Nicolai, Thank you for your generous and very informative info! I'll answer your questions below. I have included a couple pictures of the room so far to give you a better idea of what's going on. I'm in the middle of putting everything back together after putting the new flooring down and putting the makeshift absorption panel up, so the place is kind of a mess. Also the permanent seating isn't in yet, so have just been using a portable Zero Gravity lounge. It's a bit of an embarrassing setup, yes, but I'm not sure how long I'll be in this place so haven't went all-out on my theatre just yet.
Doesn't matter at all, all I was wondering is the size of the seating arrangement.
If you were doing a sofa against the back wall and needed room for 2-3 people, it would be a different story.
The layout you have should actually work quite well, with your main limitation being volume. Sitting so close to the speakers means you can't turn the volume up very far (and thus might not get the sensations of for example speakers vibrating your body), but likely considerations of neighbours prevents this anyways. I'm also assuming this is the reasoning behind the absence of subwoofers?
I have always been very doubtful of up-firing speakers, and it seems you likely agree with my suspicions. I told myself that perfect is the enemy of good here, and said that I'd have to make some sacrifices, but if you think that I'd be better off without height speakers altogether, I certainly wouldn't argue with that. As I mentioned, it's a rental so I'm going to try to avoid mounting speakers to the ceiling (but honestly, if I find something small and light, I might just do it anyway.) The ceilings are fairly reflective, given the thin drywall, I think, and are about 240cm high (a bit shy of 8'.) I'm not sure if the height speakers that sit on top of the fronts can be angle adjusted, but I will check on that. Pics below, and thank you very much! I'll expand a little on more speaker into in my next post, which will be a reply to the gentleman that responded after you did.
Upfiring speakers are (in my opinion) less than ideal and mainly offered to make the step up to spacial audio with height channels more manageable in existing rooms and systems. Since they work by reflection, there are limitations to what they can do (and where) but if the room works for it, it can definitely be better than nothing. My ceiling looks like this: /\ with a 46° rise on either side (left/right) so as you can imagine, I'd probably get very interesting results from upfiring height speakers.
Thank you for the pictures. From those, I am guesstimating your listening position to be around 160 cm into the room and 100 cm from the back wall.
If I assume that your speakers are roughly at ear level, that means your front upfiring speakers would be something like 150 cm under the ceiling and needing to reach slightly less than 150 cm horizontally yo reach you (assuming there's a bit of distance between the wall and the speaker driver). That's obviously 45°, and I think these upfiring speakers are often at angles different than that. So as mentioned, if you go that way you'll likely have to come up with some contraption to wedge the speaker to aim it.
Honestly, I'm unsure how an upfiring height speaker will work in the room. It's a very small room, so it somewhat depends on the dispersion of the upfiring speakers whether you get (only) sound that hit you from the ceiling or if you get reflected sounds from all over the back walls. Your absorption panel will likely help though. If you're not overly concerned with money, I'd say try it, and if the result is unappealing, see if it's fixable. If not, sell the upfiring speakers. Otherwise, if less curious and more financially concerned, just forego the upfiring speakers.
As for the rest of the setup, I actually think you can have a pretty nice 5.0 experience in that room.
