How high is the ceiling? If it’s lower, you might want to reconsider ON ceiling and go with IN ceiling.
Height is not an issue since they will be placed 3.5 meters high.
If your ceilings are higher, then the extra distance the ON ceiling speaker will use up won’t be a big deal. Height speakers don’t get as much info as the bed layer, that is true. However, IME you still want a quality speaker with good off axis behavior. Even heights can receive full range signals, and of course you wouldn’t mount towers on the ceiling, as a whole the system should maintain consistency if possible.
Does that mean that as long as the ceiling speakers are full range and high enough I can get away with using lower quality cones/tweeters? I don't mean garbage components but around 40$ per cone/tweeter which are not Hifi by any means but they are decent.
The ideal thing would be to use the same drivers like VMPS-TIII said but I will need massive boxes and will pay quite a lot for the more expensive components if I want them to match the rest of the system... Like you said I would have to mount "towers" on the ceiling which is out of the question...
The good thing about the speakers being custom is that I can ask the builder to try and match the ceiling speakers to the rest of the system. I am not sure if that will be possible though but I don't have anything to lose by asking.
As far as a given driver size being “slow”, that’s a wives tale, and you should never consider that ever again. In main channels, the larger drivers have the advantage of sensitivity, thermal load sharing, power sharing and imo can be more dynamic and powerful. This is usually less important for channels other than the LCR, but I’ve found that if you can, use speakers that use larger/more drivers. As long as it’s a quality manufacturer, and not “joe bobs speaker van”. Lol
It's good too know that bigger drivers being slow is false. Would I get away with using a cheaper 6-8 inch drive paired with a tweeter for atmos? After seeing Youthman's video on the atmos track I can't really justify spending crazy amounts of money on ceiling speakers and my budget at the moment doesn't allow it. At the moment I am planing to spend a max of 150€ per speaker for a total of 4 speakers. On the other hand I don't want to miss out on experiencing Atmos properly because I cheaped out... I am just looking for the ideal budget for ceiling speakers without overdoing it.
HAhaha no the builder is good at what he does. I demoed the cones and tweeters which he installed on some boxes he had lying around and I immediately knew it was "my sound".. I can't wait to listen to them once he installs them on the right boxes with a proper crossover!
For the ceiling, most systems will cross at 80 or higher, so you won’t necessarily care about the bass capability of a bigger bass driver and actually a 6” might give better dispersion if the ceilings are low. If they’re high, the bigger driver should be louder with less distortion if driven hard and dispersion should still be good. FWIW my Atmos system uses RSL c34e’s for height duty and they’re fantastic. Especially at 125ea. You can easily spend more but you don’t need to for a good Atmos system.
The C34E 's look good but I can't find them in my country... I see that it uses dual 4 1/2 drivers. Would you recommend a dual drive speaker with smaller and cheaper cones over a single drive speaker with a big and more expensive cone for Atmos? In general, what cone size would you recommend me?
Just a thought, If I go with dual drivers, would an isobaric design be more ideal instead of a parallel one for an on ceiling speaker since the same cones will require a smaller box and I will get all the extra benefits that come with isobarics?