Hi there everyone. It’s been a few years since I’ve posted on the forum but have always found the advice administered to be tremendously helpful and very much appreciated. As such, I was hoping I could get some thoughts on a dilemma I’m facing.
I’m currently building a new home with a very open floor plan with the kitchen, nook, dining and living/family rooms all open to each other. I am planning on setting up a 7.2.4 system. Due to the open concept, I can only utilize ceiling speakers for my surround and atmos channels (not ideal, I know).
I’ve narrowed my floor standers down to the Focal Sopra 3 and Audiovector SR6 Avantgarde Arreté with accompanying center channnel. As far as I’m concerned, both speakers sound incredible, but in different ways.
My impressions of each speaker are that the Focals sounded warmer and more enveloping relative to the sharp, more delineated soundstage of the Audiovectors. Focal uses a beryllium tweeter and the Audiovectors use an AMT. I am partial to the Audiovectors, however, they do-not make a dedicated ceiling speaker. Focal, on the other hand, does (even though the ceiling speakers do not use the same beryllium tweeter).
A few questions I have:
- If I go with the Audiovectors, is there a ceiling speaker available that could potentially match the sonic characteristics of the LCR channels? Or does that even matter considering that they are surround/atoms channels that are not dialogue-heavy? This obviously is more of an issue in multi-channel stereo.
- A couple of ceiling speakers I’ve come across are the Martin Logan Electromotion speakers that also utilize an AMT tweeter and the Goldenear Invisa speakers that utilize a folded ribbon design. My understanding has always been that ribbons and AMT’s rely on different technologies and therefore sound very different. Am I correct in thinking that? My dealer says that those HVFR tweeters in the the goldenears are actually based on the Heil air motion design. Am I missing something?
- Or should I simply nip it in the bud and go with the Focals in order to preserve that consistent “house sound,” even though I’m absolutely in love with the Audiovectors? What would you do in this scenario?
Another option would be the Paradigm Persona 7F. Paradigm does make matching speakers all the way around utilizing the same tweeter.
Thanks so much reading this and I would very much appreciate your thoughts.
