6.5” or 8” in ceiling speakers for Atmos

Dolby does not allow in-ceiling Atmos and in-ceiling surrounds. The surrounds are all supposed to be at 1/2 ceiling height, or below. Of course, you can go ahead an do it anyway, but you might find it to be an unsatisfying experience.

https://www.dolby.com/us/en/speaker-setup-guides/index.html

^^^

Sometimes you don’t have a choice and the speakers have to go in the ceiling.

In that situation I would do 5.x.2

RS and LS behind the main seating and the front Atmos channels in front of the main seating.

Thanks for the replies
I’m looking for information and advice on speaker size. With front bookshelves is it preferable to have 6.5” speakers in the ceiling or is 8” ok. The 8” speakers are more sensitive and have better power handling.
Thank you

When I upgrade to an Atmos receiver I will set it up as 5.2.4. (The back wall is to far away for back surrounds.). I have to open up the ceiling now to run some other wires so I want to run the speaker wire and install the speakers I will need in the future now Hope that makes sense. I’m going to use the back ceiling speakers as back surrounds in the meantime. Just want to make sure I get the best size to integrate with my current speakers.

Go with 8" Micca's.

Have you thought about putting the surrounds on stands? I’ve tried exactly what you’re talking about doing and even with excellent room correction, you just don’t get the separation and you’ll find the surrounds are rather key for the whole system. I ended up going with stands and it was infinitely better.


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That’s an excellent suggestion. My side surrounds are on the side walls. I could place back surrounds on stands. I couldn’t leave them there all the time because of room flow but maybe I could use wireless speakers and set them in place when I want to watch movies.

I would steer clear of anything wireless mixing into a wired system. The surrounds work best with precision microseconds of delay and the wireless protocol, whether it be Bluetooth or any other will have its own delay and it may not be consistent.


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Yes that makes sense. I won’t entertain any wireless speakers in the same setup.

Since the system will include a subwoofer, the speakers will not be handling anything below 80 hz so speaker size will not matter as much. It is also better for a 6.5 cone to reproduce midrange than a larger 8 inch cone which is why there are three way speakers so I plan to go with a 5 or 6 inch directional speaker. Also, the higher frequencies require less power, the cone excursion is much shorter so less energy is needed so the "power handling" does not matter. The larger power of those larger speaker are for moving the woofer to produce the lower frequencies which the atmos speaker will not be doing.

You could use 8* speakers if you really wanted to, but not really necessary for your application. As diligently explained, the subs are handling the low end so 6.5's will be just fine.

Was thinking about using a fully aimable ceiling speaker like speakercraft 5 inch. Would create a back box including MDF and two layers of 5/8th drywall. My ceiling is 3 layer of 5/8 with green glue and do not want the in-ceiling to be my weakest link. Looking at a 5 inch so the backer boxes can be small and not weigh a ton and not require a large hole to cut. Any thoughts about a 5 inch. Given the frequency response of the ones that I am looking at, they seem fine. The rest of the speakers are Aerial Acoustics so matching is going to be tough.