Atmos overhead vs reflecting height speakers.....

[MobileES]

I just did an experiment in my living room using some surround speakers mounted to my ceiling and assigning them Top Front and Top Rear. I have an 8 ft ceiling and was using the Onkyo atmos-enabled SKH-410 reflecting speakers on top of my L/R main and surround backs. Was very curious how much the sound would differ with actual overhead speakers, bought some brackets from Monoprice, found 4 Sony surround cubes and mounted them up. I have to say what a difference, the overhead sound definitely has more presence. Its roughly about 3/4 feet from my listening position to the ceiling, Sony's are 45 degrees forward and back, 4.5ft to the left/right from where I sit. You can tell where sound is coming from when the overheads come into play, not sure if that is how it should be, however they sound a lot more like you directly in the middle of everything. The Onkyo's sounded good, sometimes you couldn't tell when they were on.

I've tried the Dolby discs, Expendables 3, and Gravity for Atmos content, then tried Finding Nemo with the DSU, very impressive.

The pic below is a quick mock-up, I am ordering the proper length speaker wire and wall clips..........