Limited in-ceiling surround/Atmos placement

[CrabRangoon]

Our smaller, open floor plan home leaves me with tricky placement limitations. As pictured, we have our 75” Sony mounted to a 70” long wall, a 65” long BDI Avion holds the LCR array and my left/right channels can only be about 4’ apart (to avoid the right being too deep into the corner / too close to the wall). We’ve used a 3.1 setup for over a year and are finally ready to move forward with surrounds and/or Atmos. I would like to purchase 4x RSL C34e speakers for covering front height & surround duty; but I’m open to 6x of them if placing that many would actually be beneficial. My LCR array is powered by amps, so my Denon X3400h can easily power 4 (or maybe 6 via Zone 2 outlets?) of them for surround & height duties.

Our couch seats 5, but nearly all content is watched alone or with my wife, so I’m only concerned with things fitting the room based upon the MLP as shown, directly centered in front of the TV and LCR =) as you can see, my troubles are a wall nearby on my right & a wall just 3-4” behind the couch. The couch may later come about 12” from the rear wall, but I still worry that it would mean troubled placement for in ceilings effectively acting as rears. This is what lead me to mostly blow off surrounds on stands or brackets & explore in-ceilings - and if I’m going to get in my tiny attic crawl space to run any speaker cables I might as well do as many as makes sense to do ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ hopefully Audioholics can help me determine how many make sense & roughly how I should be placing them, as the Dolby suggested install graphics don’t really align with my space nor my placement within it.

edited to reflect X3400 - not X4400 as originally posted

P.S. I could also consider running 2x of them in my back wall & 4x in ceiling, but I worried that would be just-as-bad if not worse placement for surrounds that cannot be properly toed in..? Please help!

 

[shadyJ]

You don't have a setup where Atmos will work well. I would skip Atmos. I would just do a 5.1 with in-ceiling speakers above you as the surround channels. But the most significant problem there that I see is the right speaker's proximity to the sidewall. You are going to get a heavily reflected sound coming from the right side with respect to the left side, and the right side might sound a bit thick or congested. If you have room for it, you might look at speakers that have narrow dispersion, ie most speakers with horns like Klipsch or Hsu. They will have a bit more narrow dispersion and will be a bit less affected by nearby surfaces such as your sidewall.

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

That’s a tough one for sure. If it were my room, I’d scoot the couch forward and put a pair of surrounds on stands(or wall mounted) and do 5.1.2. As shady said, you might get some reflections or some anomalies on the right side, but I don’t think any of them would be deal breakers, and the whole front end is over to one side too so I say go for it. Every room has compromises.

Forgive my archaic drawing, lol but if you move the couch and sub forward just enough to this, I think you’ll be ok. I’ve wall mounted BS speakers as surrounds almost at a 90deg angle before and it works pretty good. If you put them on stands, you might have to move the couch farther forward but it depends. Wall mounted just above couch height might be better. That’s why I’d do...

 

[CrabRangoon]

The idea of doing surround speakers on stands had occurred to me. I’d considered making my Dynaudio Emit M10 surrounds and replacing them with Excite X14s up front. I can’t picture it, as they’re not a compact BS and would likely appear bulky and out of place, which won’t work for us. That’s what lead me to the in-ceilings, and the C34e particularly for it being angled and with aim-able tweeter.

If my couch and sub come forward just a bit more, I still won’t have more than 12” between couch and wall. Would it be ok to aim the M10’s at our seats from the left and right? Or would they perform better aimed forward into the room instead?

 

[William Lemmerhirt]

The idea of doing surround speakers on stands had occurred to me. I’d considered making my Dynaudio Emit M10 surrounds and replacing them with Excite X14s up front. I can’t picture it, as they’re not a compact BS and would likely appear bulky and out of place, which won’t work for us. That’s what lead me to the in-ceilings, and the C34e particularly for it being angled and with aim-able tweeter.

If my couch and sub come forward just a bit more, I still won’t have more than 12” between couch and wall. Would it be ok to aim the M10’s at our seats from the left and right? Or would they perform better aimed forward into the room instead?

Yes. I would go as far outboard, left and right and aim them at the seats. This will give better imaging and voicing, and also pointing ahead at the front wall will be too far off axis.