Dolby Atmos Ceiling Speakers

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Getting rears to align with the standard when your listening position is near the back wall is near impossible.
My issue as well. Rear surrounds are in the ceiling over my head, as I sit against the back wall. Plus I couldn't do 5.2.4 because my 9.2 receiver won't do BOTH front and rear heights, without external amplification. So the ceiling mounted rears are rear surrounds, and the heights are front only, a few feet above the mains. Not too many of us on here, unless we had the chance to make a theatre/surround music room from scratch, that don't have to make compromises in our setups. The addition of all these speakers the last several years, going from 5.1, 7.1 to 9.2 and such hasn't helped the cause. Our ultra cool 5.1 setups have morphed into speaker palooza, making placement a real bear... I really feel for what you're trying to do.(y)
 
What I did was ditch the couch against the back wall, replace with a single captains chair, and stick that in the center of the room...
That makes a lot of sense to me. Bringing your listening position to the center of the room allows for the Top speakers to have the optimum angle / placement for ATMOS. Below see my "Family Room" speaker layout. CLF = Ceiling Left Front, etc. All speakers are wall or ceiling mounted. The room size is 14.5' by 11.5'.

Family Room Layout - Speakers.png


FR-12.JPG
 
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That makes a lot of sense to me. Bringing your listening position to the center of the room allows for the Top speakers to have the optimum angle / placement for ATMOS. Below see my "Family Room" speaker layout. CLF = Ceiling Left Front, etc. All speakers are wall or ceiling mounted. The room size is 14.5' by 11.5'.

View attachment 75125

View attachment 75126

Nice, @tcdriver ! And with a high WAF, no less.
 
Nice room. May I ask if you have a subwoofer, and if so, do your album frames rattle during deep bass passages? I have had this problem myself, to the point where I took all my frames down.
Yes I have a sub, and yes some do rattle. I use small chunks of blu-tac on the frame backsides to better couple them to the wall. It holds them tightly and prevents them from rattling. I only had to do that to about 6 of them.
 
I just want to add to this discussion, if you are willing to add in-ceiling speakers but don't want to spend a mint on them, I have these:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002YPS6T6/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Under $50 each. I bought them with the intent of just getting Atmos up and running and then upgrading later to higher quality / better match speakers for my setup, but I like them so much I am in no hurry to upgrade.
Those look quite decent. For 8" units you can find quite a few metal backing covers. For the 6.5", not so much. I actually think an 8" install might have been easier. The directable tweeters are significant, at least for those Emotivas. Listening in the sweet spot, with the tweeters pointed down, the top end drops off quite a bit.
 
Speakers look great.
A super nice professional install job, congrats.
Thank you. In reality, I had to do quite a few modifications. In a normal install, the speaker grills would be flush against the tiles. The speakers need a full 4" mounting depth. Emotiva warns that they wont fit in most interior walls. I had 4" clearance in some but not all of the locations. The lowest clearance I measured was 3-5/8". In the places where there was 4" clearance.... it was just 4" and no more. In one case the woofer magnet would have been butted up to a joist. I needed more clearance. So I added the trim rings. They are painted 3/4" MDF. I had them made by an online place called Craftcuts. I was a little worried about how it would look, but overall I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Butttttt.... adding the trim rings also took the mounting surface thickness to 1-5/8" Note there is a sheet of 1/4" MDF glued to the back of each tile as well. The max mounting depth of the speaker is 1-1/8". It required me to seek out #6 x3"L drywall screws. Trust me... don't try to find these at the local home depot. I also had to mutilate the supplied mounting system a bit. It was only all possible because I had access to the mounting lugs due to the tile ceiling.
 
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