Speaker placement

[siwil1]

In a home cinema scenario what are the pro's and cons of placing the rear speakers high up ie ceiling height?

Reason for asking is rear wall in our house is virtually all glass until about 12ft up. Freestanding not an option as the glass all opens so would be in the way for acess etc.

Any help appreciated.

[chazola]

wouldn't have any issue with this as long as they're angled down somewhat towards your sitting position.

[STiG911]

Rear speakers installed up high can actually have a benefit as you shouldn't be able to 'pinpoint' the source of a given sound in a good Home Cinema system. Usually, 2m is recommended, but you say 12ft (!) so hopefully the speakers and amp will be beefy enough to counter the distance the sound has to travel you your shell-like.
This will work particularly well if you're using proper wall-mount dipole or bipole surround speakers.

[Driller]

I have a pair of Monitor Audio C380FX in ceiling speakers as the rears in my 5.1 system mounted to the sides and just behind the listening position.

Ceiling height is 3.2M and the surround effects are perfect.

[jas xjr]

chazola said:

wouldn't have any issue with this as long as they're angled down somewhat towards your sitting position.

+1

[siwil1]

jas xjr said:

+1

Cheers for the replies guys. Realistically the seating position is going to be virtually directly below but I was under the impression (incorrectly as it seems) that they should be ear level when sitting.

Off to trawl Richer sounds site now ! (any other recommendations for an AV numpty!)

[chazola]

The rears are generally just effects speakers but they still make a big difference to the overall surround image. Depending on how the film is mixed the main L/R speakers generally do most of the hard work and more critical where they're placed. I don't bother with a centre speaker any more, since all it handles is speech and anything in mono- I just have the signal routed to the main speakers on my Yamaha AV amp. I've got some fairly big main speakers so I don't have a sub, but that can go anywhere you like. I recommend using the test-tone set up on your amp if it has one, and set the levels where you're happy- where you're going have your rears up high and depending on their efficiency you'll probably need to boost their level a couple of db.

[StormLoaded]

surely with those high rears you are just future proofing yourself for possibly Dolby® Pro Logic® IIz .. version 2 (!?)

http://www.dolby.co.uk/consumer/understand/playbac...

[rex]

Or this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22.2