I’m upgrading my old 5.1 home theater setup which used six speakers to a 5.1.4 Dolby Atmos set up with 10 speakers.
Our living room originally came with cutouts and wired spots for four overhead speakers. I quickly found out the speakers were missing and upgraded the holes to fit some nice eight inch ceiling speakers from Monoprice.
For years we used these for the front left/right and surround speakers with a small center speaker I had from and old Infinity home theater in a box set.
But now with Dolby Atmos the plan is to use the four ceiling speakers for overhead effects in a 5 (three front Speakers/2 surrounds), 1 (subwoofer) 4 (overhead) setup.
Audio Equipment
A 4K Blu-Ray DVD player is the heart the home theater system. Sure you can stream but the media is streamed at lower bit rates and compressed. You can pay extra for 4K content but even that is compressed. The best sound and picture is going to come from a dedicated 4K player and 4K blu-ray disc with Atmos encoded sound.
Next you need a great AVR (audio visual receiver) to process all of that sound and send it out to the speakers.
Now you need great sounding speakers to get that sweet sound to your ears. We went with the Polk ES series which gets good reviews for sound and looks without breaking the bank.
- 4K Blu-Ray DVD player – Panasonic Streaming 4K Blu Ray Player with Dolby Vision and HDR10+ Ultra HD Premium Video Playback, Hi-Res Audio, Voice Assist – DP-UB820-K (Black)
- AVR Dolby Atmos Receiver – TX-NR7100 Dirac 9.2-Ch x 100w THX 8K A/V Receiver
- Center Channel Speaker – Polk Signature Elite ES30 Center Channel Speaker – Hi-Res Audio Certified, Dolby Atmos & DTS:X Compatible, 1″ Tweeter & Two 5.25″ Woofers, Dual Power Port for Effortless Bass
- Front Speakers – Polk Signature Elite ES15 Bookshelf Speaker
- Surround Speakers – Polk Signature Elite ES10 Surround Loudspeaker
- Overhead or Height speakers
- Subwoofer – We got this slim one
Accessories
- In wall speaker wire
- Speaker wall plates – Cable Matters 2-Pack Speaker Wire Wall Plate
- Low Voltage mounting plates
- Banana Plugs
- 16 Banana Post and 2 RCA Speaker Wall Plate for Home Theater Audio
- 3 Gang Low Voltage mounting plate
- TV Mount
- Wall Cable Management Kit with AC Outlets & USB Ports
- Recessed Wall Plate for Low Voltage pass through
- Speaker stands for the front speakers – these were a good match for the Polk dark wood colored ES15s.
Reference 4K Atmos Movies
To test the system, you got to have some kick ass movies with great surround sound mixes. Here are some movies with great Dolby Atmos soundtracks.