Using in ceiling surround, shall I upgrade?

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 admit the tonal difference for different brand to my front could be a drawback, but I have no idea how much it is. I guess I will never know unless I experiment with same brand, but do you have experience how that would improve?

You didn't seem to oppose using in-ceiling, which I was thinking to get rid of. It is just a matter of whether the in-ceiling speaker can have angled tweeter that can be point at the main listening position, does the rear speakers also do the same? I also heard that the surround and rear speakers shall not be too directional to the listening position in order not to give the listener sense the speakers ARE THERE kind of feel, thats why a bipole speakers are being developed, isn't that contrary to what you just said?

For OFF AXIS, my perception to this term is all diagonal speakers (except center) will cross at one point which shall be the MAIN listening position, (e.g.F/R TO R/L, S/R to S/L)am I correct? Well, I never thought of that when I built them. Is this crucial?

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.

With that level of front end, I think you should get some nicer surround speakers.

I think this general question is related to this thread but feel free to move it not. I ask as general rule, what does one do the brand of front channel speakers you are using does not offer surrounds -or say you already have holes in the ceiling where prior owner used in ceilings -or where WAF will not allow for installation of onwalls. Is there any way to try and match timbre?