It unfortunately isn't as the distance between tweeter and mid driver becomes bigger and thus also the discontinuities in the vertical directivity at the crossover frequency (unfortunately Genelec doesn't provide measurements on that contrary to Neumann), everything is a compromise.
Have you heard the Ex Machinas?
Hmmm, true. The manual contains vertical directivity (in gross JPEGs full of artifacts); on the other hand, I'd really like Neumann to give power response.
They are the same if not worse if we accept these different measurements
Yes, the Neumann vertical sonogramme is smoother and has as expected a smaller dip at the crossover region
At 300 Hz where the Neumann has its 1% peak the woofer is active as the mid is crossed higher, also different measurements conditions are to be compared with caution, better the above posted comparison of S&R which measured both KH310 and SCM25 Pro.
I know we have @Soundmixer and @audio2920 who do postproduction Atmos mixes for movie studios. Their insight into movie mixes have been invaluable for sure.
And this is where it all falls apart for the home speaker which rarely can ever be "ideal" regardless of cost because full range speakers cannot faithfully reproduce any recording below the room's transition frequency (generally between 100Hz to 200Hz depending on the room) unless its bass drivers can be moved physically to different parts of the room due to the dramatic effect caused by room modes (which create significant dips and peaks). The only way to address these modes is by (1) physically decoupling the drivers that produce sound below the transition frequency and placing them in areas of the room that allows the main listening position to receive all the bass information without dips then (2) use DSP to lower peaks down to neutral. The above issues are difficult nay impossible to solve with full range passive speakers (the typical "home speaker") packaged in one tower unless your room happens to be shaped such that your MLP is perfectly positioned where there are no modes at all between 30Hz and 200Hz. This is why mastering studios have various DSP tools at their disposal to ensure that there are no room modes at the listening position.
The motor weighs more because ATC uses a ferrite magnet and Neumann specced a neodymium magnet. Neo magnets are way more powerful per weight than ferrite. I don't understand how this is complicated.
You don't want to mix on bad speakers, and in the film industry, we don't even monitor or check a mix on a bad speaker. However, the music guys do check their mixes on the NS10 or other speakers that perform similarly. I don't know any mixing engineer who actually does a mix on a bad speaker, I would think that would be counterproductive. But I do think it is imperative to monitor your music mix on as many speakers as the studio has. You are correct. You should make sure your music mix sounds good on good speakers but sounds acceptable on bad speakers.
If your goal is to hear tiny problems in the midrange, then the ATC will be better for sure. I don't see that as being down to the driver, but rather the tuning of the speaker. ATC tunes their mids 2-3dB louder than the rest of the spectrum, whereas Neumann plays all of their drivers at the same spl. The consequence of the ATC tuning is that it will be:
Unfortunately, individual listening reports are near useless for determining which is actually the better mid. Comparison would really need to be done blind, level matched, and with multiple people. Also, level matching the Neumann and ATC to assess mid quality will be tricky, as ATC seem to purposely play their mid a few dB louder than the other drivers.
I've not compared them side to side in the same room, but the ATC 25s are uncannily clean in what low end they have. It's a little weird. The Neumanns are as good if not better above like 100hz though. I think if you crossed both with subs they'd overall be similar.
No, we don't know if the Neumann dome can cross that low because it's a custom Neumann design and isn't used anywhere else other than their designs (which have pretty typical to slightly high woofer-midrange crossover points for a dome) so there's no spec sheet available. If it's like most 3" dome mids, it probably doesn't do so hot crossed below about 500hz. ATC's dome is kind of an anomaly in that it is capable of crossing as low as it does in their designs.
That is wrong especially in a 3 way when the tweeter sits above the midrange and not between the woofer and the bass because the acoustic centrum wil be moving up down and as i showed in the case of the Neumann you have higher distortions in the lower midrange although not audible.The midrange should go as low if possible (200-250hz).From there you want a fast woofer (and then a sub).
The only thing that is important is that the distance of the drivers is smaller than the wavelength of the crossover frequency (or even better half of it), at 500 Hz we have a wavelength of 0.69 meters so its not a problem in the Neumann (if it was you would see some strong lobing in the off-axis). Of course you do want to listen any non-coaxial loudspeaker just few inches from its baffle as only then you might hear the separation of the drivers which is more problematic though between mid driver and tweeter.
"Slow woofers" are usually not a problem of the drivers themselves but of a poor bass enclosure/port tuning.
This is more complicated than distances alone as there is the time parameter envolved but according to Don Keele regarding alignment guidelines:
As said when the distance of the drivers is smaller than half of the wavelength of the crossover frequency then what Keele says is achieved, the problem on the ATC and Neumann is rather the distance between the mid and the tweeter where this is not achieved (more on the ATC due to the higher crossover frequency) and vertical lobes result and additionally in a frequency range where our hearing has a higher spatial resolution.
Correct, and ATC tunes their ports to a Q of 0.5 (from what I've read) so this is not a problem there. I should note, ATC includes a port plug with a fair number of models and from what I can tell from Resolution's absolutely tiny FR graph the port bung in the 25 smooths out the bass hump somewhat.
