Advice on 5.1.4 speaker placement

J

jacoscar

Audiophyte
I’m renovating my living room which means I can decide where to put speakers and wires (including chasing the in the brick walls); I’ll be installing in ceiling speakers so I can have Atmos, but unfortunately the sofa will have to be against the wall (it makes more sense generally, but I don’t exclude that I’ll bring it a bit away from the wall

The two big rectangles are the left and right main speakers, the smaller rectangles are the surround speakers and the circles are the atmos in ceiling speakers

Ignore the rectangle at the bottom right (I couldn’t manage to remove it from my crappy design app)

The listening point would be the two left seats on the sofa, so the surround speakers will be more or less equidistant (provided the door is closed)

What do you think?
 

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DigitalDawn

DigitalDawn

Senior Audioholic
I think your seating is way too close to the back wall and 4 speaker Atmos isn't going to work well.

My recommendation is to move the couch at least a foot forward and use two bipole speakers in the back wall. If you want Atmos, I would just go with 2 Atmos speakers in the ceiling in front of the listening position.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
How deep is the room?
I agree with dawn, if you can’t move the seating off the wall then there’s not too much point in x.x4. Also, In looking at the photo, I’d say the height speakers should come into the center a little bit. Some guides show to align them with the mains, but speaker principles are still pretty much the same as always and it looks like they’d be too far apart to image properly with the bed layer. You’ll also want top speakers with wide dispersion.
https://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-home-theater-installation-guidelines.pdf
Here’s some reading.

 
J

jacoscar

Audiophyte
The room is 3.5 m deep (from back wall to tv wall); wouldn’t 4 atmos speakers still be better than 2 for panning effects?

Obviously I can move the rear atmos speakers even further back, just over the surround speakers (but maybe closer together)
 
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J

jacoscar

Audiophyte
I think your seating is way too close to the back wall and 4 speaker Atmos isn't going to work well.

My recommendation is to move the couch at least a foot forward and use two bipole speakers in the back wall. If you want Atmos, I would just go with 2 Atmos speakers in the ceiling in front of the listening position.
wouldn’t the bipole speakers in the back wall still be considered atmos speakers? What’s the difference?
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
wouldn’t the bipole speakers in the back wall still be considered atmos speakers? What’s the difference?
Not sure of the question exactly... “Atmos” speakers are intended to produce sound from above, either by being placed above, or by the use of special speakers that bounce sound off of the ceiling to your listening position. They would not be mounted in a wall behind you.
Bipolar speakers are a speaker that is more commonly used as a surround speaker, but sometimes as front/main speakers. What makes them different is that they have the drivers mounted on different baffles(as opposed to the same baffle in a normal speaker). They fire out of phase from each other and instead of a clear focused image, they produce a diffused hazy kind of sound field. These can be effective in small places, but imo are useless otherwise. They are not for producing two channels of sound out of one speaker.
This installation guide might provide useful.
https://www.dolby.com/us/en/technologies/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos-home-theater-installation-guidelines.pdf
 
J

jacoscar

Audiophyte
Well, if I look at the side view at page 29, if I were to have the front atmos at 45° and the rear ones at 135°, assuming a sitting height of 1 m and a ceiling height of 2.35, my front atmos speakers would end up almost above my LCR

In this scheme, the back wall is on the right and the screen in on the left
 

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William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Stupid Tapatalk.....just crashed and lost my whole response. I’ll try again.....
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Don’t have enough time to duplicate my first reply so...
In your first image your couch is up against the wall so at 45° the front TOP speakers would be about 1.5m(5’) from the front wall.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Also, the images that Dolby uses are just for reference to illustrate the layout. A little generic for my liking.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
They do recommend like 64-100° for 5.1.2 which makes more sense in your room. Having more speakers, but in the wrong places will not help imo. Again, I would do 5.1.2. In your situation...
 
Kingnoob

Kingnoob

Audioholic Samurai
wouldn’t the bipole speakers in the back wall still be considered atmos speakers? What’s the difference?
If there raised high near ceiling , otherwise there just back surrounds like what I use on my non atmos receiver.


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