Where the center speaker should be positioned is obvious…duh, in the center. While that 70% value may be overstated, a good center speaker is perhaps the most important speaker in your home theater system (apart from listening to music in 2-channels). That means not just dialogue, but also much of the music and effects as well. According to some experts, as much as 70% of the audio in a multichannel soundtracks comes from the center speaker. It’s a common misconception that the center channel is just for dialogue, so any old center will do. It should also be at least as robust as the left and right front speakers. The dialogue will then no longer appear to come from the screen.Ī discussion of center channel speaker design is beyond the scope of this blog, but a three way (with a vertically arrayed midrange and tweeter) is clearly the best choice if available. And if you move to the side with a phantom center setup, the center channel information will inevitably collapse into whichever front speaker you’re closest to. That saves money, but in my experience doesn’t work as well, or sound as natural, as a competent center speaker offering a reasonable timbre match to the left and right front speakers. It will then be perceived, by a center-seated listener, as coming from the center where the screen is located. In the latter, the center channel information is split evenly in the AVR between the left and right front channels. Some home theater fans choose to omit a center channel speaker, preferring a “phantom” center (as in the image above). But I suspect that 5.1.4 or 5.2.4 (five main channels, one or two subs, and four Atmos speakers) will describe most readers’ setups. There’s a wide range of additional possibilities, including front height speakers, two additional surrounds (7.X.4), more than four Atmos speakers (though we don’t know of any consumer Atmos sources that offer more than four discrete Atmos channels), or only two rather than four Atmos speakers. I’ll limit this discussion to 5.X or 5.X.4 setups, both with and without four Atmos speakers (for newbies, the 0.4 in the 5.2.4 designation describes the number of Atmos speakers, and the X is a stand-in here for the number of subwoofers, most often one or two). The remaining speaker channels we haven’t yet discussed are the center, the surrounds, and possibly Dolby Atmos. It takes time to get the best results (and sometimes money-acoustical panels aren’t cheap).īut I digress. The best approach is first getting the speaker positions right, then add some domestically acceptable room treatment to help with the most persistent offenders (hard, bare floors, large uncovered windows) listen, then rinse and repeat as necessary, perhaps adding in some room EQ as a final sweetener.
#DOLBY ATMOS FRONT HEIGHT PLACEMENT FREE#
Sheetrock gives a bit, absorbing some (but far from all) of the energy produced by these room modes along with some of the desired bass information! I’m not saying that non-rigid walls are necessarily better, but only that there’s no free lunch here. (Published information on calculating room modes, found in many books on room acoustics, invariably assumes perfectly rigid walls). Stiff walls don’t vibrate as easily as sheetrock, therefore they better preserve not only the desired bass response but also these modal deviations as well. All rooms have bass modes, the major culprits producing the uneven bass afflicting virtually all rooms. There’s also a possible concern about outgassing from many stiff, engineered wood materials, such as particle board, that might be chosen as a more economical and stable alternative to solid wood.Įxtremely stiff walls do have one other downside. While I don’t necessarily dispute this, it’s impractical for most people unless they’re building from scratch or have a huge remodeling budget.
#DOLBY ATMOS FRONT HEIGHT PLACEMENT FULL#
There’s a lot more involved with a full surround sound setup.Īn argument was made in a response to my previous blog that rigid wood walls are superior to more flexible sheetrock, the latter the most common material used in U.S. My last blog was limited to placement of the left and right speakers in 2-channel system, or just the left and right speakers in a home theater setup.
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