If you’re building a Dolby Atmos home theater and you’re stuck on placement, I tested the big options: upfiring (soundbars or modules on top of towers), top middle (sidewall/ceiling), and top front + top rear. I’m not going to sugarcoat it—upfiring is the worst way to experience Atmos if you care about convincing height effects. It’s heavily dependent on your room, and anything over a 9-foot ceiling starts killing the bounce effect. It can be a solid minimalist alternative, but once you hear real speakers firing down at you, you’ll never want to go back. My “aha” moment came when I moved to proper height speakers (SVS Ultra Elevations) and ran them as top middle first—sidewall mounted in my old place, then ceiling mounted slightly in front of the listening position in my current place. Top middle can be insane on the right scenes (Civil War jets overhead, Oblivion ship movement), but I kept noticing it didn’t hit often enough across movies that should’ve been Atmos showcases. That’s why I compared top middle vs top front/top rear, and for most rooms, top front + top rear is the move. You lose a couple specific top-middle-only moments, but what you gain is a more constant “bubble” of sound—front-to-back movement, diagonal movement, and a bigger sense of atmosphere throughout entire movies like Top Gun Maverick and Godzilla Minus One. If you’ve got a dedicated room, run all three. For the rest of us: top front and top rear.