Ceiling mount or speaker stands?

[rplace]

I need some input from the rest of you. I have two goals here and think there is a good chance they conflict.

1 Great sound wanted

2 Nice looking or wow factor

My HT has a 6 foot wide double door located directly below a steel beam. Just after the end of the door is a closet that hides the basements steps. Moving the double doors, steel beam or closet is not an option. I have already ripped out the finished closet/door that was there in favor of a lower door with a shelf to make room for rear speakers. Please see the pictures below with explanations. The entire wall is pretty much door or wall space that the doors open back onto.

I am considering putting a set of Heresys in the ceiling for my surrounds. Pros in my mind are: Looks cool, does not interfere with door operation, looks cool, and oh yea, I think it would look cool. Cons are: have to figure out how to pull it off, might not be optimal sound, no future movement of the speaker once finished. My other option would be to get some sort of speaker stand and put them in front of the one door at ear level. You can always open just one door and if need be when not in use I could move the speaker/stand to open the doors.

This is pretty much the entire wallon far right you can see a piece of front wall on far left you can see the start of the closet. That black vertical line is where the door edge is when fully open. Check out the Greyhound on the couch outside the room. He does not use the surfboard in the corner much since he retired from the track.

This is the corner of wall in question and back wall. The shelf built from reducing closet height will hold on of the rear speakers. NOTE upper right corner of picture. I have constructed a cardboard heresy to test fit my option of ceiling mounting. More on that below.

Here you can see cardboard Heresy in the ceiling just clearing the operation of the door and relation to back speaker on shelf.

Opposite wall from the one with the double doors. My second option would be to place the Heresy surrounds on stands at ear level when seated. Does not have the wow factor as ceiling mounts, but surely easier and would provide for movement of speakers as needed.

I see a lot of talk about custom speaker cabinets on the forum here. Ill start taking order for these as soon as I finish the room. Excellent attention to detail as well as craftsmanship.

Better shot of ceiling mount and rear. Speaker has to be fairly flat and that tell me it points down a bit too much. Would I be sacrificing sound quality for speakers up and out of the way?

Any other thoughts on my options? Any advice as to which is better? Thoughts on how to actually do the mounting if I move forward with ceiling mount?

[DrWho]

Could we see a floorplan of your HT as well? Nothing too extravegant...just a few rectangles in MS Paint to show the location of the mains and the listening positions and all that. The steep angle of your cieling mounted surrounds poses to be a real sound quality problem. What material is the floor going to be and is the cieling going to be finished or left open?

[dougdrake]

Hey, I think I saw that Heresy for sale on Ebay from a guy in Romania? Did you get yours from him? LOL!

[rplace]

Here is my lame attempt at dimensions of the room. Let me know if you need more. Not quite to scale. The wall with the screen is 13 feet wide the room is 16 feet deep. Closet around stairs is about 2X3. Other then the small area by the pocket door the room is basically 13X16.

Thanks for any and all help, Rich

[rplace]

Oops, forgot to mention that seating will probably be two rows of 3 seats just about where the text "Heresy's in question..." are. I plan on finishing the ceiling in drywall with a large PVC pipe and access door to area where the projector will be mounted.

[Tom Adams]

Personally, I would not ceiling mount the Heresys. I would either use stands or mount them on the walls. In my HT room I used stands for both my side and my rear surround Heresys as you can see here

However, I'm re-thinking using the stands for the sides and will probably mount them to the wall. If you go the stand route and would like to talk to me about these stands, I can make you a pretty good deal.

Tom

[DrWho]

What do you think about just 5.1 instead of 7.1?

