Hopefully someone can advise.

I am soon to be installing my old (ish) Yamaha 7.1 home theatre receiver in a large new family room approx 3.7m x9m.

The max output is 100w in each channel

I was thinking of using six 8in Keff ceiling speakers and an oldish Keff front speaker and subwoofer. The most important thing is music for when we have parties etc.

With a 7.1 am i wasting my time with six 8inch ceiling speakers…as when you use the “stereo” function does that just runs two speakers?… unfortunately I haven’t got access to the receiver at the mo as its in storage whilst the builders are here!

I need to get some speakers ordered while the builders are still here though

Any ideas much appreciated..

avforums should help

My stereo (an Onkyo) allows you deliver Stereo to all channels. I would imagine the Yamaha would do the same.

If you are using 7.1 though the upper/lower fronts won’t have much separation if they are all embedded in the roof will they? might be better off just sticking to 5.1 and saving yourself some cash on the extra 2 speakers?

Cheers for quick reply guys… @Toby1…was thinking that and maybe just going to use 5.1…as the 8 in speakers seem quite expensive… I would guess 4 should be ok… the room is a bit long though at 9m but i suppose with ceiling speakers you aren’t losing sound into the furnishings so much. Its also good for us as the speakers will be out of the kids’ way too!

get two floor standers for the main left and right, best for the music and work well for most tv that is really stereo.

Yip, if the most important thing is music go for a proper 2ch setup.

Tks again for advice… folks!

As clunk , I have an onkyo and use a pair of mission 760 for stereo for music and some nice tannoy SFX5.1 as a package for the surround package

also with a pair of floor standers they really fill in the mid range when running 5.1 just surround speakers can sound a bit thin and the system becomes over-reliant on the sub (which can then be quite “boomy”).

Richer sounds a good place to go, plenty of choice. If you got dolby pro logic II processing on the receiver, that would make stereo be processed to surround. All-in-one 5.1 systems are ok for cheap convience but the satelites are poor and the sub can be muddy and boomy. Depends on budget, go for bookshelf/standmount fronts. good centre (if watching movies for dialog) and surrounds can be smaller. I got wharfedale diamond 9.0s for fronts and rears, nice clean sound and they are £40 a pair at richer sounds. I hope that helps a bit more.

My Yammy (ASX763 iirc) has an option for 7ch stereo.

Also dependent on what speakers you go for and if you get sub. You may be able to set the fronts, rears and centre to small or large. If go with all small, then LFE (low frequency effects) be re-directed to the sub. If set speakers to large, you may not need a sub. Depends on what speakers you have and if there is enough bass being outputed. I have a tannoy sfx sub and hardly use it, only cos I use digital stereo through external soundcard using optical cable, which gives me a 96khz output (dvd audio level), when cd audio is 44,100khz. sorry for slight waffle

Lots of good advice above, but also you may find ceiling only speakers to be quite directional if that’s all you are using for both movies and music, you may not get the best from your multi channel sources in that case, although music should be fine if its just background.

We often use in-ceiling speakers for the surrounds, and this also works well when using the amp in 7 channel stereo mode for music at parties etc. You can buy surround sound specific ceiling speakers which have a wider dispersion than normal speakers – something like these would be ideal.

Clickedy Click

I prefer square in-ceiling speakers as they look a little different and B&W offer a square grille option.

For the front left/centre/right as above, I’d use the best speakers you can. Floor standers are great, but if you don’t want something as visible or taking up so much floorspace, there is a number of great sounding on-wall speakers from people like B&W (FPM range) and Monitor Audio (Apex range) which sound great if used with a sub.

If you fancy something from B&W or Monitor, feel free to email me and I might be able to do an STW special price!

I wouldn’t use ceiling speakers for anything but the surrounds. I’d go with the advice above and use a dedicated centre speaker and two floorstanders.

I got a cambridge audio s80 centre speaker and a tannoy sfx sub. for sale, if interested…. 🙂

I would prefer high quality floorstanders in a 2 channel setup over a mediocre surround setup.

Some of the transmission-line style floorstanders can offer very good control over the bass in difficult room positions and will always sound more integrated than satellites and a sub unless you have a very expensive setup/room correction.