Ceiling speakers for Atmos

T

TheTallOne89

Audioholic Intern
I am looking to install four ceiling speakers for a 5.1.4 Atmos setup. I have Martin Logan Motions (60xti, 50xti, 15i) on the ground, but I don't think I need particularly expensive in ceiling speakers.

I am leaning toward B&W CCM 362s since I have heard them and I like them and they aren't outrageously expensive, but I have heard (not sure if this is true) that although matching isn't that important with Atmos speakers, you might not want totally different tweeter technologies. Does that really matter?

More generally, any other in ceiling speakers I should be looking at that might be cheaper/better?

Space is about 13x14x8. Really only worried about their use for Atmos; music already sounds amazing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
 
V

VMPS-TIII

Audioholic General
I am looking to install four ceiling speakers for a 5.1.4 Atmos setup. I have Martin Logan Motions (60xti, 50xti, 15i) on the ground, but I don't think I need particularly expensive in ceiling speakers.

I am leaning toward B&W CCM 362s since I have heard them and I like them and they aren't outrageously expensive, but I have heard (not sure if this is true) that although matching isn't that important with Atmos speakers, you might not want totally different tweeter technologies. Does that really matter?

More generally, any other in ceiling speakers I should be looking at that might be cheaper/better?

Space is about 13x14x8. Really only worried about their use for Atmos; music already sounds amazing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
While ATMOS speakers can easily be from another brand, I would suggest listening to the new driver with your existing speakers before committing to them. You want to be sure their sound blends well when playing Auro-3D or upmixing music to them.

I would not want to install a driver and later realize the combo is not what I expected.
 
T

TheTallOne89

Audioholic Intern
While ATMOS speakers can easily be from another brand, I would suggest listening to the new driver with your existing speakers before committing to them. You want to be sure their sound blends well when playing Auro-3D or upmixing music to them.

I would not want to install a driver and later realize the combo is not what I expected.
Interesting, thanks. As a practical matter, how would you go about doing that? Just wire a few of the in ceilings and place them... somewhere? I don't spots for them in the ceilings yet, of course.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
I am looking to install four ceiling speakers for a 5.1.4 Atmos setup. I have Martin Logan Motions (60xti, 50xti, 15i) on the ground, but I don't think I need particularly expensive in ceiling speakers.

I am leaning toward B&W CCM 362s since I have heard them and I like them and they aren't outrageously expensive, but I have heard (not sure if this is true) that although matching isn't that important with Atmos speakers, you might not want totally different tweeter technologies. Does that really matter?

More generally, any other in ceiling speakers I should be looking at that might be cheaper/better?

Space is about 13x14x8. Really only worried about their use for Atmos; music already sounds amazing.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
If you can build some simple 0.25 cu.ft back boxes then these are not only your best, but cheapest solution.







In any event all ceiling speakers should have a back box to work properly. In the sealed box I specked the F3 is 91 Hz 12 db per octave roll off. Response is very smooth to 25 KHz and is flatter then most tweeters.

Really a full ranger is the most ideal speaker for an Atmos ceiling speaker. This totally avoids troubling lobing issues. The cost is $66.00 each from Madisound.