I've never heard a well setup 7.1 system, but even ignoring the specific challenges of your room, I don't think adding the 2 side surrounds will be of much acoustic benefit. The rear channels in a 7.1 setup are both just a mono sum of the left and right surround information. Your rear surrounds in your current setup propositions seem like entirely perfect positions for the left and right surrounds in a 5.1 setup. It sounds like you're trading those perfect positions for side surrounds that won't provide the needed coverage throughout the listening area. What about going with 5.1 and moving the rear surrounds forward a bit and cieling mounting those? You could probably extend this idea and do a 6.1 setup with a rear center cieling mounted speaker as well.

I know this idea probably doesn't jive well with you considering that you already changed the height of a closet to accomodate one of your surrounds. I also understand the desire to have a 7.1 setup as that sounds cooler than 5.1

If you absolutely must go with this 7.1 thing, then I think speaker stands will be your best bet.

For a cooler approach, what would you say to constructing a speaker that can move up and down? So instead of moving your speaker on the speaker stand, you would pull a cable that'd lift the speaker out of the way. It wouldn't be hard to mount your heresy with chain or some sort of cable and make it so that the cable holding the back of the cabinet can be pulled so that it moves the cabinet up out of the way of the door. When you get into serious HT mode, you just lower the cabinet back down for optimum positioning of the speaker. An overboard approach to this would use a pully system connected to the door so that the speaker moves out of the way as the door is opened, and then back down when the door is closed. If you'd like, I could sketch up some simple drawings for you. I love designing stuff like this, but if you enjoy it too then I'll leave the work/fun to you. I picture something like this costing under $50...maybe a bit more depending on how ugly the door is allowed to look.

[rplace]

Hmmm, I must be missing something here. In my past two homes I have had 5.1 and due to the room being used for a lot more then just a theater I had my surrounds mounted on the rear wall (mostly because I was missing all or part of a side wall). But it was my understanding in a perfect world you would want the surrounds mounted on either side or to the side and slightly back of the listening area. Even though most setup you see have the surrounds in or on the back wall I thought ideally they should be on the side walls. Is this not necessarily true?

More or less as I am construction a HT from the ground up, yes I am stuck with the double doors and the space allotted but I dont have to worry about additional use. So my thinking was that even if I went the 5.1 route the first choice would be to have the two surround speakers on the side of the listening area at ear height. Next I thought if I went the 6.1 route I would just take the 5.1 optimal in my mind setup and add a rear center. If I went the 7.1 route I would just add two speakers in the rear instead of the one rear center.

While it might be fun to say I have a 7.1 setup what I am really looking for is the right sound. I am totally fine with 5.1 or 6.1 if that is in my best interest. Currently I have 8 speakers to work with - more if I pirate some from my current upstairs system. In the heritage line I have Chorus, Forte II, two set of Heresy and an Academy.

Again my thinking (flawed as it may be) was that if I went the rear wall method (read no side speakers) I would be losing a few feet of separation do to the closet/stairs in the back. That is why I reduced the height and made a shelf to widen the area in the back. How about one speaker on the closet shelf and another in roughly the same area on the other side suspended from the ceiling?

For the sake of argument lets take the sides at ear level out of the equation and stick with 6.1. Do I want the three rears (LS, Rear Center, RS) to be on the same plane? Do I need them to be the same height? Do I need them to be the same speaker? To that final question consider that when I was thinking 7.1 I had 4 Heresys and 2 Forte IIs. My use of one Forte (center) would leave me with and extra Forte. If I put 3 Heresys across the back then I will still have the extra Forte, but will also have an extra Heresy. Might a better choice be to go with Heresy/Forte II/Heresy across the back? That leaves me a full set of Heresy to play with elsewhere in the house. For the time being I dont think I want to use the Fortes as surrounds a put a Heresy in the Center. I believe Chorus/Forte/Chorus up front will work nicer together then Chorus/Heresy/Chorus, but will probably experiment once the room is done.

