So it has been a long time testing and me being on the fence about how I wanted to do atmos, in-celing self install sounded like a pain and I have been using SVS angled speakers with them on the side walls following dolby idea of in ceiling angles. It sounded well. Okay.
So for the meat of the topic I suggest the audioholics video
again where they talk about the problems with atmos mixes. It's a must watch. In his video he said the auro-3D set up was best. So I had to find out for myself. I set up my speakers much like auro suggests however my surround speakers made the desired angles impossible so I tried and found the solution!
Now for my testing I drove all the way to Portland Oregon where my uncle lives and who got my into hifi he has a 7.4.4 speaker set up with atmos in ceiling so here was the plan the day I was leaving our Lan party and visit we decided to splice 20 min of dtsx, and atmos movie clips that we felt sounded the best. Then burned it to a blu ray. After that we decreased all but the hight channels to half DB c-weighted so we can really pin point when audio is above us. Now his system sounded great and we left for my home system where I found that if I put my hight layer on the front wall (above but 10° closer in) the main L/R and after my uncle helping with the rear we found for my room ignore the auro- 3D of putting back hight over the surrounds and put them on the back wall over where your surround back would be. We ran the same demos again at the same SPL. Now my system isn't as high fidelity as his but what we found was outstanding.
During the JW 2 sequence when the (horned tiny t-rex idk Dino names) was behind the actors and roared we found we could clearly point in the direction he was (back right high) then when the volcano exploded we could track falling rocks flying from rear to front.
Another part was a dolby demo where there is a thunder storm we found that the storm felt larger and more "realistic" or say natural than his system as we don't hear rain falling from the sky but more all around us sprinkling on objects,
Now one clip where we both agreed sounded better with in ceiling speakers was the film knives out when an actress is meditating and there is a thud directly over her head in his system is sounded like someone upstairs dropped a baseball where my set up sounded maybe more like a dresser fell over upstairs. But we both agreed even with his higher fidelity system, the way I have my speakers over head sound feels more like you're in a "bubble" of sound the room even felt bigger and the over head layer was more "natural". Now after this he did comment the Holly grail would be over heads with high front and back wall speakers and I'm sure he will add that one day soon as I could see the upgrade twitch in his eye.
I hope you enjoyed this rushed "experience" as I type it out in bed just giving people and idea that just because you can't fit the speakers or angles if you just bend the rules a little bit you can actually get fantastic results.