You can not go wrong with these. If you are correct that your system sounds good, then these drivers are ideal, as they sound very good. I will say categorically they are by far the best Atmos ceiling speaker available. I think they would also make an excellent center speaker.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Have you considered anything from ML? I know they have IC speakers in the same price range. I generally agree that they don’t have to be an exact match, but it is the ideal, and Ime works better. Audyssey should help balance the FR some.
If you’re a diy fan, marks suggestion(tls guy) would be great. A full range driver or coaxial speaker should give very wide dispersion which is what you want.
If not, there are plenty of options. I used rsl c34e’s in my room and totally love them. They have a slightly unusual baffle that’s set at 15° making it easier to aim the whole speaker providing more on axis performance. They also have great dispersion characteristics. Imo a design strength they have is that they don’t have the typical “bridge” to carry the tweeter which covers up so much of the woofer. Still, many options out there.
My question though, is where is the LP. If you’re up against the back wall, you might consider 5.1.2. I’ve seen some use four top speakers with the seat against the wall, but imo the “bubble” doesn’t reach behind and also makes the front tops too far forward. It’s a small room so...not sure here. Also, you mentioned the other open area in your dynamo thread. Could you rotate the layout to extend a little longer?
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Have you considered anything from ML? I know they have IC speakers in the same price range. I generally agree that they don’t have to be an exact match, but it is the ideal, and Ime works better. Audyssey should help balance the FR some.
If you’re a diy fan, marks suggestion(tls guy) would be great. A full range driver or coaxial speaker should give very wide dispersion which is what you want.
If not, there are plenty of options. I used rsl c34e’s in my room and totally love them. They have a slightly unusual baffle that’s set at 15° making it easier to aim the whole speaker providing more on axis performance. They also have great dispersion characteristics. Imo a design strength they have is that they don’t have the typical “bridge” to carry the tweeter which covers up so much of the woofer. Still, many options out there.
My question though, is where is the LP. If you’re up against the back wall, you might consider 5.1.2. I’ve seen some use four top speakers with the seat against the wall, but imo the “bubble” doesn’t reach behind and also makes the front tops too far forward. It’s a small room so...not sure here. Also, you mentioned the other open area in your dynamo thread. Could you rotate the layout to extend a little longer?
For a ceiling speaker, the ideal is NO tweeter.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
Please explain in what Application and the Logic behind that

View attachment 41885
Because for Atmos speakers to work optimally you need a perfect circular dispersion pattern, with zero lobing. Only a good full ranger will do that.

I can tell you that those ceiling speakers of mine work to absolute perfection.

Once this pandemic is over I'm going to build some designs for those speakers. You can get deeper bass out of them than most towers. Their mid range is ruler smooth and as I said the HF is better than most tweeters. Quite soon I am going to put together a labyrinth design for them. At 45 watts each speaker, for a lot of rooms you would have quite enough power and the sound would be awesome. All speakers 8 ohms and zero phase angle problems. The best crossover is no crossover. That is perfect for AV as there will be no time disturbances and excellent voice intelligibility.

With a labyrinth you could get and Fs of 41 Hz and 12 db roll off, so only 15 db down around 20 Hz. Very few towers can match that.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
So Mark, I am curious to your thoughts on these.

I know your disdain for most IC speakers but I’m interested in seeing if these look different than most, to you. Whatever your thoughts, I’m fine. They’ve been installed quite a while and I’m definitely not changing them. Lol! Here are the dispersion patterns for a quick look. They’re also available in the specs section if these are too fuzzy. Tapatalk made me choose a size...


Not perfect but still, I don’t usually see anyone else posting these on their sites.
 
mazersteven

mazersteven

Audioholic Warlord
Because for Atmos speakers to work optimally you need a perfect circular dispersion pattern, with zero lobing. Only a good full ranger will do that.
OK so you mean no tweeters for Atmos applications only.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
OK so you mean no tweeters for Atmos applications only.
Not at all. The ideal speaker is actually a full ranger. Getting good full rangers has been neglected for far too long. From what we now know about time aberrations and speech discrimination, full rangers could have enormous benefit in the AV environment. Center speakers especially come to mind. In our Eagan Town Home bolt hole we had, I used a full range center for years and it was phenomenally successful and had very superior speech quality and intelligibility.

The full ranger enthusiasts have never gone away. Remember by far the world's oldest Hi-Fidelity loudspeaker company have only ever produced speakers with full range drivers. That has occurred not by chance.

Now is a time to go back to Paul Voight and his work in the 1930s. I think is now a very good time to start exploring our roots again from the dawn of High Fidelity audio reproduction.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
So Mark, I am curious to your thoughts on these.

I know your disdain for most IC speakers but I’m interested in seeing if these look different than most, to you. Whatever your thoughts, I’m fine. They’ve been installed quite a while and I’m definitely not changing them. Lol! Here are the dispersion patterns for a quick look. They’re also available in the specs section if these are too fuzzy. Tapatalk made me choose a size...


