Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Maybe I should start a v4.0 build thread somewhere

Are you wall mounting the ceiling speakers?

You want as much separation in height between the surrounds and the overheads. So ideally, you have surrounds at a couple of inches above seated ear level (so that one person's head isn't blocking all of the sound from a surround or rear speaker), but still low enough to give some distance between those and the overheads.

Then for the overheads, either mount them on the ceiling or at least up against the ceiling.


I pushed my side surrounds slightly forward of my front row seats when I lowered them for Atmos and love the way that they sound. Seems so much more enveloping, so I like what you did there too.

You can google angles, if doing 7.1.2 you want the speakers 60 - 100 degrees front or back of the main listening position.

For 7.1.4, you want the front overheads 35 - 60 degrees in front of the front row of seats, and the rear overheads 35-60 degree behind the rear row of seats. A lot of people will use a spot between the rows of seats for measurement and just make sure that the angles meet the requirements for both rows (using a lower angle).

If only one row, then base it on that one row.

Here is a reasonably good and short video about it. It isn't perfect, but will get you there.
Atmos placement - Start around 40 seconds for 7.1.2 or 50 seconds for 7.1.4

Thanks Nick.

I am using 4, M3 Ceiling speakers for the ceiling. I did not want to cut holes in my ceiling or try and rout wires through all the floor joists, so I built some boxes the speakers mount to. The boxes are attached to the ceiling. Roughly 8.5" height. I was limited to where I could actually place them in relation to the seats. The back row is directly overhead. The front row is 52" forward the back set, and at an angle towards the seats. The M3C's do have tweeters that can be "aimed" as well. I'll play around with that some if needed. That part of this Atmos project is done.

I'm using On-wall M3s for the surround and surround back channels. I have a door that's in line with the seats, so I have no choice but to mount that speaker forward. I'm happy to hear that will not be a problem.

As a couple of these wall mounts will be prone to being bumped by folks walking in/out of this room, I will most likely need to remove the driver and add a second attachment point. IE: screw though the speaker, into the wall......

I sure hope all this is worth it. Atmos really changes all the rules on speaker placement, and type.

Micheal, looks like your too far along to change this now but I think mounting M3ow on the ceiling would be a lot less work and sound better. I've listened to both these speakers and I believe the M3ow are almost as good as an M3 while the M3c are a bit of a compromise. Another observations between the M3c and a FMB mounted M3ow is that the on-walls are more amiable. The M3c's tweeter only has a few degrees of aim before it hits the grill. Further, In theory, you want your all the speakers to image well with each other so that objects (sounds) can be placed exactly in 3d space. The on-walls will do that better the the in-ceilings.

Now, I have not heard either of these guys in an ATMOS setup and suspect that when you in the middle of a movie I doubt the differences will be extreme. Bottom line ... bet both setups will sound awesome.