# Adding old surrounds to get to 9.2



## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Thinking about using some old Mirage Omni -polar in ceiling speakers as height channels. The Mirages still sit on the ceiling and wired just not connected since I upgraded to SVS MTS-01/MCS-01's/MBS-01's. The Mirages L&R are 4 feet directly above the L & R mains. The SVS speakers are a matched set and I am concerned about mixing both types of speakers regarding timber and other speakers characteristics and I understand that Aydyssey DSX /XT will manipulate the timber/tone so the in ceiling speakers will sound similar to the SVS speakers but am I any further ahead in going through this process or am I creating audible issues between both speakers types? 

If the above is a really bad idea I will upgrade to a 7.2 Onkyo avr. If however this is a benefit then I will upgrade to a 9.2 .


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## drdoan (Aug 30, 2006)

The height speakers are to help with the surround effects, so I don't think it would be bad an idea. Have fun. Dennis


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## Jungle Jack (Jul 28, 2009)

Hello,
I am in full agreement with Dennis and believe they will do just fine.
Cheers,
JJ


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

I contacted Chris at Audyssey and this is his response "Yes, absolutely. That will be a great use of the in-ceiling speakers. We typically recommend that the speakers are from the same family so that you get better timbre matching. But, if they are not it's not the end of the world. MultEQ will calibrate them to the same target curve and so they will sound closer to the other speakers."

Perhaps this is worth pursuing


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Based on your feedback and Audyssey's looks like there is some benefit using the Mirages so I will look ifor a 9.2 avr plus there are more features with 9.2 avrs vs 7.2 avrs


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## Z71SierraSLT (Nov 9, 2010)

My Mirage MX speakers arrived today. I'll be adding these 4 speakers for my front height and back surrounds.
My main system comprise of Klipsch speakers.


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Z71SierraSLT said:


> My Mirage MX speakers arrived today. I'll be adding these 4 speakers for my front height and back surrounds.
> My main system comprise of Klipsch speakers.


Hello
I would be very interested to find out how you like your Mirage MX speakers and if they integrate well with your main system. Also are you using Audyssey to manage the two speaker types?


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## Z71SierraSLT (Nov 9, 2010)

Dwight,
I got a chance to do an initial setup last night. I didn't run the Audyessy set up but did it manually.
The DVD I used was The Sum of All Fears...Tom Clancy movie with Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman.
This movie had everything I needed to test out the height speakers. Rain, Helicopters, Crowd noise, Explosions and Jets flying around.

At first the sound was really weak, then I tweaked the sound level coming from the height speakers.
I set it to the max on my receiver to +12db for the heights and set the height level to high on my Onkyo 1008.
If you are running extra amps to the speakers, I bet it will sound better. I am only using the receiver's power.

After I did that, the sound really came through. The rain scene with Clark and Cabot was really engulfing. I played it several times with it on and off...Dolby Heights and Audyessy Heights both sounded great. The helicopters above really came across in the height speakers. There are a few scenes where they were in the helo and the blade sounds above you were amazing as they got out. The scene where the president was at the football game really showed off the heights with the crowd noise. While testing I did get up to see if the sound was coming from the ,main fronts or the heights. The heights were definiely working and sounded great.

I will try and run the Audyessy program to see if it does a better job, but I will probably manually set some of the settings. 

I bought the Mirage MX speakers on purpose because of the output of the speakers (360 Omniguide). I have a small room (11'x18'/ 9' high) and the front area isn't huge, but these speakers did fill out the sound. The back surrounds did what I expected. When mounting these speakers above 6' you are supposed to mount them upside down. I may change that and mount it pointing up to bounce the sound off of the ceiling. If I had a larger room, I would definitely use direct firing speakers.
I didn't use the wide speakers because I have a small room and the fronts are wide enough to fill out the sound. I may experiment and move the back surrounds up to use as wides and check it out. I also thought it integrated well with my Klipsch speakers. My 5.1 are all matched. The surrounds in my opinion don't have to be the same as long as they are decent speakers.

All in all the heights do add to the sound field. It was very cool. I didn't think I had to make the adjustments I did on my receiver, but it sounded great. As this format evolves, I hope they do something to boost the sound. The technology is picking up the correct sounds to move up high.

Let me know what you think. I think its a keeper. I need to hook up the HD box to watch football games in there. I read at another forum that when using height speakers the crowd noise and stadium sounds really come through.

I'll also let you know about the Audyessy setup to see if it makes it better or worse.

Thomas


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Hi Thomas
I am very familiar with "Sum of all Fears" and it a great movie to test out the height speakers. Glad to see the height speakers are working well for you and whats really interesting is they are performing well without Audyssey. Chris told me Audyssey will narrow the gap between to two different speakers types so you may see more improvement once you get Audyssey dialed in. Exciting stuff.

When I first built the HT I installed the Mirage Onmican in ceiling speakers but later replaced them with SVS MTS-01/MCS-01/MBS-01 but left the Mirage in the ceiling so it was a natural fit to reuse the L/R for height channels.

Yes I will be using external amps on all channels so volume on the height speakers should not be an issue . I need to add 2 more amps and new avr in the near future before this becomes a reality but based on your input it sounds very encouraging.

Its definitely a keeper. Congrats and let me know what you think of Audyssey MultiEQ and if it helps with the speaker integration.

Thanks for you feedback

Cheers
Dwight





Chris at


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## Z71SierraSLT (Nov 9, 2010)

I still haven't had time to run the Audyssey yet. I did get my wife to listen to the different scenes from the Sum of All Fears. All she could say was, "that is so cool" From another untrained ear, she didn't think the different brand of speakers sounded that different at all. She did notice all of the height sounds that the speakers were outputing. She mentioned how the speakers worked with the movie on everything. Helo blade noises, crowd noises, Jets flying from left to right and wind noises. I told her about Audyssey and what you said about improvements. She thought it sounded great already. So like you said, running the Audyessy setup will probably only make it better.


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Hi Thomas
Yes everything sounds very positive and confirms there is a real benefit to the height channels. Let me know your thoughts once you get Audyssey dialed in.


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## Z71SierraSLT (Nov 9, 2010)

I tried running Audyssey several times last night and it would not recognize my Sub. I tried what the Onkyo manual said to do but no luck. I'll try some other suggestions this weekend.
I found this info out online, thought I would share it with you.

http://forum.blu-ray.com/audio-theo...ssey-auto-calibration-other-technologies.html


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## Dwight Angus (Dec 17, 2007)

Make sure you have set your speakers to small in the avr


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## Z71SierraSLT (Nov 9, 2010)

All were set to small when I ran the program. I found some other things I can try from other forums.


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