DIY Dolby Atmos speaker

I completed a couple of Dolby Atmos speakers in past couple of weeks. These are front upward firing Atmos speakers that reflect the sound of the ceiling creating surround effect from the ceiling.

Initially when I tested the Atmos speakers, I was disappoint as I could not hear much effect. Then one day I was playing the Eagles farewell concert in DTS and my Denon automatically set the surround to DTS-Neural X. The makes the Atmos speaker playing all the time and with vocal and I can hear the singers voice from the ceiling. But the reflected sound was in front of my seating position. Because the singing and music is continuous, it makes it easy to find the optimum position where the sound is reflected. The position is a couple of feet in front of my couch. My Atmos speaker is design with a 30 degree angle and obviously that is not optimum for my seating position. So I raised the back of the Atmos speaker up and that shifted the sound further away from the Tv back to my seating position. The difference is night and day, and now the Atmos speakers effect is awesome. Now the ceiling is like a big speaker. So now settled with a 40 degree angle and they are just awesome.

The strange thing is when I design the Atmos speaker, I use calculated the sound reflection based on the speaker height, ceiling height and the listening position and 30 degree seems optimum. But it tuen out that the angle is wrong and the speaker need 40 degree for optimum performance.

Anyway, below are some photos of the speakers.


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Great build
I think why your first measurements of 25° were off. I see your ceiling has a slight slope on it so that change the angle that you calculated. Just an observation but it’s hard to tell in the video. I’m sure I’m wrong but with you were just in the angle of them and moved the position of the sound, that may be the reason why but beautiful build on your system and wonderful looking room
 
Great video
One question, to you think that the front wood plate is maybe blocking some of the sound from your diy atmos speakers ?

Look at my crude yellow lines showing where I believe it’s blocking sound

View attachment 872546

Yes, I think its blocking a portion of the sound from the lower driver. I am thinking of buildng another box with 40 degree angle and deeper depth so that the lower drivers won't get blocked.
 
Great build
I think why your first measurements of 25° were off. I see your ceiling has a slight slope on it so that change the angle that you calculated. Just an observation but it’s hard to tell in the video. I’m sure I’m wrong but with you were just in the angle of them and moved the position of the sound, that may be the reason why but beautiful build on your system and wonderful looking room

Thanks. Btw, the ceiling is not angled. I think I know my mistake. the picture below is how I come up with 30 degree angle. The red line is the sound from center axis, and the yellow line represent the sound that is is 15degree off center. I thought that is good enough as sound is disperse out at all angle.

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Very interesting read the Closer look at the patent link.

Also very interesting DIY design mr Lightning69. Did you add a HP filter somewhere around 180hz to eliminate direct sound coming from the speaker itself. Does blocking part of the front help to eliminate direct sound from the speaker? Did you also test it with 1 driver or 2? How did you determine the angle of the speaker reflecting against the ceiling to you sitting position.

They look a lot like the riad’s Bronze LR-H, is your diy design based on them?
 
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Very interesting read the Closer look at the patent link.

Also very interesting DIY design mr Lightning69. Did you add a HP filter somewhere around 180hz to eliminate direct sound coming from the speaker itself. Does blocking part of the front help to eliminate direct sound from the speaker? Did you also test it with 1 driver or 2? How did you determine the angle of the speaker reflecting against the ceiling to you sitting position.

They look a lot like the riad’s Bronze LR-H, is your diy design based on them?

Yes, my design is based on the Triad INROOM BRONZE HEIGHT MODULE.

I did not add a HP filter because the front cabinet basically block the sound coming directly to the listener and it does very effectively. The angle was done with simply modelling base on the speaker height, ceiling height and distance of the seating position. Below is a picture of the angle...the center line is 45deg and the reflected sound is directly at the ear level. The other 2 lines are basically the 15 off axis sound.
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.


I also make another set with 2 drivers instead of 4 and they are for my brother because he is using the Q-Acoustics 3020 so the atmos speaker sits perfectly on top of the 3020.
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The sound of this 2 drivers version is just as good as the 4 drivers version so there is really no need to go 4 driver.