anything resembling Atmos, or would I be better off sticking with an articulate 5.1 setup?
Any thoughts would be deeply appreciated!
Thanks!!
I use Plex via Nvidia Shield Pro. In my space I will pick DTS HD MA over TrueHD 7.1 Atmos any day!! My AVR upmixes DTS to Auro3D, and the difference is day and night. Of course every space is different. I have on wall speakers (height), not in ceiling (top).
Great video ! 7.1.6 is the way to go to make sure ourselves ready for rightly mixed content 👍🏼
And thanks for the efforts to make ‘the sound’ sounds the best Channa!
Thank you for watching!
This explanation of speaker placement for atmos is fantastic. I have the normal open space living room in an apartment building. I would choose the Dolby render placement.
Thank you so much for watching and I’m glad you liked the video.
It would be very helpful if you had some images of your recommendations for placement for the speakers that anyone could see and understand I randomly found your videos searching for how to setup my new system however I have no idea what you’re saying but you sound like you know what you’re talking about
100% correct...Best video describing it how it should be. Kudos to you sir also think about a name change to Dolbydad.
Thank you, Razor! Hah! Dolby Dad?!?! I here thought if that…
Very well said, and like you said, the problem is what the artist intended!!
The real problem is the lack of standard in Dolby layouts, if you go to Dolby layouts, you got the classic Dolby overhead speakers layout, then you got the layout that is very similar to auro 3D, then you got the layout with speakers sitting above your main speakers but pointing to the ceiling (such a joke this layout but it is there if you want to use) so if you are an artist, what layout should you use??
Since every artist is different and is mixing using different rooms, and he or she can choose between 3 layouts to use, what you get for the end user is a layout that doenst have a standard and dont work on all situations, you can use the classic overhead or the more like auro 3d, some movies will work great with one, others will work great with the other, because basically some artists is mixing using one layout instead of the other.
Audioholics did a video about this some time back, he even invited one famous mixig artist that was mixing a lot of famous movies, like Star Wars and something like that, the artist said that the correct way to listening to his mixing was the classic overhead speakers, now other famous artist is mixing other famous movies like Dune using a more like auro 3d setup, so thats it, you can choose if you want to have a perfect movie experience with Dune or Star Wars, or you can have two home theaters like Techno Dad have 🤣, all thanks to Dolby!!!
Yeah, it's a big PITA. I have seen so many different Atmos studio setups and a lot of them don't even follow the suggested speaker placements. They do tune the room using Dolby's Curvce, which will not give similar results. Tuning to a custom target curve in the studio and the home theater is what we need to do. I think if we matched the calibration method in the studio as that in the home theater, we will be able to have better translation from studio to home theater.
Just so you know, that live stream you speak of was two hours they tried to prove me wrong, but that mixer guy wouldn't say I was wrong. I didn't watch it, but a viewer did and told me what was said. At the end of it, they just voted and said I was wrong. Where is the proof?
I am building a dedicated room in my custom home build. The room will be 18' wide and 23'-6" deep with 10' ceiling. I will have second row seating which will be 15" above the first row. I plan on a 11.4.6 setup using JBL Synthesis in-wall speakers and a Trinnov Altitude processor. How would you recommend placing the 6 ceiling mounted Atmos speakers in this type of configuration?
This helps quite a bit. My dedicated room is 13x12. I have 2 Emotiva in ceiling about 3' in front of my seating and was trying to avoid cutting more holes and running wires. Now I think I will add 2 above the TV up front and 2 behind my seating position.
Oh, wait...13 channels, damn. Well, maybe I add 2 up front until I can up my channel count😅
Yeah, it requires a larger AVR, but the X6700H has dropped in price - amzn.to/3VOLZsG
@TechnoDad, I downloaded all of your demo tracks. Unfortunately, they didn't play on my Denon 4400H and Pany 820 but played on my Xbox One, and all tracks were great.
Awesome! It’s strange the Panasonic won’t play them but that’s just the way it goes…
Great talk I agree with you and for me performance first then aesthetics second.
Woot Woot!
i got that and agree... and by watching i noticed, that i mounted everything like you said about 4 years ago😂 why did i do this? because i did not look at the atmos recommendation. i did it because that made the most sense to me. but what about angles of the top speaker. do you think they should all pointed to the MLP via pivoting ect. ? exept the middle tops?
I’ve been preaching a scaled down version of this for years - high performance, BUDGET 5.1.4 Atmos systems that can be built around an affordable 9.2 receiver ($500 or less) and 2 sets of Klipsch Reference Theater packs ($800 gets you 4 ear-level speakers, 4 height speakers, 2 subwoofers and a spare center channel speaker!) Performance is surprisingly good once the system is properly calibrated and installation is a breeze when you don’t have to mess with in-ceiling speakers. Home theater snobs consider it heresy - until they hear just how awesome it sounds.
