Ceiling Speakers

[zerohero]

This applies to gaming as well..

After relaxing, and watching a movie the other day I thought, wouldn't it be interesting to watch a movie not only in 5.1, but also have speakers facing directly above you on the ceiling. You would be completely immersed in sound from every angle. For example, imagine a helicopter flying above a character in a movie/game. You would first hear it from the S- rears, then a mix of S –sides, and S – ceiling speakers, and finally the front, and center speaker. I’m sure the concept or idea has been thought up, and experimented before, but I wanted to hear this forums thoughts.

[Joker T]

That would be pretty cool, but I really don't think we need any more speakers these days.

[Pedro Lambrini]

Can't you already get that, or at least, something similar? What's 7.1 about? I think that 7.1 is FR, FC, FL + RR, RC, RL plus a 'Centre, Centre' speaker (and the sub!).

Personally I'm all for surround sound setups - I have a 5.1 system sans the subwoofer. But I do think it's getting a wee bitty ridiculous with 8 speakers. Where do you, in a practical sense, put them all??

[zerohero]

Can't you already get that, or at least, something similar? What's 7.1 about? I think that 7.1 is FR, FC, FL + RR, RC, RL plus a 'Centre, Centre' speaker (and the sub!).

Personally I'm all for surround sound setups - I have a 5.1 system sans the subwoofer. But I do think it's getting a wee bitty ridiculous with 8 speakers. Where do you, in a practical sense, put them all??

I think those are for the more hardcore audiophiles. I mean those guys have rooms dedicated to nothing but that sometimes.

but no, there are no ceiling or above speakers.... yet.

[Flack]

Sure there are (ceiling speakers). There's just no source that pushes dedicated audio channels to them. I've seen lots of 5.1 setups where the rears are mounted in the ceiling.

[Anthony1]

When exactly did these boards turn into the home theater forum? I put my home theater related stuff in the off-topic area. But if I could put it in the Modern Gaming thread instead, I probably would. :)



Anyways, in relation to ceiling speakers, not a very good idea. A buddy of mine has all his speakers in his ceiling, it's mostly to appease his wife, although the house he bought might have had speakers pre-installed in the ceiling or something. Any audio expert will tell you that from a pure sound quality standpoint, it's not at all ideal.

At one point, I had a 6.1 setup in my living room. With 6.1, you have the two surround speakers, but you also have a center surround speaker that goes in between the two. My problem was that in my living room, my sofa backs up against a wall. So there is no place for my surrounds to go behind my head. I could do in wall, but it would be too close to the ears. So I mounted my surrounds up on the ceiling kinda aimed downwards. The bottom line is that it was a failed experiment. I moved the surrounds to the side of the listening area and got rid of the back center channel. That isn't ideal either, but it's better.


Ideally, you just want a 7.1 setup, and you want your side surrounds to be about 10 ft from the listening position and the rear surrounds about 10 ft from the listening position. Of course, having a room large enough to do that is usually not possible, so we all have to make sacrifices. I did a home theater deal in my 3 car garage, cause that is the only room large enough to actually do it proper. (plus it was the only room where I could do a 113 inch screen). I must say however, that it is so nice to finally have the surrounds far enough away from the listening position so that you can't specifically tell where the sounds are coming from.