Height speakers are they worth it and what do I need

[merkin]

Hi haven't posted here for years. I just move to a different house with a different layout in the room where I have my theater set up.  Here is my situation, I have 3 Belles with Volti upgrades across the front, two Forte II's for surrounds.  I use to have 2 quartets for center backs but my new mancave won't allow it.  They are driven by a Marantz pre amp with 11 channel with height or atmos.  The amp is a sunfire TGA 400x7.   I put up 2 KG 1's for height speakers up front to use the extra two channels in the amp.  I have a couple of RS3II's laying around that I could hang up for rear heights if I picked up a 2 channel amp to drive them.  I was wondering would it be worth it, will I notice, it is kind of a pain running speaker wire to them.   I also don't know if the speakers I'm using for heights are enough (I do know that they do not timbre match.   I also have a set of RB 81 II's gathering dust that I could use.  I don't know much about height speakers and how much speaker you need.  Thanks for any help provided.

Merkin

[billybob]

Well welcome back! As soon as soon, member will say. Nice amps... thanks @merkin

 

[billybob]

The kg-1 is certainly a lighter weight/size compared to your 81s.

Since you seem to be happy using all the speakers, and since you can hear the timbre difference, you may have to decide if it is worth the doing.

Sounds like a busy cave, sound wise.

[billybob]

Of course you could also use those surrounds for rears, as it is your man cave. Enjoy...

[Coytee]

Decades ago, I had my two LaScalas up front.  Called my favorite store in my hometown (that I was no longer living in) and asked them for their thoughts......he said Academy's all the way!

 

So I said, here's my Card number, send me three of them.

 

I built a 2x3 base that went UNDER my LaScalas, had a water pipe go up say, six feet and attached a platform to the pipe.  This allowed me to put the speakers ON the platform to hold it firmly, the Academy's would be in the air above each speaker and the third Academy would be in the cabinet as my center channel.....  I was stoked....

 

Pretty much an epic fail.

 

I just blindly went with his recommendation without knowing what the (center channel) Academy was....  but what really bit me in the hiney was the big difference in sensitivity.  The LaScalas essentially drowned out the Academy's, both the center channel and the front effects.

 

To be fair, they probably added some ambiance to the sound but I ended up never really using them and then several years later, sold them to someone on this forum, all three of them.

 

Point being, if you do something like this, make sure your height speakers match your mains verses the stark mismatch I had.

 

 

[MMurg]

I'd say that whether it's worth to you to put up rear Atmos speakers depends on if you've been satisfied with the experience you've had with your from Atmos speakers.  If you have, then it's likely worth it as you will get more precise overhead effects localization and more fully immersive ambience sound from Atmos/DTS:X content.

 

As to whether kg1 and RS-3 II are appropriate speakers to use with a Belle/Forte ground layer, this will depend on several things.  Firstly, wide dispersion surround speakers are not recommended for Atmos/DTS:X.  All the major immersive surround formats (Atmos, DTS:X, Auro 3D) specify monopole (i.e., direct firing) speakers for all channels.  Secondly, whether small speakers like kg1 (which are almost about as far away in capability from Belle speakers as you can get in vintage Klipsch) will work for you is going to depend on whether your receiver/processor has enough usable gain to overcome the sensitivity mismatch and whether you are sensitive to sonic mismatches between the ground layer and the height layer.  Most people think that sonic (timbe) mismatches are just related to frequency response.  While that's true, what's even more important is distortion mismatches, both in quantity and quality (types and profile over the frequency range) of the distortion.  While frequency response mismatches can be somewhat mitigated by room correction systems like Audyssey, distortion mismatches cannot be fixed.  I'll explain what I mean by this.

 

My experience with this is very much like what @Coytee described.  My main theater system in my basement consists of seven Palladium speakers in the ground layer (P-39F mains, P-27C center, P-27S side surrounds and P-37F rear surrounds).  When I first decided to upgrade the theater to Atmos, I hung four Klipsch AW-650 outdoor speakers from the ceiling.  I figured that these would be superior to most in-ceiling speakers for Atmos.  They do work quite well as Atmos speakers.  However, over time the mismatch in sound character between the ground layer and the height layer started really bothering me.  I realized what was bothering me was the lack of midrange clarity from the AW-650.  The AW-650 crossover from the horn to the direct radiator woof at 3400 Hz.  The 3-way Palladium speakers do this in the 500 - 600 Hz range.  That means way more of the midrange is reproduced by much lower distortion horns on the Palladium speakers and therefore have a much cleaner midrange.  (I suspect this is something of what @Coytee experienced with the Academy (crossover at 2200 Hz).  I owned an Academy for a short time as a center for original Forte.  I wasn't satisfied with it for the same reason I mentioned with the AW-650.  I ended up replacing it with a single Heresy II (crossover at 850 Hz).)  So, I switched to front and rear heights using Palladium P-17B bookshelf speakers on high shelf units.  Yes, overhead localization of effects was slightly less precise, but the coherence of the entire immersive sound field was much better due to timbre matching of all channels.  Also, overhead effects occur much less often than other immersive sound in most movie soundtracks.  So, I prefer the timbre matched heights much more than having precise overhead effects.  If I ever add Atmos to my living room Jubilee mains/ Belle center/La Scala surrounds 5.0 system, I will likely purchase Klipsch cinema surround speakers like the KPT-1260H or the KPT-250.  These hopefully should be able to reasonably "keep up" with the ground layer.  Using these would be much easier than attempting to hang Heresy speakers from the walls or ceiling.

 

Here's a picture from when I was first testing the Palladium height speakers but hadn't yet taken down the AW-650.