Atmos Modules - Test Tones

stevos

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Hi,

I have generally been disappointment with my atmos modul speakers, i just am not getting overhead sound.

I notice that if i run the test tone, the sound is very clearly coming from the speaker itself and not from the ceiling. Is this normal?

Do you guys do any form of toe-in of the speakers?
 
Not updated my sig it seems, i have Marantz 7010 with the rather cheap onkyo atmos modules.
 
Not updated my sig it seems, i have Marantz 7010 with the rather cheap onkyo atmos modules.

I think that's where the problem is. Not meaning any disrespect or anything, but maybe look at the kef upfiring modules, or possibly put in ceiling speakers in.. That's if at all possible, which can be dictated by many forms.

I find a new pair of shoes for the ball and chain/other half works well,,,,,,,,,,for my av habits:)
 
Have they always sounded like that ?

Apparently the ceiling needs to be totally flat for them to perform, is yours flat ?
 
Have they always sounded like that ?

Apparently the ceiling needs to be totally flat for them to perform, is yours flat ?

Yeah flat and a normal height for a UK ceiling.

I made an assumption that it could be the speakers, but replacing them is an expensive path without knowing if it really is them.
 
Yeah flat and a normal height for a UK ceiling.

I made an assumption that it could be the speakers, but replacing them is an expensive path without knowing if it really is them.

I don't have any experience with Atmos up-firing speakers. But one thing that always put me off them is the fact that you would be able to hear the sound from the speaker. I don't understand how one wouldn't notice it.
 
Yeah, but equally i didn't want to go down the route of atmos and putting holes in the ceiling without first experiencing it at home, hence the cheap speakers.

An option i was thinking about was the SVS elevation speakers.
 
Yeah I can totally understand.

Is the config in the 7010 all set up correctly etc etc etc ?
 
Yeah pretty sure its all setup properly.

It is possible that the rather small Onkyo speakers are getting drowned out by the much bigger MA ones, but hard to tell.
 
Steve1210 has mentioned the KEF R50's which are supposed to be good for what they are. Are you able to demo those anywhere ?
 
Hi , I've been lurking around this forum for some time already, love you guys!

So, I have experience with the Onkyo Atmos speakers on a Denon X4300H (which I returned, but that was because of the Spotify mess, in all other respects it was good) with a 7.1.4 setup.

The key to hearing the sound from "above" was angling the speakers correctly.

Back ones worked out of the box... to my surprise, actually, given they were high above the top of the bookshelf behind my main listening position (fancy way to call a couch!), let's say 1 meter from the ceiling and 1.50 meters from my position, roughly.

The front ones were trickier. I have like 4.50 meters between the front speakers (SVS SCS-01) and the main listening position, so it wasn't enough to just place the Atmos speakers on top of them.
I needed to angle them much more before I reached the sweet spot and could clearly hear the sound from above.
In theory there's a fairly decent tolerance for the reflection angle, in practice I needed to fiddle a bit to find the right one, but didn't take more than an hour or so (tested it with eyes closed and focusing on the perceived direction).

Even so I felt the rear ones were more "up and above" then the front one, but that might have been due to the geometry of the room and higher dispersion given the longer distance.

So my recommendation is to try different angles, focus on a couple (front or rear) until you hear the sound distinctly from above, it's possible!

Given my experience I think buying speakers with integrated Atmos speakers is going to be very problematic, one thing is to angle the small add-on, another one would be a full tower speaker.
I was considering them at first (Klipsch ones) but good I went the cheap way first!

PS I should have a picture of the "technology" behind the angle just to give an idea.. I'll try to dig it out
 
How did you test the sound, did you use some atmos material or did you use the test tones?
 
At the time I couldn't find any free Atmos single channel test material and I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for the Atmos blu-ray or download anything illegally.

I tested the speakers using the freely available DTS:X 7.1.4 channel test (I should still have it at home, I can give the exact name of the file later, but it's a very common one).

After that for proper Atmos testing I used all free Atmos demos using different settings (and also directly turning on/off the Atmos speakers).
On the Audiosphere demo the soundstage difference between 7.1 and 7.1.4 Atmos was like night and day!

In movies I was less impressed, the effect is there but the difference with 7.1 is not that big (very noticeable differences are overhead passes of planes and such), so seems that Atmos mastering can really make a difference, hope is that it can only get better in the future.

I didn't have the receiver for long so the number of real movies I watched wasn't that big.
 
On my KEF R50s the test tones doesn't seem to bounce of the ceiling. The Audyssey pink noise certainly does because of the distance that is registered. Hopefully the R50s are a lot better than the Onkyos otherwise I wasted a lot of money.

I find the sound from the R50s, even just in my 5.1.2 setup, is very good. They give height, you get the overheads sounds when the sound mix has it and in a lot of films that can be few and far between. What the R50s give is a really good transition of sound between the front and the rear speakers. It seems to lift it and then pass it seemlessly behind you giving you a bubble of sound that simply was not there in a 5.1 setup. If I had the room I would certainly invest in a second pair of 50s.

DTS X Neural and Dolby Surround work very well with upfirers and the correct placement of object based sounds is brilliant. I think, even with in ceiling, that people expect too much from Atmos with sounds bouncing off the ceiling every other second and find the experience a big disappointment.
 
At the time I couldn't find any free Atmos single channel test material and I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for the Atmos blu-ray or download anything illegally.

I tested the speakers using the freely available DTS:X 7.1.4 channel test (I should still have it at home, I can give the exact name of the file later, but it's a very common one).

After that for proper Atmos testing I used all free Atmos demos using different settings (and also directly turning on/off the Atmos speakers).
On the Audiosphere demo the soundstage difference between 7.1 and 7.1.4 Atmos was like night and day!

In movies I was less impressed, the effect is there but the difference with 7.1 is not that big (very noticeable differences are overhead passes of planes and such), so seems that Atmos mastering can really make a difference, hope is that it can only get better in the future.

I didn't have the receiver for long so the number of real movies I watched wasn't that big.

If you find that file name, it would be great.
 
Should be "DTS Sound Unbound 11.1 lossless", I can't find any other DTS X channel check videos in my demo folder.
As I wrote above I don't have the Atmos receiver anymore so I can't test it myself now, sorry.
 
And this is the picture of the Onkyo Atmos speakers at the proper angle to reach the sweet spot at the main listening position:

onkyo_atmos_speaker_test.jpg
 
Cheers, i have downloaded the files.

I don't really want to end up with something similar, as it would look a bit off in my living room, but if tilting the speakers works then i will definitely invest in some SVS elevation speakers.
 

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