ATC SCM19 Bookshelf Speaker Review

[Frank Dernie]

Nice story and Ross Brawn is keen on hifi what speakers did he like? 1981 would be the Williams FW07 according to wiki.That Proac though with twin domes...

1981 was the FW07C our first car without sliding skirts.
Ross had Martin Logans but has just moved house and I haven't been to the new place yet because of lockdown.

 

[BYRTT]

This is a specific question that has been raised before; the in-room curve from the Klippel spinorama is some kind of average and does not include specific response for e.g. a near- or in-wall placement of a speaker.

Yes Klippel analyzes is a clean anechoic reference response but think you mix up my post which was about Amir's selective few mm nearfield measurement of woofer driver and tweeter seen below that lack baffle step loss and diffraction which is not the case when Klippel scanner is set to do a full system sweep all around device under test.

 

[Mawclaw]

Does anyone have any semi-reliable measurement source for the SCM25A Pro? That is the model I think of when I consider ATC. Also their Pro monitors have a legitimate following and are actually used in a shit load of proffesional spaces, second to genelec and that's it really.

As an aside this tour of Deadmau5's studio is pretty groovy, full ATC Atmos setup.

 

[Purité Audio]

It appears it’s the speaker‘s terminal connectors that are at the root of the problem, see page 2
http://atcloudspeakers.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Hi-Fi_Critic_SCM50PSL_WEB.pdf

Keith

 

[thewas]

Does anyone have any semi-reliable measurement source for the SCM25A Pro?

Here you go, as expected they seem better than the SCM19 ones here, but still far from being great.
https://www.resolutionmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ATC-SCM25A-Pro.pdf

 

[Dialectic]

Here you go, as expected they seem better than the SCM19 ones here, but still far from being great.
https://www.resolutionmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ATC-SCM25A-Pro.pdf

What an excellent magazine. I had never heard of it until seeing this post.

 

[b1daly]

This makes sense, but why did the NS10 become ubiquitous in the first place?

The other question is, should a studio monitor be "accurate" and "neutral", or should it exaggerate faults? If the latter, that would explain why studio monitors are often disliked in a domestic setting.

The NS10 was basically the first near field monitor, which has some advantages, namely you can minimize the effect of the room by putting them close to your ears and listening at a low volume.

Most studio monitors of the also didn’t sound that great.

Add to this their affordability and portability and they became ubiquitous in studios.

I also think the lack of low end response helped them, because it filtered out a lot of the signal which is quite hard to get correct. This makes the engineer feel better, but it is exactly the wrong thing for a monitor to do. (Source: myself who made many recordings on NS10s and suffered painfully when they turned out muddy with way too much bass.)

 

[vntgehauer]

The point I was alluding to in my last post was the difficulty of correlating a subjective opinion with a set of measurements, and which Toole is addressing.

Personally I have used Macs since '91, and up to system 9 I found them vastly superior to PCs. Now they have converged, and Mojave is not as straight forward, but the build quality has always been better, and the reliability good. My SE30 died in '05, and its Motherboard has '86 on it.

I don't think that ATC has the facilities of some of the larger companies, and so they are less likely to be able to do intensive radical research, and to me there is now a major shift going on. To denigrate ATC, given their wide usage in the audio and video industries, suggests that the users have cloth ears, and also many users have other makes of monitor with which to compare them, B&W, ADAM, Genelec and others, maybe still Quad.

With regard to amplifier power, a greater concern to me would be current supplying ability.

I think Ad Hominem stuff should be avoided, and tighter reasoning and language used.

I wasn't going to respond to the Mac lauding - as only a mac fan can do- But I realized this is actually on topic when the discussion of this drapes into this whole thread and the paramount consumerism and the negligence of the typical user.

Pharos makes a grand statement (I use that statement since my first 8088, Mac users have always been this way) saying, "I found them vastly superior to PCs.... and that, "...the build quality has always been better....)

Show me a mac user, and I'll show you a man who doesn't tinker and know anything about the innards.

Yes, a complete generalization. But with caveats that I've understood since also using and building since the late 80's.

What Pharos is saying is completely reasonable from his perspective. He uses the computer and it just works. He needs sound? Oh, it has onboard sound. Cool. It needs a midi port? Shit! It has one!

