Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater front height channels

Who has experience with the front height channels? Are they worth the effort?

What is the Pre/Receiver that you have?

Personally, I found that running Height channels on the front gave me a better experience than the surround back channels did.

ie, it felt more real with 5.1 + front heights.

I was running this on my Yamaha receiver circa 2009. That was was the last time I had them hooked up. I have since moved to a much better system and am in the mids of getting my AV room re-setup.

Thanks for the info! I have an emotiva umc 200 preamp that does 7.1 -EITHER surround back or front heights. I currently am running a surround back with 2 on wall m3 s but honestly for music or 5.1 stuff it sounds better to use my qs8's surrounds only.

Good luck on the new setup! I love settin up av.

No one else tried front heights?

I have, switching between rear surrounds and front heights several times ( I have 4-QS8's)
I have noticed subtle differences ,nothing major and only during certain scenes...my room is a bit challenging to say the least,but IMO it is hard to beat a good 5.1 setup. The qs8's do such o good job as side surrounds there was almost no difference as rears ( my second row of theatre seating is against back wall) and as heights .....they are usually not noticed....imo anyway.... May want wait til all this Atmos and DSX is sorted out...I wish I had spent the $ on upgrading subs instead.

Thanks a lot! That is what I'm afraid of.putting in the work for connecting front height channels then noticing little difference. The QS8 speakers really deliver at the surround side position and I'm sure wherever they are. If I do use front height speakers they will be my m3s. Can't afford more QS8's. I am on the fence.I think in my set up the front Heights would probably make some difference but just not sure.

I would not use QS8 or QS4 speakers for heights. The QS8 make a great ambient non directional sound for surrounds. The do such a great job that the rear set of speakers don't seem to get much use and our ears are not all that good at locating sound directly behind us.

From the looks of it, if you look at a speaker location guide, when they start mapping out 7.1, the moved the surround speakers forward to be about in line with your ear, and the rear surround behind.

For 5.1 the surrounds are 15deg behind the ear that I think are probably a better location.

I would spend the time to put in height speakers as they might offer a bit of an improvement for the current setup. However the real time they will shine is in a few years when you upgrade to an Atmos/DTS X system where the sound mix will actually take advantage of the heights.

but that is just my subjective opinion. That is what I am doing. Well, actually as I am pulling wires without any drywall up, I just spent a bit more for a 500' spool of cable and am running speaker drops about everywhere as it's cheeper to do it now than try and do it after the fact.

Hi Matt,

I have installed several systems with both QS4 and QS8 as heights and they performed beautifully for Dolby Pro Logic PLIIZ for movies.For music application it depends on material.

I am currently using my M3 as front height, in a 7.2 tried as rears. But find more sound stage with them as heights.
Have M22 as front VP160 center M3 surround Don't have any of the Qs yet

You are correct, JC. With front height speakers, we are talking ambient material that is NOT hard-mixed in the mixing theater. The QS-8 or QS-4 will always deliver very effective ambient reinforcement and even specific hard-mixed sounds when required (bullet richochet type sounds, etc.)

Regards,
Alan

That is very interesting. I never would have thought it. I really need to do more reading up on the Dolby PLiiZ. I will have to see my Marantz AV7005 handles that mode when playing back items encoded in DTS as that seems to be the vast majority of all bluray movies now. It reads like it's a superset of reading the decoded audio and splitting off the sounds that would be given as ambiant to the front speakers and adding them into a Height. I would be very interested in seeing how it works. My old Yamaha didn't really have any of these features that this new pre-amp has and I would like to see what new experiences I have at my fingertips. Perhaps a new set of QS4's are in line for the future.

I didn't read your 2nd post....didn't realize u already had amp and speakers....why not run temporary wire to m3's on temporary stands (ladders,shelf....whatever) ...give it a few demo scenes and see what u think
Ex sandstorm in Ghost protocol ,underground tunnel scene in Batman with Harvey Dent ,
Twister ,master and commander opening 15 mins anything with Rain or Storms
I should have also mention in my room it is subtle like I said,but when I don't have them on or set up as back surrounds ...I "THINK" I miss them...( always wondering if that action scene would have sounded larger).......I just would not advise anyone to upgrade ( as of now) their amp and have to buy speakers,wire etc......to get get Dolby PIIz or DSX heights

I've been using QS-8's for height speakers. I've had this set up for a couple years now, maybe longer. I like it, and can most definitely tell a difference. If I turn heights off, the front soundstage feels naked.

I also tried width speakers, but my room is not wide enough for correct placement, so they sounded funky...

Probably with my upper and lower M22's and VP160, it does the same job as what the height channels supply, except the sound gets anchored to the center of the screen instead. I still like my setup with M22's L/C/R across the top and with M22's as L/R on bottom with VP160 in lower center position. (And 3 QS8's for 6.1 + EP500).

I rarely hear anything coming out of my single rear speaker, that I can identify as anything other than ambiance, but while watching Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, part 1 the other day, someone said something that only came out of that speaker. That tells you how little 6.1 or maybe even 7.1 does to the listening experience.

I have a Yamaha receiver which gives you the option of front "presence" (height) speakers. I use them as part of 7.1. I like the effect it brings. Makes the soundstage seem to fill the whole height of the room, which I guess is the intention.

I never got much action from my back surrounds (QS8), and I took to using front height speakers instead (CSW dipoles, similar to QS4) and Dolby PLIIz on my Pioneer SC-1522. Well, the 1522 AVR finally broke, and I replaced it with a Pioneer VSX-90, which does Dolby Atmos, and I use what were formerly called "front height" speakers as "top middle" speakers in a Dolby Atmos 5.2.2 system.

Dipoles are not recommended for Atmos ceiling speakers, but I'm just not that interested in localizing sounds from above in action movies, personally, so they give me the ambience sounds I want. My side surrounds are also dipoles -- QS8.