Hey Nick --

Hope all is good with you! Your theater is looking great! The following consists of a few under-informed personal thoughts, along with some technical information which you already know very well:

I agree, the consensus advice on Atmos seems to be point sources. However, the QS8 is rather unconventional among multi-driver surrounds with angled faces, the main distinctions being that all drivers are in phase, and the four drivers are placed on four different physical faces of the unit. The older dipoles with out-of-phase response created a null at the listener position which really delocalized the source, as was good for the old-school ambience-only surround tracks. In my reading, bipoles (in phase) are much less strongly disfavored for duty in an Atmos setup than dipoles (out of phase), and the QS8s are indeed more closely aligned with the former camp. The QS8s do add a wider (and much more complicated frequency dependent) dispersion pattern, but have a reputation for remaining localizable.

Other considerations include the fact that a commercial theater has LOTs of individually addressable speakers, located in the far field, whereas a home theater will have a much smaller number of speakers (though still perhaps quite a few, say 11), many of which are in the near field for certain seating positions. It would seem to me that a speaker which is slightly less localizable and slightly more forgiving in placement could be a decent tradeoff in quite a few situations for home use, giving up some pinpoint positioning, but creating the sensation of a a more seamless (if somewhat smeared) continuum of sources. It also would seem that the rather unique design of the QS8, and the comparatively low market penetration of this design, would imply that most people making recommendations have not specifically auditioned this scenario.

Caveats: I know you've got a great Atmos system set up, and have specifically listened to a few alternative configurations, deciding ultimately to send the QS8s for trade-up. By contrast, I've not ever even heard an Atmos system in a home-sized setting, so I freely confess that there is no direct experience behind what I'm saying. In fact, I haven't even got my own QS8's hung yet. But, it seems like the initial response in your build thread after some trial runs with Atmos source material was to favor the QS8s for the surround (not ceiling) application, for reasons basically similar to those I mentioned above.

Here's another take on the issue from our friends at AudioHolics.

Anyway, in a nutshell, the advice from the newsletter does not sound crazy to me ... I would be much more skeptical if they told me to buy something new!

Cheers-
DSQ