That's Macs. That was always Macs. But nowhere in any decade will you find someone who can prove macs were more reliable than a PC. You know why? Because macs used the same parts as a PC. I still have every damn processor all the way back to my 386's and AMD/Intel's because those are easy to hold too. The motherboards never died- just upgraded (though I wish I kept my Pentium II brick.) The hard drives were all crap unless you bought SCSI or enterprise, but I still do have my original 40MB drive from it.

And building a PC? You used a part that was the cheapest you could find- or you spent the extra bucks for the top of the line. PC's were built for those of us that wanted the build to be EXACTLY like we wanted and for a quarter of the price.

The only thing a Mac person saw was the ugly PC cases and assumed their Macs were better (thank god for Apple upping that game!) and, sometimes they were! people specifically included many things in a Mac that a PC didn't have. For us on the PC side, we had to buy every little damn thing that it didn't have. but we didn't give a shit how it looked. Hell, half the time it wasn't in a case- but built on the side of it.

There was no better than PC- Mac just had it built in. But it used the same damn hard drives and the same damn RAM for MUCH more money. They had no duper-secret component maker with mystical quality.

If you were sold on a Mac, a PC wouldn't do. In the end (as it is today with apple-that's what you were paying for (and still are))- an eco system that you find more attractive and a user base lauding the company- to a point that those users actually believe in its lengthy reliability over any thing else.

The one thing I did notice about Mac guys was that they just worked on them. They didn't want, for the most part, to tinker about, they wanted to work and get shit done. Which is what a computer(tool) is for. But you pay for that eco system. as same as with the Iphones. I've used them and hate them. They're so...closed off and limited. But as we know, others see android as a hot mess- too much going on. Totally customizeable. But, hey, I'll use an Ipad over my surface (AH!) when the need arises no problem.

Pharos is saying we shouldn't use ad-hominem and to use tighter reasoning and language. But he is doing with the ATC company exactly what he has always been doing when touting Macs against PC's- alluding to them as if they are far and above other companies' offerings and willingly looks for favored excuses to wash away any and all tests with a negative light.

I'm here because I couldn't care less which company it is- I want the best I can afford- regardless of its lauded history. I'm absolutely enjoying the shit out of a company looking pretty bad right now even though it's just one speaker of many. But It's not like I'll never buy them (like I really could!) because of this thread, it's just nice for us commoners to be able to get some real world testing instead of relying solely on the marketing group.

Also, since i'm writing a book here, It's pretty obvious the ATC fanboys that just signed up to defend them. (though, I too just recently signed up as I plan on sending in an old JBL L20t for testing- I did purchase the JBL 305 MKII's for my computer setup from his testing though. Now if I can only get my lauded(!) 1820M working)

Now, if anyone cares to tell my that an LCD is better than my 24" CRT GDM FW900 then you can go right off a cliff-s i've told every salesmen and forum member since LCD's first came out.

I'm such a novice with all this stuff when it comes to speakers but it's so fascinating and I wish I would've learned it in my 20's or 30's. Wonderful stuff (but my RSL 3600's aren't going anywhere.) I've read most of the speaker reviews at length- and working on the amps and all the other fun stuff here.

 

[Lao Lu]

I wasn't going to respond to the Mac lauding - as only a mac fan can do- But I realized this is actually on topic when the discussion of this drapes into this whole thread and the paramount consumerism and the negligence of the typical user.

Pharos makes a grand statement (I use that statement since my first 8088, Mac users have always been this way) saying, "I found them vastly superior to PCs.... and that, "...the build quality has always been better....)

Show me a mac user, and I'll show you a man who doesn't tinker and know anything about the innards.

Yes, a complete generalization. But with caveats that I've understood since also using and building since the late 80's.

What Pharos is saying is completely reasonable from his perspective. He uses the computer and it just works. He needs sound? Oh, it has onboard sound. Cool. It needs a midi port? Shit! It has one!

That's Macs. That was always Macs. But nowhere in any decade will you find someone who can prove macs were more reliable than a PC. You know why? Because macs used the same parts as a PC. I still have every damn processor all the way back to my 386's and AMD/Intel's because those are easy to hold too. The motherboards never died- just upgraded (though I wish I kept my Pentium II brick.) The hard drives were all crap unless you bought SCSI or enterprise, but I still do have my original 40MB drive from it.

