# Speaker Deflection angle



## Maverick59 (Jun 17, 2019)

Hi Guys 
Unfortunately for me I am not able to fit ceiling speakers for the Atmos effect .
So l will be making tower surround speakers wit Atmos up firing speakers built into the top of them. 
My question is , just for argument sake if my Atmos up firing speakers are point to the ceiling at a 45 degree will the sound wave bounce from the point were it hits the ceiling at 90 degrees. 
l am just trying to figure out the angle of the up firing speaker so the sound wave reflects to the listening position.
Cheers 
Adrian


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## willis7469 (Jan 31, 2014)

That’s a fairly accurate guess. What are the hurdles from ceiling mount? Maybe someone can come up with a solution. If your building speakers, what are your plans for up firing Dolby Atmos enabled(AE) speakers? I do know that real ones have a notch in the FR to help trick the brain into hearing sounds above. Without properly implementing that, you might have problems. Also, the better ones seem to have acoustic “camouflage” in the way of some kind of foam to help block sounds coming from directly to you ears from the top of the tower. Also, I wouldn’t use a fixed angle in case you do need to adjust the angle. Simply tilting an AE module can land the sound where it needs to go, and if you have a tower with a solid mount speaker on top well...


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## Maverick59 (Jun 17, 2019)

Hi Willis
We have a concrete ceiling and there is only 40mm front the concrete to the outside of the plasterboard roof sheeting . Was looking around and can’t get anything in shallow mount worth fitting. Contemplated making some spacer mounts but the minister of no fun was definitely not happy with that idea. My whole systemised made up of Morel drivers and Fountek ribbons.
l am also going to use this combo for the tower speakers .
l will use a Morel CAW 538 and Fountek Neo CD3.0 combo for the surround speakers and another couple of the same for the upfiring Atmos.
Thanks for your tip on shielding the Atmos speakers l could do that with Dynamat but will need to find out more about the built in RF spike before making sawdust. I done some basic measurements yesterday and a basic sketch that l have attached of how l might work out, This sketch was only freehand and not to any kind of scale it’s only a quick and easy way for me to keep notes .
Thanks again for your input it’s definitely aappreciated weather be






good or bad .


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## Maverick59 (Jun 17, 2019)

Forgot to say the marker @ 980mm this is the hight of surround speaker in relation to my ear when in the seating position 
Cheers 
Adrian


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## Da Wiz (May 8, 2019)

I would suggest not bothering with Atmos speakers if you can't put them up high. There are, I think, some lightweight "tall" speaker stands for those who can't or won't put mounting holes in walls. The other issue is that most Atmos and DTS:X soundtracks are WORTHLESSLY terrible. Studios won't PAY for a Atmos or DTS:X movie (very often) so they use Dolby Surround to create a 7.1.4 soundtrack, then encode it as TrueHD with Atmos encoding. You get **** that way. Dolby Surround is HORRIBLE HORRIBLE at creating ambience from 5.1 or 7.1 (or stereo music). So the resulting movie sounds NO BETTER. In the Star Trek movie where 100s or 1000s of attacking small ships breach the hull and are fighting inside the ship... the ONLY thing in the height channels is "Red Alert" --- none of the noise, mayhem, weapon sounds... NOTHING else in the height channels... it is PATHETIC. AuroMatic processing of 5.1 or 7.1 Dolby soundtracks sounds MUCH better than decoding Atmos (there may be a FEW small exeptions, but ONLY when a studio pays to have sound engineers create the Atmos track PROPERLY, by putting ambience AND overhead sounds into the height channels. If you are going to go ahead anyway, you can't just pick 45 degrees and assume that is correct. Every room is different. The only way to know what the proper angle for up-firing speakers in YOUR room is to put a mirror flat on the ceiling, sit in your main listening seat, and while someone else moves the mirror around, you are looking into the mirror from the best seat. When you SEE THE SPEAKER in the mirror, THAT is the point on the ceiling that the up-firing speakers should be aimed at to maximize the "bounce effect". But having used 5 different sets of bounce speakers, not a single one of them was worth having. The bounce effect is very very weak at producing any sort of sense of height. NONE of the bounce speakers I used had ANY option to adjust the tilt of the speakers, a dumb oversight. There should be 3 independently adjusted for length to allow the bounce speakers to be tilted to the right direction to maximize the height effect. In my room with a 9-foot ceiling, none of the sets of bounce speakers I have used here had the right aiming when they sat level on top of the main speakers. Also, if you MUST use bounce, a coaxial driver is the best option... as long as it is well-designed, not some $50 WalMart special or anything with a whizzer cone (a second tiny cone attached to the main cone).


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## RLouis (Jan 20, 2010)

I actually use some decent indoor/outdoor speakers for my front height speakers. They come with U brackets that can easily attach/hang from the ceiling with common toggle bolts. Then I have some plastic stick-on cable conduit to run the wires up one corner of the room and across the top corner of the ceiling so no wires showing at all. Works great! Looks really clean and they actually sound **** good and make plenty of bass for surround effects. If set up properly front height speakers make a BIG difference in the front soundstage of movies. Also never use Audyssey. Figure out how to do your own distance and level setup and kick the surrounds up 3-4dB. Everything sounds better when setup properly.


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