Yup! The Klipsch Theater pack is a great choice. I’ve made videos about what you’re describing many times.
I understand your theory, I thought about it myself, but putting all your speakers in corners where two or three walls meet is not gonna be great for sound. Unless, you have a bunch of small, sealed coaxial speakers crossed over at like 120 to 150 Hz and all at 45 degree angles like those little triangle shaped speakers that were around a while ago. I think this also depends on the width of your room and ceiling height. But I personally like having my front mains and ceiling speakers and rear surrounds all creating good stereo imaging, I even went as far as plugging my Atmos speakers that are on ceiling into my front left and right channels and playing music on them while adjusting the toe-in and location until I got a good stereo image. Of course I tested all of this on Dolby, Atmos and DTSX demo discs. The helicopter demo on the 2016 Dolby Atmos disc is a good one. I think you’re on to something with having a height speaker above every bed layer channel but I don’t think putting them in the corners is the best idea. Just my two cents. Love these conversations, I could talk about this for days… oh wait… I already do…
I think the effect that we talk a lot about the dolby atmos is that the sound engineers are less generous compared to surround sound because the surround we hear almost permanently compare to atmos.
Great perspective!
Curious… if you have high-back chairs…
Do you have front stage and rear stage at on same plane, but higher than optimal to allow rears greater clearance over chair backs or do you keep front stage optimal and raise the rears.
Which is lesser of two evils?
This video got me thinking.
Hi! Great question. I'm glad I can inspire some thought. I have the tweeters at 47" all around on the ear level. High back chairs do present a problem when it comes to hearing sounds from behind. You could raise them, but not too much as you don't want to disrupt that ear level plane too much.
I don’t think you need to make any apologies or excuses for anything you do! Everything you’ve put out is based on YOUR experience, it’s up to the consumer to use the info provided to educate themselves or interpret these videos into their own experience. 🎉
Giddy-up!!
This issue with atmos is not everyone has a movie theater room setup, a movie room I would assume is very square, most home aren't built that way unless you custom built your house to include this
Apparently, there are a lot of homes in Texas that have media rooms which are pretty ideal for a theater.
@@TechnoDad While that’s true, most builders have no clue how big to make the media rooms. Most are 12x12 or 11x10 etc. I just closed on a plan that has a 14x17 media room which I can work with. Would have preferred 14x22 ideally.
Great video!
If you are going through the trouble of creating a dedicated home theatre, then it should be performance over aesthetics.
So, according to the 3D picture, the bed layer is placed at the floor? So, much lower than ear level? If so, are the speakers angled up toward the listening position?
No, that’s just the ear level location…
Are Height speakers a suitable surround speaker?
Do you think placing the front and rear height speakers in the corners is more important than keeping them equidistant to the MLP? Also, if they are down firing in ceiling speakers and not aiming at the MLP, does that affect your findings or not?
Depends on where they are placed. Maybe equidistant is good if that’s what the space will allow.
@@TechnoDad Lol, ok. Let me be a bit more specific. MLP is at 2/3 room length. Would you recommend putting the front heights equidistant from MLP or back to the front wall?
Yes!! 3 on the left and 3 on the top for a total of 6 on top and 6 on the bottom. BUT we should take it a step further and 6 in the middle, for a total of 19!!!!
You are absolutely spot on! Loved the video. Very experienced. It’s very true everything you have just said. I concur because I have the exact same experience as you . There is way too many videos out there, a lot of it doesn’t make sense.. lol
Thank you so much!
so, where do we put the speakers?
Most home theater preamps and receivers with Atmos are no more than 11.1. The height channels are front and rear with no provision for center height. No matter. Dolby Atmos is an object oriented system that adjusts to the number of speakers employed for proper imaging in that environment. In a home environment, speaker placement is important in order for the sound image to work and have proper mapping of objects in the sound field, but it need only be in a rather standard configuration. In a theater environment, you can hang as many as 64 speakers in order to place objects precisely where the mixer has placed them. For my setup, I'm employing a 9.2 speaker arrangement with upward firing L&R front height speakers to reflect off the ceiling. I don't have the rear height speakers employed but Atmos compensates with the arrangement I have in order to place sounds where they need to be. That's really the key here. Atmos is designed to create the proper sonic image even if you're using a sound bar. It won't be as good as having a theater with 64 speakers but it will sound as good as your equipment allows.
I did the layout according to the dolby specs 5.1.4 and it wasn't that immersive, then I placed the rear speakers exactly vertical to the rear heights channel and the sound was complete Immersive, do experiment before installing .
Ayyy! That’s all I’ve been saying, “try it out and see which configuration sounds better”
Performance Period!
Woot woot!
Why not make a 7.1.7 and use the same style of speak for a center height that you use for L & R front heights ?
Hey T.D. What crossover point is recommended for atmos? Is there much bass, or even mid bass? Would having an 8” compared to a 6.5” make a huge difference? Maybe you could make a video discussing these.