For surround sound: better to mount speakers to ceiling, or place on floor stands?

Question

I'm asking about acoustic quality, not about aesthetics... which will give the best sound, speakers up high, or speakers at couch level?

Answer 1

The rule of thumb is at ear level in which optimum surround sound can be optimized engulfing the listener.

However, many THX approved and certified public movie theaters have speakers way above the listener's ear level. If you have ever walked into one of the THX approved/certified public movie theaters and observed the placement of their speakers, you'll notice the speakers placement will be well out of range of the industry's standard for home theater speaker surround placement installation. Many times you may wonder why the sounds sounded so good at the movies while the speakers are placed high above the listener's audience. The answer has to deal with room acoustics, sound damping materials, reflective materials, and sound calibration.

I have three surround sounds speakers mounted inside the roof (Rear-Left, Rear-Center, and Rear-Right). The name brand is Speaker Craft 6" CRS. I auditioned several speakers and they for one sounded the best. I paid about $750.00 dollars for them --within budget.

Hence, it really boils down to your particular room acoustics and your hearing preference: no two people hear the same thing -- it's all personal preference, your hearing range, etc.

In my opinion, I would not have gotten the spatially-engulfing experience had I not installed my surround speakers in the ceiling. Whether I'm in the kitchen, all the sounds seems to be emanating throughout the house giving me that encapsulating experience filling the living room, kitchen, and other places in my house.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

The reason speakers in a theater are mounted so high on the wall is because there is no place else to put them. Do you want a 500Watt speaker next to your ear? Or next to a child's ear?

Now, THX states to do the same in a home, but if the reason the theater places speakers so high is to get them out of the way, why would you want them like that in your home?

Next, THX also states to use dipoles or bipoles to diffuse the sound, which recreates having multiple speakers in a theater. The only reason there are so many speakers in a theater is because there are so many seats. Why would you then need to create a large seating arrangement in your living room?

Most if not ALL movies are mixed with speakers at ear height and in a circle. SO the best place is to place the speakers at ear height in the same configuration.

Of course this is not always possible, so adjustments have to be made. Do what sounds best and works best in your home.

Answer 3

For more than two decades, the National Research Council (NRC) in Ottawa, Canada, researched the nature of the relationship between how speakers sound and their measurable characteristics. They used both experienced and non-experienced listeners to determine what sounds good to people.
For convincing surround sound studies show that you should either have 3 rears(LSrnd,RSrnd, RearC) or 2 Dipolar speakers( LS and RS). If this is what you have it should sound good either way. If not it kind of depends on the speakers and the room. If you don't have very difuse speakers then you can place them on stands which will probably place them closer but try bouncing the sound off the walls if the room is such that it is possible. This not a sure thing but worth trying out. Good Luck

Answer 4

Floor stands and placement at ear level are a bad idea unless you and only you listen. And here is why...

Surround speaker placement depends on two primary factors...
Coverage and Seat Placement.

Coverage means that the speakers need to be able to put sound equally into each of the seats. The polar dispersion pattern of most speakers (before fall off) is a cone. This means that in order for you to have the speakers cover a seating area that is several people wide, you need to have those seats within the coverage cone. The closer the speakers are to you, the smaller the coverage. To increase the size of the cone, you need distance. Since most folks have their seats fairly close to the rear wall, the only practical way to increase the distance is by moving the speakers up. This is why commercial theaters have the speakers placed up high and why the THX HOME specification calls for speakers up higher...it is all about coverage. Also, the THX spec defines the speaker coverage pattern, with the Ultra 2 spec being the tighest spec. Coverage is one primary reason why all commercial cinema speakers use horn based speakers...they allow you to control the coverage by definining the dispersion, plus they put more energy into the seating area.

In addition, seat design has an effect. The tendency is to have the seat back near the middle of your head for comfort. A set of speakers mounted at ear level will put them *below* ear level for smaller people and people tend to sit lower once settled in. Again, moving the speakers up higher helps alleviate this issue.

Seating placement also has an effect on placement. If the seats are against the back wall, the only practical way to get coverage of all the seats is to mount the speakers as high as possible...this means the ceiling. If you run coverage traces on a set of rear surround with seats against the rear wall, you will see that the seats are outside most speaker coverage areas. Even then, I will often spec in a rear center mounted at the ceiling to avoid a coverage hole in theater with more than 4 seats and ceilings lower than 9'. Note that no good home theater designer will ever have the rear most seats against the back wall unless he absolutely has to.

Answer 5

I would vote for stand or wall mounted. I've heard surround speakers in the ceiling and they just didn't do the trick (at least to my ears). I have mine mounted on the wall a little higher than ear level. In my room, that seems to work beautifully. Just the same, feel free to experiment.

Answer 6

Speakers in the ceiling would never let you hear a true surround sound, you need to place them on floor stands and arrange them the way your speaker plans describe..☺

Answer 7

in my opinion its best sound to have the front speakers on stands the rear channel is all about what you like i have also seen all front speakers in a ceiling that had adjustabable twwets in the speaker so you could point them at the veiwing area but all that said i still think being able to adjust the speakers to the sweet spot is still worth more than anything

Answer 8

unless you customize your ceiling to match the small thiel parameter of the speakers the sound will not compare to a nice pair of bi-pole or dipole surrounds....keep it simple. use the old fashion enclosed speakers they sound better.

Answer 9

Always had seated head hight stands, they project sound above and below more evenly, ie a plane going overhead cant sound above you if thats were all you sound is comming from, ie wall speakers.

Answer 10

ear level