Thanks for comments. Just to clarify:With the greatest respect to Anthony Grimani, he vastly overstates the importance of front wides, which, as John correctly noted above, are not really part of any home format at all (this reality is what partly drives the fact that many Atmos/DTS:X tracks use a 7.1 base layer).
Grimani bases his conclusion off of acoustics and acoustics only. He says that to have a more "immersive" audio experience front wides are needed (to be clear, in this video he says they are "equally important" to height speakers, not more"). That focuses on how audio leaves the speakers and bounces off surfaces (or go right to your ears) creating a large field of sound. Undoubtedly front wides serve to create a larger field.
However, what Grimani ignores--and what I think you are ignoring, Bob--is that the channels only deliver what the creatives choose to send. Front wide channels simply just aren't used to (90% of the time) deliver anything other than the same information already being sent to your LCR channels. In almost all cases, front wides are duplicative and only serve to widen the field of sound. I highly doubt this will ever change.
Height channels are used by creatives to place objects. This is happening more and more. In my view this use will continue to increase.
Frankly, based on your description of how you used the Audyssey DSX wide mode, I think you are placing greater weight on your speakers being "filled" with sound, rather than being filled with meaningful sound, which is what I prefer. DSX takes 5.1 and 7.1 and upmixes. It's very good, but the results aren't driven at all by creatives. When DSX mode is on, the audio you hear in your front wides or two height speakers weren't placed there by a human: they were placed there by math.
So, in my opinion, a listener is better served by four height channels than two height channels and two front wides. The former will present you with more detailed sound. The latter will just have more sound.
1) I’m not suggesting it’s worth giving up top speakers I’m favour of wides. Not at all. I’d gladly run 9.1.6 or 7.1.6 if soundtracks would let me, but most don’t. I want MORE top speakers, not less. The problem is I prefer the middle row alone (which is precise) v.s. the front row + rear row (which sounds vague and barely overhead at all… definitely not “precise”). So regardless if I use wides or not, I’m sticking with x.x.2. Again this might be my room, speaker dispersion, and speaker placement. It seems some of you misread Dolby’s placement guidelines, and it’s a good thing you did!
2) just to be clear I’m using IN CEILING speakers, not ceiling mounted “heights”. That’s a whole different ball game. If your not using in-ceiling then you are not really getting the same atmos experience anyway, and won’t understand what I’m talking about. Sadly most will never get to enjoy the sound of rain falling literally above your head… it’s awesome. It puts you IN the movie.
3) I appreciate that you are a soundtrack purist (you prefer precise sound over more sound). Strictly IMHO, you are giving the creatives too much credit. Hopefully things improve (and in some cases they have) but many soundtracks (and 2ch music) are just a hot mess. They don’t put nearly the precision into it as one might hope. I’ve gone down the audiophile rabbit hole before and came to the conclusion that most recordings suck, regardless of equipment, compression, high-res, etc, etc. Crap in… crap out. But I digress.
Btw, I didn’t mention before. I also daisy chain 2 atmos AVRs to connect all 3 atmos rows so I can do immediate comparisons of which row combination has the best result. Sadly running all 3 at the same time is difficult to pull off due to volume control and signal overlap… so I run either middle row alone, or front + rear.
To be fair there is 1 time I might have preferred x.x.4 over x.x.2. On Dolby’s atmos demo disc, the swirling helicopter demo. With 2 middle row atmos speakers, the helicopter is literally above you and goes side to side. With 4 atmos speakers, it is much further way and circles around you (but with massive gaps in sound when it’s in between speakers), but frankly it’s better described as an “elevated” surround-sound rather than truly “overhead”.
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