Atmos Speaker Placement

Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
Hi all,

I'm pretty new to the atmos world. Recently I did get a new Yamaha AVR that supports atmos and decided to get some "atmos" speakers to go along with it.

Now I realize its unlikely I will achieve perfection here. However hoping that I can do the best I can in my space. I currently can't say I've really noticed much with having them.

I've got 4 atmos enabled speakers that are designed to go on top of your front/back speakers. Technically they can also be mounted on the walls but in my case doing anything like that is out of the question. So sitting them on top of the speakers is what I can do, and have done.

The questions:

I am a little unsure of which direction the atmos speakers should be facing. The front ones I have placed in the same direction as my fronts face which is more or less towards the main sitting space.

However I don't have true surround back speakers. I have surround left and right which are currently just slightly back from where you normally would sit and cannot go any further back as their is a wall in the way. Sooo should the atmos speakers I placed on those be facing back towards the front atmos speakers or should they also face the same as the surround L/R speakers which would be more towards the seating space?

I also would like to confirm which setting I should have for the speaker type. In my AVR I can choose between 3 types.

Front/Rear Height which says it should be on the wall -these speakers technically can be classified as wall speakers and is what the auto calibration chose. (or maybe it was the default)
Overhead which is for in ceiling so most likely not this
Dolby Enabled which is what I have them set to but this does not really offer a clear description of what this means. My speakers do say they are licensed from Dolby on them...

Speakers: https://www.polkaudio.com/en-ca/product/height-modules/monitor-xt90

Thoughts?

Cheers!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Select Dolby enabled. This allows for the notch in the FR to help trick the brain into hearing those sounds overhead. It will also tell the AVR how to calibrate with the distance to match the other speakers.
I would toe them to fire at the MLP no matter which way the mains are toed. And you may have to experiment with tipping the DAE speakers foreword or backwards to get the sound to land at your ears. If you’ve ever shot pool, think of these speakers as making a bank shot to your ears. It can take some fussing around but if that’s all you have to work with, then that’s what you got!
 
Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
Thanks for the reply!

So I should probably move the "back" atmos speakers some to point more towards the MLP and likely adjust the fronts a bit. Re calibate also.

Great thanks!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Thanks for the reply!

So I should probably move the "back" atmos speakers some to point more towards the MLP and likely adjust the fronts a bit. Re calibate also.

Great thanks!
Yep. I would do that. And also don’t be afraid to bump the trims a little. It’s pretty common, especially with DAE speakers. If you don’t like it, you can definitely back them down, although the higher volume might help you find the best angle. One demo I can think of is the “helicopter” demo. It only plays in the height/top speakers so it’s a good test. One note on that. I did see on another forum that a user that had DAE speakers could hear sounds from the bed layer too. Imo it was operator error, but never verified that. On my system it only plays from my tops. I do have a pcm version to test DSU and DTSnx and those both use the bed and height layers so that’s why I think the other guy messed up. Iirc I downloaded it from demolandia.
 
Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
Thanks for the info.

I've tried to find the helicopter demo a few times now. Does it go by a different name? Link? I cannot seem to locate this particular one but I've seen it in youtube videos from other people.

Cheers!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
I’ve been wracking my brain cell and looking all over for it. I can’t remember where I got it from. The YouTube stuff is worthless since YT only supports 2.0ch unless you have some premium subscription or something like that.

Here’s a really fun demo. But you have to save it to a thumb drive and play it with a BD player like most of the demos.
 
Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
Awesome thanks for that. I'll give that a go and keep searching for the helicopter. :p

Cheers!
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
This is a link to a Google Drive that has the helicopter on it.
Nice! Hope it is the same one. It just goes from TFL to TRL to TRR to TFR.
Definitely make sure it’s the right one. Press info or display or whatever on your AVR to
A) make sure the input source is Atmos and
B) to make sure the sound mode is set to Atmos as well.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord


Here’s some ore fun.

Dolby used to have a couple on their site. Not sure they still do.
 
W

Wardog555

Full Audioholic
The issue here that your hearing the atmos effect well is due to the upfiring speakers. In order to hear it better the most ideal place is ceiling based or in ceiling second best is high on wall next to the ceiling. If you don't do that then it's worthless. I'm sorry to say but this is a fact.
 
Last edited:
Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
Thanks for your help/inputs.

Yeah I realize upfiring speakers are the least desirable but doing what I can for now. I have heard them if I go up to them. :) The idea of bumping up the volume on them might also help.

Unfortunately for the video (helicopter) I posted I have not been able to actually get it to playback with atmos. I am not sure why yet. The other video of the guy going from channel to channel worked fine.

The helicopter video specs seems to indicate it does have atmos. Will have to do more investigations...

1643126797434.png


Cheers!
 
Q

qwaven

Audioholic Intern
so just to update. The file seems to play just fine via my bluray player off a USB key so not really sure why it won't play from my other source. Anyway Cheers!
 

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