First post, really need help understanding surround format layouts.

M

mach250

Audioholic Intern
Hello, I've been watching videos and researching what to do with my ten year old 5.1 system to get into the Atmos and Auro 3d realm. I've already upgraded my base 5.1 speakers (Sony SSF7000 towers/Onkyo HTIB everywhere else to Klipsch) and projector (Epson 8350 to 6050) and now I'm trying to understand the placement of the height and ceiling speakers to get both formats. My main question for this post is do I need to have specific speakers placed for atmos and then another set for auro or could I do both with ceiling speakers? This leads me to what receiver (Denon 8500) or processor/amp (16 channel) setup I'll need to budget for and get.

If I can just do ceiling I'm needing help if I should do 6 overhead or front wides with 4 overhead. I have easy access to the attic. The difficulty I'm seeing is doing two rows of seating due to the width of the room and worrying about only having 4 speakers overhead. A recent audioholic video I watched mentioned that the front wides were more noticeable than 6 ceiling with how we focus our hearing more towards in front of us.

Am I thinking too much about this??? Thanks for your help.

Espon 6050UB
Front L/R: Klipsch RP-8000F
Center: Klipsch RP-504C
Surround L/R: Klipsch RP-600M
Subwoofers: HSU VTF-3 MK5 (x2)

TBD ???
Sur L/R Klipsch PRO-160RPW x2
LW/RW Klipsch PRO-160RPW x2
Height Center RP-500SA
6 Atmos Klipsch PRO-160RPC
4 Atmos Klipsch PRO-160RPC

Ruume1.JPG


Understand the sub placement is not ideal, will eventually either move one to the back or get two more subs for next to the entrance.

Ruume2.JPG




Right now I have this setup with an Onkyo TX-SR876 with a dead hdmi board after one repair.

room.jpg
 
Last edited:
HTfreak2004

HTfreak2004

Senior Audioholic
A height speaker(atmos) is located heigher than any floor or stand based speaker to reflect sound of a boundary(ceiling in this case) to crest more enveloping sound.

A ceiling based speaker works like any other designated position based speaker(sound info is expected to resonate from that point) not reflect off a boundary (know as boundary interference) not true source sound.
 
William Lemmerhirt

William Lemmerhirt

Audioholic Overlord
Well, IMO there’s no reason to worry about Auro. There is basically zero content available in the US(assuming you’re here). Due to that I would just worry about Atmos/dtsX. The latter I believe shares more with an Auro layout, but does work fine with an Atmos speaker configuration. As far as 6 top speakers, how long is the room? 4 will phantom images from front to rear pan just fine. Also, the processors that will do it are very expensive, and depending on the soundtrack, the middles will be silent anyway. That might not matter but, just saying. Content wise, not many films utilize wides, and iirc, DSU and dtsNx will not use them when upmixing legacy tracks.
Which row will get the most use? I would put that row at 90° with the side surrounds and let the other row be for kids and mothers in law. Lol
Also, you should read this a little bit.

It’s full of insight and more detailed than the diagrams on Dolby’s site which are just for quick visual aid.
 
Pogre

Pogre

Audioholic Slumlord
Those are great diagrams of your room and setup. Are you using expensive software for those or is it free? I've been wanting to draw my room up like that for a long time.
 
M

mach250

Audioholic Intern
Those are great diagrams of your room and setup. Are you using expensive software for those or is it free? I've been wanting to draw my room up like that for a long time.
Pretty much just using excel on my work computer and getting snapshots from the atmos setup guide on the dolby website.
 
M

mach250

Audioholic Intern
Would there be a noticeable difference between 4 and 6 speakers with two rows of seating? I'm thinking the centers between the rows would help even out the sound as the speakers would be at each corner of the seats.
 
JerryLove

JerryLove

Audioholic Samurai
Would there be a noticeable difference between 4 and 6 speakers with two rows of seating? I'm thinking the centers between the rows would help even out the sound as the speakers would be at each corner of the seats.
I think the biggest issue, once you add a second chair, much less a second row, is to think about baffle-lines. Whose head blocks what speaker.

Theaters seem to work around this in three ways.
1) Stadium seating.
2) Placing speakers far from the floor
3) An array of side-channel.

I'm thinking that the second would be the most significant in a home-theater setup, and I wonder how that interacts with the desire to put up many "height" speakers.

I'm putting off the atmos portion of my build until the 7.2 is complete; but I'm thinking that I may run a subset of the height speakers simply because the surrounds are already pretty high.
 

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