Ceiling speakers can be an awesome addition for home theater setups, some factors are more important than others but here are a few things to consider getting the best performance!

Examples of Ceiling Speakers

In a typical home theater setup you have the front line speakers which include the center channel and the left and right speakers. In contrary to what people may think, ceiling speakers can actually be used as the front line speakers with exceptionally good results. The tweaking required in this setup is to be sure to point the speakers towards where the listeners would be. The front line speakers are arguably the most important components in your entire home theater setup, and out of all the things the last place to spend the least amount of money on. If I were to pick one of these speakers, the center channel which usually provides the vocal clarity whether it is in movies, video games, music would be the most important out of the all 3 speakers.

For subwoofers as mentioned in my previous post, your best bet is to go with a floorstanding or wall subwoofer. Subwoofer’s performance is hugely correlated to its enclosure, so in the case you do go with a wall unit be sure to aware of that, because you would have to fine tune your receiver in order to get the best results and hence get deeper bass and more importantly reduction of static at higher listening levels. Another note on tweaking the receiver is that you have to be very aware of where your ceiling speakers will be installed, e.g. would it be in a corner that sound may be obstructed by reverb and bad sound absorption. Tweaking the receiver settings properly are a very effective way to compensate for these short comings and turn them into your advantage.

Like all speakers, it’s always a good idea to “sync” your ceiling speakers. What I mean is it is best to stick to one brand, unless of course you know what you are doing when matching certain speakers together. Many manufacturers often build systems based on their different speakers setup and most importantly configured to operate best with their own equipment, which of course makes perfect business sense.

Ceiling speakers work pretty well when used in a surround sound environment. For those who enjoy a “diffused environment” type of sound, which is when you those sound experiences where you have no clue where the sound is coming from. It is sort of like you feel like you are IN the sound, then like I mentioned before about pointing the speakers, instead you would point away from the listening vicinity. What this does is that it disperses the sound around the area, of course this would take a little trial and error, but a lot of sound professionals would be able to configure this for you.