Not perfect but still, I don’t usually see anyone else posting these on their sites.
Well, it seems to have pretty good horizontal dispersion. However it needs a back enclosure as really every driver does. It is also expensive. I addition the filters are only first order 6db. With the cross at 2.5K HZ, the tweeter is only 6 db down at 1250 Hz, and only 12 db down at 625 Hz. So you wonder about tweeter stress.
I really do believe that 6 3/4" full ranger is the better bet. Making the small 0.25 cu.ft back box is duck soup. You just need to fill it with Polyfill which is cheap.
So I would venture to suggest that the full ranger as an Atmos speaker is the better of the two at significantly less cost. So if you are doing it now, that solution is my top pick.
 
TLS Guy

TLS Guy

Seriously, I have no life.
So I guess you wouldn't like these if you don't like Williams

Actually they look like pretty ghastly contraptions. I actually know of no commercial ceiling speakers that I would actually ever mount in my ceiling.
 
mazersteven

mazersteven

Audioholic Warlord
I always find it interesting and I keep an open mind on the different thought patterns of sound systems.
You obviously like to keep your dispersion patterns tight, where as the speaker's I listed seem to like to have a wider dispersion pattern.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Thanks for the input Mark. I already installed the RSL’s a long time ago. I didn’t build boxes as the airspace above the trusses is not high enough AND it’s covered in blow in insulation. I decided that when I pushed them up into the vapor barrier which is cover in insulation, it would be a quasi enclosure. If I was in bare studs at the time boxes for sure. I have built boxes for other architectural speakers in the house.
 
T

TheTallOne89

Audioholic Intern
Have you considered anything from ML? I know they have IC speakers in the same price range. I generally agree that they don’t have to be an exact match, but it is the ideal, and Ime works better. Audyssey should help balance the FR some.
If you’re a diy fan, marks suggestion(tls guy) would be great. A full range driver or coaxial speaker should give very wide dispersion which is what you want.
If not, there are plenty of options. I used rsl c34e’s in my room and totally love them. They have a slightly unusual baffle that’s set at 15° making it easier to aim the whole speaker providing more on axis performance. They also have great dispersion characteristics. Imo a design strength they have is that they don’t have the typical “bridge” to carry the tweeter which covers up so much of the woofer. Still, many options out there.
My question though, is where is the LP. If you’re up against the back wall, you might consider 5.1.2. I’ve seen some use four top speakers with the seat against the wall, but imo the “bubble” doesn’t reach behind and also makes the front tops too far forward. It’s a small room so...not sure here. Also, you mentioned the other open area in your dynamo thread. Could you rotate the layout to extend a little longer?
I have considered other Martin Logans--they seem a tad expensive, given the use is basically just going to be Atmos. I'll look further into the RSL c34s. Out of curiosity, can you angle them once they are installed or are they just going to whichever way they're pointing? (Not a big deal either way, just curious)

As for as the MLP, it will not be against the wall, but not quite in the center of the room. So, we're looking at the front in ceilings being a bit further in front of the sofa then the rears will be behind (about a foot each way, so maybe two feet further away). I'm open to considering just two instead of four, although the price of installation (I am, alas, not a DIYer, or at least, not to this extent...) will be not that different so I figured why not put them all in.

(And as for rotating, that was always what I wanted to do but for various reasons not relevant here, just never worked out as an option, so I have to make do.)

Again, many thanks for all the replies.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
I have considered other Martin Logans--they seem a tad expensive, given the use is basically just going to be Atmos. I'll look further into the RSL c34s. Out of curiosity, can you angle them once they are installed or are they just going to whichever way they're pointing? (Not a big deal either way, just curious)

As for as the MLP, it will not be against the wall, but not quite in the center of the room. So, we're looking at the front in ceilings being a bit further in front of the sofa then the rears will be behind (about a foot each way, so maybe two feet further away). I'm open to considering just two instead of four, although the price of installation (I am, alas, not a DIYer, or at least, not to this extent...) will be not that different so I figured why not put them all in.

(And as for rotating, that was always what I wanted to do but for various reasons not relevant here, just never worked out as an option, so I have to make do.)

Again, many thanks for all the replies.
Yeah, basically rotating them is the way to aim them, but you’d have to loosen the dog ears to rotate them after installing. Then re tighten. The tweeters are adjustable but I’ve never found that to be useful, and imo you can end up with some diffraction by moving them.
 
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