The system still only has four discrete height channels of audio, but spread among six speakers. Essentially, this forms a small speaker array by cloning one pair of speakers and copying the sound to the other pair as well. Ultimately, I chose to rewire both the Top Middle and Top Rear speakers and connect them in parallel to one set of posts on my amp. Not only does that seem wasteful, but it would potentially leave a gap in the upper hemisphere of the room with no sound at all. Otherwise, I’d have to pull down one pair of the speakers (either Top Middle or Top Rear), or simply leave them disconnected, a purely ornamental feature in the room. That was simply out of the question, but I still wanted to find a way to make use of all my speakers and most effectively distribute sound through my room. Yet I had 13 speakers wired, mounted and installed – enough for 7.1.6.Ĭurrently, only super high-end boutique hardware costing tens of thousands of dollars can decode more than four height channels in Atmos. My A/V receiver, the Denon AVR-X5200W, can only decode four height channels, for a maximum system configuration of 7.1.4. I now had six speakers mounted either on the ceiling or up high on the side walls: two in the front of the room, two in the middle, and two in the rear. However, it also means that I had two speakers mounted to the ceiling in the back of the room that weren’t being used. That sounds simple and logical enough, right? Indeed, it works out much better for me. First, I took those spare MC200 speakers and put them on a shelf behind my seats, just slightly above ear level but close enough to being in the same plane as the other 5.1 channels. What I decided to try was a little unconventional.
While not every movie had problems like this, it was enough of an issue that I wanted to change something. In my system at the time, the car would start at ear level in the front, move to ear level at the sides, and then suddenly shift to up high in the back. Say you’re watching a movie where the sound of a car zooms from the front of the room to the back. Having the other 5.1 speakers at ear level but the Surround Backs up high created an imbalance in the soundstage and a lot of confusion in sound objection directionality. In an ideal Atmos configuration, all 7.1 of the base layer channels should be at or near ear level, whereas I had the Surround Backs on the same plane as the height channels. One thing that left me particularly unsatisfied was that my Surround Back channels were mounted to the ceiling in the back of the room. When I initially installed Atmos, I had to make some compromises in speaker placement due to the way my former 7.1 system had been wired and installed when I built the home theater room. I then had to decide what to do with those MC200s, and that was especially complicated. Because I was left with a spare MC300 speaker that I didn’t want to put to waste, I next hunted down a second MC300 in order to replace my left and right Surround channels (formerly MC200s). Replacing the center channel then triggered a chain reaction. That wasn’t the end of my changes, though. My front soundstage sounds a lot better now, not just for the rare mono movie but for everything I watch. Just look at how much more space it takes up on that stand, for starters. I have now moved up to the MC500, which is significantly larger and more powerful. Previously, I used a model MC300 speaker for my center channel, as you can see in this old photo. The company used to have a big retail presence in my area, so its products (even high-end speakers) turn up pretty regularly on Craigslist and eBay. Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of good luck finding used Soundworks speakers for reasonable prices. The company doesn’t make home theater speakers at all now. If I’d had a better center channel, I shouldn’t have had to do that.Īs I explained in my prior post after I made the Atmos upgrade, upgrading speakers is a little tricky for me, because all of the speakers I have are from a brand (Cambridge Soundworks) that isn’t even in the home theater market anymore. I realized that this was a problem when I played a mono movie and found myself disabling that speaker in order to split the mono signal to my left and right front mains instead.
In my case, wiring my home theater for 7.1.4 channels of surround sound made me question the adequacy of some of my speakers – especially my center channel speaker, which is tasked with reproducing the majority of dialogue and significant portions of any movie soundtrack. Is it ever possible to be happy with what we have? However, as these things usually go, making one big change inevitably prompted even more. When I added Dolby Atmos surround sound to my home theater a few months ago, I expected that to be the last major upgrade that I would tackle for a while.