Ok, give me your thoughts, or if you use front height speakers (or even front wide I guess). How you use them in your setup, what sort of matrix system you use to drive them (as they aren't discrete channels), when you use them (music, movies whatever) etc.

Sort of looking for an idea of how people use front height speakers if they have them. I now have front height speakers and am trying to figure out how to make them sound the best they can. I suddenly have a ton of matrix options etc....

Yup, I remember our little discussion, but now I actually got them because I decided to dump the rear surround speakers. Since our discussion I now have a full set of Orb Audio Mod2's and 2 subwoofers.

You see what I originally did was buy enough Orb's for a 7.1 system Mod2's for front L/R, Centre and Mod1's for Surround L/R and Back L/R. And then I went and bought wall mounts and stuck all my speakers around the room up where the ceiling meets the walls. Except for the back surrounds which stayed on their stands because behind me is where all the control gear sits on a fairly nice piece of furniture. So behind is the gear, then seats and in front is just projector screen and of course all the speakers mounted around the room up high.

Now for vocals and movies, the centre Mod2's are fantastic, makes it sound like they are talking out of the picture, but.. with the rest.. well it doesn't sound that full because of the speakers being so high. It sounded great if you stand up.. but standing up to watch movies isn't all that fun.

Since my receiver will only do 7.2, I decided to basically update the back and side surrounds to Mod2's, and dump the back ones moving them to front L/R approx ear height just to the L and R side of the screen. This means my existing Front L/R which are up where the ceiling meets the walls (top L/R corners) became candidates for front height speakers, and so they now are. The side surround speakers are now Mod2's so they produce a bit bigger sound.

The first thing that got me after I re-did the Audessy setup for the new speaker configuration was all the new matrix modes. Depending on the source some of these have like 7 or 8 options. Various A-DSX (Audessy DSX) married with various versions of Dolby or DTS plus also things like Dolby PLIIz and even that and A-DSX.

I read that Dolby PLIIz was better at heights and A-DSX was better as wides....

Either way, the sound coming from the around the screen is.. well.. the least way you could describe it is FULL. It's everywhere, It's like just a wall of sound coming from the screen and you do get more forward facing effects when things move across the screen, top to bottom, diagonal, whatever. i guess one does miss the old 7.1 stuff where things come from behind over the top of you to the screen because there are no back speakers anymore, but the front on sound is just there! That's the best way to describe it.

I haven't had the configuration long so I got a lot of things to mess with yet. DTS Master Audio + A-DSX sounds... different. It does seem a little like the surround speakers are down a little, which to me seems a little strange because 7.1 inherently uses both the surronds and backs to make it sound like the sound is somewhere behind you (not just directly behind you with backs).

But it is definitely a lot fuller and I don't have to stand up to watch movies anymore :-)

I am just interested to hear what other people do with these sorts of things.

Quoting Parsec:

Quote:
I'm guessing very few people use front height speakers here......

I think its the Holidays. People are busy. Other people unfortunately are having troubles. Also I have noticed that there are fewer general interest conversations these days.