OK I decided to install four ceiling speakers per Atmos placement specs to augment my 8.2 system (the 8 comes from a rear center).
I am fortunate to have a dedicated HT room as an addition with an attic above. I am going to buy built in speakers, nothing fancy, perhaps even the higher end Monoprice models.
The ceiling joists are 2x6in, 5/8 drywall ceiling fiberglass insulated with a 3/4 plywood attic floor on the top.
Is simply cutting the speakers in and carving out the fiberglass to half thickness good enough. Or do I need to box in the compartment?
I mean, these are just for movie effects so how much detail is needed in the installation?
In ceilings are designed to be used without a box. Building a box might give you a bit more in the low end but I recently installed some in-ceilings in my game room and I must say I was very impressed with the sound. Much more base than I had anticipated. In my case tho the ceiling was a double ceiling without 12" between the 2 sets of drywall. The ceiling started out as 10' high and it was later lowered to 9'. So I guess in my case I have a bit of a box, allbeit a huge one. You might think about some time of box or coverng tho atleast for insulation. Otherwise you are creating 2 giant holes for heat to escape through.
In ceilings are designed to be used without a box. Building a box might give you a bit more in the low end but I recently installed some in-ceilings in my game room and I must say I was very impressed with the sound. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00006BMQT/ref=pe_385040_121528360_TE_dp_1
How are you going to handle the Auro format which isn't compatible with that speaker layout? You're probably jumping the gun here. DTS:X hasn't even been released yet so who knows what the best layout for that would be.
Also, there's 4 movies available for the format right now. They all suck.
I plan to mount the speakers in a way that is more or less compatible with the three formats. What more can you do? I also read that my current surrounds need to be lowered. I'm going to test that as well before I tear the columns apart.
It would seem to me, and I'm an EE but not an acoustics expert, but these specifications can't be that critical. In a small room 10 degree angle difference should not be a big deal. And consider that even with a perfect dimensioned layoput, that's only good for a single seat. What about the other guests?
There will always be compromises.
I should also mention that I don't even have an Atoms, Auro, and certainly not a DTS-X decoder yet. But I do have a MiniDSP on each speaker including the soon to be ceiling speakers. I plan to experiment with some DSP code build my own up mixer because as you stated, native content will be lacking for quite a while.
There's a general principle in marketing that the first one to market with a concept owns that concept and wins the market if they manage any significant penetration. In this case, that would be Atmos. DTS:X is so late to the party without any significant advantage that its failure is almost assured. Auro hasn't penetrated the theater market nearly as well as Atmos, and lags Atmos at home in hardware and software. We can wait and see what happens, and there may be some parallel product for a time, but the first in and biggest splash goes to Atmos. They probably already "own" the concept of 3D audio in the minds of consumers. Even with 4 sucky movies, Atmos is still way ahead of its competition.
Any speaker layout incompatibility will be just one more nail in the underdog's coffin. And, we have yet to see if there's any significant interest in Atmos at home at all, or if the cost/complexity outweighs the benefits. It might win over its competitors, yet still fail.
Most consumers don't know or care about it actually. You assume too much in thinking that one of these has won. It's never been the case that there's been a single audio format winning out in home theater. There's always been at least two.
The speaker incompatibility won't be a nail in any coffin. Most people have the sense to avoid all of this until the formats play themselves out.
I guess for some people it's easier to be combative than to own up to any lack of planning.
In my experience, your ceiling will work pretty well for in-walls without "boxing in" the space behind them (see #2 below). I've used in-wall speakers in the ceiling three times - this is what I found / experienced:
#1 - open attic: too much sound and vibration into the attic, could hear the sound in other rooms and even outside through attic vents and the sound was "muddy" - but surround channels don't have that much content or bass - it was much worse with "5 channel music" surround mode. I ended up building a back box / enclosure in the attic between the bottom 2x4 of the ceiling trusses which helped a lot but enclosures were too small and seemed to "choke" the speakers a bit. Still much better sound with the custom back box / enclosure.
#2 - ceiling between floors: like you I had a theater room downstairs with another room upstairs - 2x8 ceiling joists with thick plywood 2nd floor above. I couldn't build enclosures as before because I didn't have access from above so I just mounted the in-walls in the sheetrock ceiling in the space between the ceiling joists - the cavities were very long (16') - enclosed with 2x8 wood on the sides, plywood top and sheetrock on the underside. I got a little bit of vibration from the sheetrock but was happy with the results - I didn't get muddy sound and could only hear a little sound / vibration upstairs - again this was worse with 5 channel music mode.
#3 - "attic" between floors: current house has about 3' between home theater ceiling and floor above and I didn't want sound in adjacent rooms or muddy sound. I thought about building back boxes again but wanted best possible sound and wanted ceiling mounted surrounds to sound exactly the same as back surround channels (7.1 this time) mounted in 2x4 wall behind so I decided to get in-walls with built-in enclosures - four Def Tech UIW-RSSII speakers in the rear. They sound amazing, not at all muddy, and no sound in adjacent rooms from the back of the speakers. Expensive, but worth it.
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