I, too, have been interested in adding height channels. I'm interested in hearing what other people have done with height channels.

I'm currently using a BeoLab 4000 for "center front height" and a BeoLab 4000 for "ceiling." I really don't seem to detect much of a height effect.

that sounds very promising! Hope I can test the suggested setup by end of the week.

Mikipidia wrote:

No so i have the harmony and 50’s up front.

 

Then i have the 17’s basically up on the wall at the ceiling height, more or less 8”/20cm behind my head.

 

And then i have 18’s as rear speakers.

 

 

The 50’s are left/right and harmony set to center.

 

The 17’s are set to height surround.

 

The 18’s are set to left/right back.

 

 

The 17’s in this position where a late addition and i though the gains would be marginal but fun. But in reallity it transformed the whole sound emersion and soundstage. It’s not so much the loudness that has changed but the possitioning of where the sound is coming from. You can pin point if the sound is coming from the left front, left or left rear or left height for instance and vice versa. It’s increadible and i love it. The 17’s get a mixed signal for height and surround and the trueimage processor does it’s magic beyond belief😁 it’s silly accurate and very often we swing our heads around because it’s so accurate and it sounds way too life like and also where the sound originates from😎 a film with rain makes it feel like you’re sitting in the rain or a film where let’s say an upstairs neighbour in the film is stomping on the floor to quiet down the subject actually sounds like our upstairs neighbours are trying to do that to us in real life and we can’t tell the difference from the movie to real life lol

So maybe my problem is hoping that there would be a remarkable effect along the front-back axis. Whereas, you went with the left-right axis. I did notice some pretty amazing sound watching "Top Gun" and "Air Force One." This was after I very recently replaced my BeoSound 1s with BeoLab 9s as front left and right and moved my BeoSound 1s to left surround and right surround. The BeoSound 1s truly do make a nice improvement (over the former Beolab 8000s) for the surround left and right speakers! I'm hoping to add two more channels for height to have front height left and front height right along with surround height left and surround height right -- instead of the current "center height" and "ceiling" roles that I currently have. However, I first need to either get a special cable to isolate the powerlink to only send one channel to the BeoLab 10 center channel speaker or to completely remove the Beolab 2 subwoofer to free up some available speaker connections. I'm still not certain about the debate of whether a BeoLab 2 is needed when one has BeoLab 9 speakers.

Here are the speakers and their roles that I have with my BeoSystem 4:

BeoLab 10: center front

Beolab 9: left front

Beolab 9: right front

Beolab 1: left surround

Beolab 1: right surround

Beolab 6000: left back

Beolab 6000: right back

Beolab 2: subwoofer

Beolab 4000: ceiling

Beolab 4000: center height

Personally I would put the bl1's as rears as the corners tend to give the most oompf and then move the 6000's to the surround role. (you have the speakers furthest back set as rears right, as in not set as surround?)

Also important is to get the most out of it is to watch something that is actually recorded in 7.1 or above. as otherwise the trueimage processor is still upmixing. so in the case of a source that is 5.1 the most of channels used are now the bl9's and 6000's, where as if you swapped those arround it would be the 9's and 1's.

In my opinion with your setup the bl2 is fairly useless unless you set it to subwoofer rear.

to my knowledge, unless there are some atmos set up this way for recording, there aren't all that many films natively set up to have channels in the height front or height center. I personally feel the height channels on the side give more effects, but if there are center or dedicated height channels they would be mixed to the side height channels anyway. But I could be wrong, all I know is that as I sit for a film at home it's bloody spectacular with how I have it set up and the difference from 5.x to 7.x what I have now was eye opening and jaw dropping. It has exceeded my expectations for adding these speakers by a looooong mile 😎

I believe that Mikipidia has the solution for the height channels. Whereas, kawo and I (and likely many others) were misunderstanding the height roles with regard to the TrueImage upmixing.

Geoff Martin wrote a blog about TrueImage Upmixing in 2013 and discussed the height channels. The blog can be found here:

https://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2013/12/06/bo-tech-trueimage-upmixing/

Especially useful are some of the discussions that follow the article. In one response to a question posted, Geoff Martin said the following: “The question of what components from which inputs, get directed to which outputs is one of philosophy in algorithm design. One philosophy (which you describe) is that the front height channels should be used for reproducing uncorrelated (or negatively correlated) signals (measuring correlation using L/R pairs). However, another philosophy is to use the front height channels to help elevate the centre front (typically dialogue) channel so that its perceived location is similar to the height of the video screen. The latter of these two is the choice we made in the TrueImage algorithm.” Geoff went on to recommend that the person instead use the roles “Left Height Surround” and “Right Height Surround” to get the desired effect.

Thus, it’s my understanding that the Left Height Front and Right Height Front roles provide more of an improvement of dialog rather than creating the height dimension that the Left Height Surround and Right Height Surround speakers create. Therefore, we might be mistaken in thinking that all of the height channels work together in the same manner in adding the height dimension.

I’ve felt that the article by Geoff seems cut off and unfinished. A “part 2” of the article that further explains the PRACTICLAL uses that we should keep in mind when adding height channels and assigning roles would be very useful. For example: if you add just 2 height channels, where should they be and which roles should they be assigned? If you add 4 height channels, where should they be and which roles should they be assigned? And so on.

I feel that I’ve been misunderstanding the use of height channels and their roles until now. I still don’t claim to really quite understand them.

It would be great to see what these amazing B&O loudspeakers could do in a Dolby Atmos setup. The adoption of Dolby Atmos has come a long way since 2013. I’m seeing it everywhere now --- Apple TV (iTunes), Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus. There is now plenty of content for us to really enjoy proper height speakers in our B&O home theater. Until then, “built it and they will come”?

@beojeff

In rhe article...or rather in the Q&A’s Geoff suggests that you might ‘lie to’ the system by telling that the height speaker, that are placed at the from are surround heights.

(This is what I would do if I was funtanate to havecthe option of 2 height channels at home).

That seems to correspond with the findings of Miki - although his height surrounds aren’t placed at the front, but more at the side.

By the way - the ‘person’ is Henrik Baron Vejrup, who from time to time takes part in the Beotalk podcast.

In his current setup at home he does not use any heights, but I am sure that he will be glad to tell about his impressions from back then. You could contact him in the chat/Beotalk or on his social media mentioned there.

We’ll see, if there will be a ‘part 2’ of the upmixer article some time - would be nice imo.

@Miki

You wrote in the description of your set up:

’The 50’s are left/right and harmony set to center. 

The 17’s are set to height surround. 

 The 18’s are set to left/right back’.

Does that mean that you have no speakers set as surround.....which would be the usual layout for 5.1 in the horisontal plane. Rears/backs are mostly used for a 7.1 layout as an addition to the surrounds.

Questions:

Since you always upmix/use the TrueImage upmixer, what are the differences between playing a 5.1 and a 7.1 source (in case you have 7.1 sources at hand/mostly from bluray discs). 

MM