And building a PC? You used a part that was the cheapest you could find- or you spent the extra bucks for the top of the line. PC's were built for those of us that wanted the build to be EXACTLY like we wanted and for a quarter of the price.

The only thing a Mac person saw was the ugly PC cases and assumed their Macs were better (thank god for Apple upping that game!) and, sometimes they were! people specifically included many things in a Mac that a PC didn't have. For us on the PC side, we had to buy every little damn thing that it didn't have. but we didn't give a shit how it looked. Hell, half the time it wasn't in a case- but built on the side of it.

There was no better than PC- Mac just had it built in. But it used the same damn hard drives and the same damn RAM for MUCH more money. They had no duper-secret component maker with mystical quality.

If you were sold on a Mac, a PC wouldn't do. In the end (as it is today with apple-that's what you were paying for (and still are))- an eco system that you find more attractive and a user base lauding the company- to a point that those users actually believe in its lengthy reliability over any thing else.

The one thing I did notice about Mac guys was that they just worked on them. They didn't want, for the most part, to tinker about, they wanted to work and get shit done. Which is what a computer(tool) is for. But you pay for that eco system. as same as with the Iphones. I've used them and hate them. They're so...closed off and limited. But as we know, others see android as a hot mess- too much going on. Totally customizeable. But, hey, I'll use an Ipad over my surface (AH!) when the need arises no problem.

Pharos is saying we shouldn't use ad-hominem and to use tighter reasoning and language. But he is doing with the ATC company exactly what he has always been doing when touting Macs against PC's- alluding to them as if they are far and above other companies' offerings and willingly looks for favored excuses to wash away any and all tests with a negative light.

I'm here because I couldn't care less which company it is- I want the best I can afford- regardless of its lauded history. I'm absolutely enjoying the shit out of a company looking pretty bad right now even though it's just one speaker of many. But It's not like I'll never buy them (like I really could!) because of this thread, it's just nice for us commoners to be able to get some real world testing instead of relying solely on the marketing group.

Also, since i'm writing a book here, It's pretty obvious the ATC fanboys that just signed up to defend them. (though, I too just recently signed up as I plan on sending in an old JBL L20t for testing- I did purchase the JBL 305 MKII's for my computer setup from his testing though. Now if I can only get my lauded(!) 1820M working)

Now, if anyone cares to tell my that an LCD is better than my 24" CRT GDM FW900 then you can go right off a cliff-s i've told every salesmen and forum member since LCD's first came out.

I'm such a novice with all this stuff when it comes to speakers but it's so fascinating and I wish I would've learned it in my 20's or 30's. Wonderful stuff (but my RSL 3600's aren't going anywhere.) I've read most of the speaker reviews at length- and working on the amps and all the other fun stuff here.

My admittedly effusive comments in defense of ATC were not because I am a fanboy, but rather I thought that I had bought a loudspeaker that was made, like the Benchmark amp and dacs, to be well-built tools and antidotes to hi-fi nonsense...I will of course restate again: Tested was the 19 V1 of six years ago; the 19 V2 has a new tweeter and a completely different (better?) cabinet, and a modified crossover. And from the comment made by Benchmark about their choice of a non-ported loudspeaker one can infer that in principle they must have approved of ATC's sealed cabinets for small loudspeakers; (isn't there someone from Benchmark a member here?) Lastly, John Marks' piece (https://www.stereophile.com/content/fifth-element-85) about sealed cabinets that touches on the history of design, the role of Edgar Villchur, and his impressions about the 19 V2 are interesting. The specified low measurement of 54 HZ sounds anything but light on bass in a small room with room-reinforcement (close to back wall and corner) driven by the impressive Benchmark front end... I get bass down to the high 30s....Enough said, I will now retreat back into the soothing sound world of Paul Desmond's saxophone on "Glad to be Unhappy"....

 

[MattHooper]

The LS3/5A isn't a good speaker for music and was quacked and fizzed up to better reproduce distortion and hiss in the broadcast program (in OB vans).

Never heard the original LS3/5A, but my Spendor S3/5s are one of my favourite all time speakers for listening to music.

That's incorrect, the LS3/5a was designed to monitor voice broadcasts in vans and small control boots, as per design brief:

This report describes the design of a miniature two-unit loudspeaker of adequate sound quality and loudness to serve as a monitor in conditions where larger existing designs would be unusable.