BTW, I totally like the idea of the some pulley system that raises and lowers the side speaker excellent wow factor! However, this morning I stood and looked at the room for a long time with my current heresy on the shelf and the fake in the ceiling. That puts two powerful speakers within a few feet of each other (overkill perhaps?). So if I dont really NEED the surrounds to be on the sides I think it might be best to use fewer speakers and move them back. Question now is completely on the back wall (cant with the one on the closet unless it is in front of the other two or I forgo the closet and put it next to wall created by closet) or put one on the closet/shelf and put the other two inline with the closet. This would mandate some way of ceiling mounting or suspending from threaded rods or cable.

I am open to any and all ideasso keep em coming

Many thanks for all the ideas and advice, Rich

[DrWho]

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On 12/7/2004 9:16:03 AM rplace wrote:

Hmmm, I must be missing something here. In my past two homes I have had 5.1 and due to the room being used for a lot more then just a theater I had my surrounds mounted on the rear wall (mostly because I was missing all or part of a side wall). But it was my understanding in a perfect world you would want the surrounds mounted on either side or to the side and slightly back of the listening area. Even though most setup you see have the surrounds in or on the back wall I thought ideally they should be on the side walls. Is this not necessarily true?

BTW, I totally like the idea of the some pulley system that raises and lowers the side speaker – excellent wow factor! However, this morning I stood and looked at the room for a long time with my current heresy on the shelf and the fake in the ceiling. That puts two powerful speakers within a few feet of each other (overkill perhaps?). So if I don’t really “NEED” the surrounds to be on the sides I think it might be best to use fewer speakers and move them back.

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I hope I'm not persuading you against going with 7.1. Having two speakers close together like you've noticed is a bad thing if they're playing the same source material. In A 7.1 setup, the rear and side surrounds are indeed playing different material, but the material is derived from the side surround information. That said, I don't know if there is any benefit in providing two slightly different dispersion patters from slightly different source materials. I was kinda hoping someone that has heard a lot of 7.1 would chime in and give their opinions on the matter. I've never heard anything similar to your situation so my opinions are simply projected outcomes based on other experiences.

I have read in some textbooks that the ideal location for the surrounds in a 5.1 is 135 degrees off center (so if your center channel is at 0 degrees, rotate 135 degrees and you should be facing your surround). In 7.1, you definetly want your side surrounds at 90 degrees.

More importantly, because your listening position is not a single point but rather two rows of seats, you need to make sure that the dispersion patterns of your speakers cover every seat. Having a heresy directly to the side is going to have trouble reaching every seat unless the speaker is far enough away to allow the sound to spread out.

I think your corner placements for your surrounds and a forte for the rear center would provide the best sound...and like you said, this leaves you with an extra pair of heresies to play with For the sake of symmetry, I would suggest cieling mounting all 3 back speakers (which sadly means you don't have a speaker on that handy shelf you built...perhaps put your equipment rack there?)

I know you're finishing the cieling, but what are your options of conducting some tests with your room? Hearing it for yourself is really the best way to draw your conclusions.

[rplace]

Thanks for all the input, DrWho. I think I am going to explore 6.1 with one Heresy on the closet/shelf and the other Heresy and Forte mounted on the ceiling from a suspended platform of aircraft wire or threaded rod. These platforms will be in the same plane as that of the speaker on the shelf (read same height and distance from back wall). My thinking is that with some sort of platform I am not locked into a fixed location. Yes a fixed distance off the back wall, but I can rotate or change the angle a bit. Sort of a shelf but up from the back wall if you will. Also with this setup I could swap the forte out for my other heresy for checking performance. This will also spread out my two rears more then if I put all 3 on the back wall.

Not to limit myself I think I will still run a set of 7.1 wires in the walls before I drywall. This way when I am looking for a project in the years to come I can give that a go.

I am assuming I should put the heresys and forte upside down so woofer is closer to the ceiling, right? If I go with the heresys on their sides to give me more head room while moving around the room (that one is going to be close to the pocket door entrance) then I will put them with woofers toward the walls. Either way I think I will try and keep the single centered forte upside down and not on one side.