Rear surrounds behind, or in ceiling?

[Electone]

My current 7.1 setup has my rear surrounds at 18" distance from the listener's head while seated (my couch is only 2 feet out from the back wall). I was thinking of re-positioning the rear surrounds with some ceiling-mounted speakers firing down just slightly behind the seating position.

Would this work better than my current situation?

 

[Savant]

Electone,

While I am generally not a huge fan of in-ceiling surrounds, I have been faced with several rooms recently where there were no other alternatives. In many of those cases, I have had the most success with treating at least the top 50% of the rear wall of the room with acoustical diffusors. The tweeters of the in-ceilings were then aimed (aimable tweeters is definitely a prerequisite here) at the center of the treatment area on each side, angled slightly towards the physical center of the wall. (I have only done this in 5.1 applications, but a similar approach should work for x.1 systems.) The effect of this in one recent installation was to successfully create the illusion of lateral surround, even though the source was in the ceiling.

Thus, I would ask you if you have any treatment on the rear wall? If not, you might consider installing some diffusors and aiming your in-ceilings as described above.

I will offer up an additional opinion: This generally does not sound as good, in terms of an enveloping surround field, as when you can us in-wall, on-wall, or otherwise in-room surrounds and place the seating area a decent distance away from them. I have typically found that having no seat closer than about 3'-4' from any surround loudspeaker tends to yield the best results in a properly treated room.

 

[Electone]

Thank-you for your reply. I do not have any accoustical treatment on any walls in the room. My concern with my current rear surrounds is that when I'm seated in the "sweet" spot on my couch, my head is a little over a foot away from each speaker on each side, but only 6 inches or so in front of them. The rears are not toed in towards the sweet spot, they fire straight out from the back wall.

Because the side surrounds are wall-mounted and 6 feet off the ground, I thought that I would get a better defined sound by moving the backs into the ceiling and aiming them down, or slightly behind the listening position.

 

[QED]

What about using in ceiling di-poles?

 

[Savant]

Electone,

In-ceilings aimed down and back from the listening area could work. I am not a fan of doing this sort of thing because ceiling sources are not natural for a surround environment. This is more of an opinion than a fact. Movies and other surround material is mixed with laterally placed sources. Move those sources to the ceiling and things don't usually translate very well, IMO.

But that's not to say it cannot be done. Again, I have had the most success with combining carefully placed treatment with in-ceiling surrounds. But if I say that too much I could run the risk of sounding like a commercial for acoustical treatments!!!

Now, I do have a friend with in-ceilings more or less right above a couch up against a back wall. The room is not treated at all. Personally, I am not fond of the sound field this creates, but that's not to say it's the end-of-the-world. My friend seems to be perfectly fine with this arrangement. (In his opinion, it sure beat the hell out of trying to get (a) in-walls in the solid brick wall at the back of the room and (b) WAF for moving the couch into the room, away from the back wall... )

To QED: What about using in-ceiling dipoles? Are you asking whether Electone's considered it, or are you asking for a professional opinion on the matter? (Or both? )

 

[QED]

Sorry I wasn't clear...

It was a request for an opinion...

Thanks

 

[Savant]

QED,

Well, I thought I'd have an opinion on this, but now that I've sat and thought about it for a bit, I cannot say for sure. Let me think this through and do a little digging. The reason dipoles work so well for the walls could be the very reason they either work very well, or very poorly in an in-ceiling setup. Or maybe there's something in between...

I will ponder this...

 

[j_garcia]

If the speakers are that close, you could just consider repositioning them so they are not facing toward the listener. Up toward the ceiling, or out, toward the side and/or rear wall slightly, may create a good diffused effect - using similar dampening methods as described previously. It does take some tweaking and experimentation to find what works right for your particular case, but there is usually something that will work.

 

[bpape]

This is going to sound like an odd suggestion but in your situation it can actually work quite well. Assuming you cannot put up treatments (recommended), your best bet might be to lay them on the floor behind your seating position and fire them straight up at the ceiling. This gives somewhat of a better surround experience and makes them less localizable while still getting decent pans that don't end up on top of your head.

It's certainly easy and cheap enough to try.

 

[Savant]

bpape,



Oh, great! Now, instead of "What's that noise upstairs?", listeners will just ask "What's crawling under the sofa?"



Seriously, though, not a bad idea...

 

[bpape]

LOL. Yeah. It's always something. It doesn't work half bad though when you get in a tight situation like that.