Using in ceiling surround, shall I upgrade?

Grandtech

I have both atlantic technology in wall and in ceiling in my secondary setup and revel ceiling in my primary. I did this because of the absence of walls in an open space. No choice. I did have revel s30 surrounds on furniture stands prior and focal on wall surrounds in my Previous home.

So I can speak from experience and tell you the following:

1) if you have no choice, then in ceilings will work well as surrounds if they are high performance speakers and preferably angled to point at the listening seat (which my revels do).

2) you can use in wall Atlantic dipoles in-ceiling. You just keep the null point consistent as you move up the wall into the ceiling. It's not ideal but works. It works better if the speakers are not too close to the listening seat either.

3) comparing the revel s30 on wall vs the in ceiling ic15 I can say that there is a bit of a difference in the fullness of the sound and in some instances, the sour round effect is probably better with the setup when it had the S30s. But, not by much. It will be impacted more or less depending on ceiling height and whether you have the speakers at 90 degrees or behind the listening position. There is only one movie, and I can't remember which, where I thought the surround effects were impacted a big due to the placement in ceiling. Listen, I'm too finicky about audio to let a sub-par setup rule my primary listening. It works in my setup but I spent a ton of time measuring out distances and angles before I cut the speakers in.

So, in summary, no, the surrounds do not need to be in ceiling or ceiling mounted. The standard specs call for wall mount about 2-4 feet above listening seat and slightly behind. However, if you cannot do that, then in ceiling can and do work well but you need to really take care to measure and setup properly. Otherwise, it will be a terrible experience that is hard to fix once the holes are done. If you can quantify your displeasure then it may come down to the fact that you would prefer a different brand of speaker. My Revels and Atlantic tech speakers sound very different. Simaudio stuff is great. So your electronics are multiples more than the cost of your speakers.

Grandtech,

Your comment about the dynamics, looking up the theil model and my own experience with the Atlantics tell me that your surrounds are overmatched by a 12k pair of fronts. My suggestion is to go with a highly dynamic pair of in ceiling. Triad, Revel, B&W come to mind immediately. Your Atlantic tech are also likely only able to go down to 80hz, as most of their stuff crosses over at that point. You may be having some room response issues as a consequence. The only way to know is to do a room response graph for those speakers via the anthem. See where they are getting crossed over. It may be that they are getting crossed over at 120hz or higher and the sub may only be going up to 80. Thus, you might have a frequency gap. But look at the anthem post correction graph to see what's what. In fact, take the next step and post the graph on the AVS forum for the anthem AVM50/D2 forum and see what other opinions you get. While I certainly do think that it is a speaker matching issue, it may also be another issue related to the room. Again, I'm assuming you have property run ARC.

And are the in ceiling dipole or monopole/direct firing?

Dear Grantech,

Lots to dissect in your response. Let me start with the speakers. There are some who are very passionate about brand XYZ. Some will bash some brands and extol others. I'm not of that perspective for a very simple reason: everyone's hearing is different and audio is subjective. That's just fact. So the question in my mind is not whether Atlantic is inferior or superior but rather do they sound good to *YOU*. If you got the speakers without listening then that may be the casebuti have haunch and you tell me if I'm right.

1) I am inferring that your fronts are not Atlantic Technology. If your fronts are different then yes you have a timbre difference and that is certainly going to be a problem. So it's not a question of the Atlantics being good or bad; it's just that they are different. Put a 3k in-ceiling and it will sound different too.

2) The question of measurements has three parts: the first is the angle of each speaker relative to the primary listening position. The second is the distance of each speaker from the primary listening position. The third part and often not talked about is the distance measured in proportion to the incremental steps your Pre-pro can handle. My anthem for example handles distance in .5" increments so I kept my distances to that tolerance.

For angle, I followed the DTS/Dolby lossless codec setup. You can see one here: http://www.dts.com/consumers/sound-technology/home-surround-sound/hook-it-up.aspx. My setup follows this. It's not a perfect circle, but it works wonderfully well.

4) I doubt theatlantics are angled in-ceiling so you are also getting off-axis issues that also affect the tonal quality of the setup.

So, if I'm right you have a mismatch in your setup and that's your primary source of displeasure. Secondly you have possible measurement issues and off-axis issues also affecting the tonal quality. Those two factors will not make you happy and YES the surrounds do matter. Play the first 3-5 minutes of Star Wars Episode III. If you can grin after that--especially when the star destroyer explodes and you fly through it, then you know everything is setup properly. If you can't play that scene then, that's your surround litmus test.

So if you REALLY love the sound of your fronts then work your way up and buy good in-ceilings for those and ideally get angled speakers so that the tweeter can hit the listening position.

Finally, remember that if all of us bought solely on brand and perception of sound quality, then we'd all have Bose systems ;-)

I use direct radiating and not bipole speakers. With in ceiling if you want the bipole effect you aim the tweeter away from the listening position to the wall. I didn't do that and have my tweeters aimed at the listening position. I listen to multichannel music and movies and with music the direct radiating is better than dipole. Some companies don't even make nipples and Revel's top of the line doesn't have bipoles. So no, I don't think dipoles are as "mandatory" as you might think. It's more about placement and configuration. In my Preamp you configure dipole or direct. The difference is that direct gives you the ability to enter in distance.

The timbre between speaker brands can be significant. What do you have for fronts? The difference between my Atlantic tech and Revels is significant. They would not mate well at all. Years ago as I was building out my system I had mated my Revel fronts with Focal dipole surrounds and Cambridge sound works rears. Yuk. Anytime there was a surround effect panning across speakers you could tell right away there was something not right. Even the Focals--which are simply excellent speakers--did not timbre match the Revels. I could tell. And they were wall mounted and not ceiling mounted. Remember: I'm hearing you say that the sound isn't good, not the effects.

So, if you can answer "yes" to all my assumptions in my previous post then, in my humble opinion that's what you should do. 1) make sure you like the sound of your speaker brand. 2) if so match it all the way around.

I am not disagreeing with Kal's point and post about in-ceiling vs. wall mount. I'm simply saying that if you need to have aesthetics, in-ceilings can indeed work very well and effectively.

Kbuzz, you will have to make some concession. If its a larger company they may have a different line of speaker that offers in walls. Otherwise ask your dealer for a good compromise brand. If you are not dealing with a dealer then post your speakers and ask the community for suggestions. The way to handle it is that the architectural speakers of a brand should be timbre matched. Therefore if the free standing sound close to you then the in ceiling should be close.

Theo