Why a faction of the audiophile community chose to rave about it is quite the mistery...

If they sound like the Spendor version, it's no mystery to me. I've rarely heard a speaker sound more natural with voices. But, never having heard both versions I don't know what Spendor may have changed.

 

[AudioSceptic]

Never heard the original LS3/5A, but my Spendor S3/5s are one of my favourite all time speakers for listening to music.



If they sound like the Spendor version, it's no mystery to me. I've rarely heard a speaker sound more natural with voices. But, never having heard both versions I don't know what Spendor may have changed.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood what you say, but the Spendor S3/5 is not Spendor's version of the LS3/5a. The latter is a BBC design and many, including Spendor, have made licensed versions over the years. The S3/5 is the same size, and the name was chosen for obvious reasons, but it is a different design, just as say, the Harbeth P3ESR is. You can see that just by looking at it <https://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/879/index.html>. Spendor have also made the (new) SA1 and D1, more expensive speakers again of similar size, but different designs again.

 

[Pharos]

You post vntgehauer feels like a personal and vindictive attack on me.

Firstly I think "lauding" is an exaggeration of my stance, and that praising may be more accurate, and I do not think that my statement was "grand", but just an opinion based on my experience.

"The one thing I did notice about Mac guys was that they just worked on them. "

I have 'tinkered' minimally with my Macs, but to me they are a tool, and I do not personally want to study the workings of a tool in the same way that I do not want to know when using a pair of scissors, what their steel alloy is comprised of, the rake angle of the cutting blades, or the thread used to hold the blades together.

"The hard drives were all crap unless you bought SCSI or enterprise " seems to support a superiority in Macs, they used SCSI drives.

My introduction to Macs was as an aspiring musician, and my affinity with Performer software, particularly its interface.

"The only thing a Mac person saw was the ugly PC cases and assumed their Macs were better ", so presumably you have a statistical analysis of the psychology and sociology of the processes by which the public chooses.
I again, have before me some evidence of Mac superiority.

I have evidence before me, as in the past of superiority in Mac builds compared with the PC I am using now.

The mouse I am using now is a Microsoft Comfort Optical Mouse 3000, and when I bought it, I bought three because of one particular feature, the magnifier facility. The casing clicks such that it is very similar to the actual mouse click because the castings/vac-forming are so poor in tolerance, and it creaks. The Apple mouse is beautifully made and functions succinctly, and, MS have stopped supporting the magnify function, and so I have lost that facility.

"Pharos is saying we shouldn't use ad-hominem and to use tighter reasoning and language. But he is doing with the ATC company exactly what he has always been doing when touting Macs against PC's- alluding to them as if they are far and above other companies' offerings and willingly looks for favored excuses to wash away any and all tests with a negative light. "

I think this is an exaggeration, my view, supported by my criticality of them after having four pairs, and rejecting them
in favour of a speaker costing about 1/5th of the ones I had, and after my rebuilding the last, SCM100ALS because of my dissatisfaction with their sound. This is not 'washing away' what I see as their faults.

But of course you are free to project your own feelings resulting from your reaction to my post, if that is what you wish to do.

"I'm absolutely enjoying the shit out of a company looking pretty bad right now " In contrast, I felt sad at the result, and do not gloat at the misfortune of others, especially in this case, despite my reservations about ATC, I have an affection for them and an admiration for much of what they do.

You seem to be contentiously challenging, and that is OK, but without a clear argument based on facts and reasoning, this may be more to do with you own emotional needs than the realities under discussion..

 

[Dialectic]

My admittedly effusive comments in defense of ATC were not because I am a fanboy, but rather I thought that I had bought a loudspeaker that was made, like the Benchmark amp and dacs, to be well-built tools and antidotes to hi-fi nonsense...I will of course restate again: Tested was the 19 V1 of six years ago; the 19 V2 has a new tweeter and a completely different (better?) cabinet, and a modified crossover. And from the comment made by Benchmark about their choice of a non-ported loudspeaker one can infer that in principle they must have approved of ATC's sealed cabinets for small loudspeakers; (isn't there someone from Benchmark a member here?)

So you want Benchmark to defend a third party's product, which happens to be a wildly overpriced loudspeaker with questionable engineering priorities (e.g., the pointlessly heavy cabinet) and--even if we disregard its high price--mediocre performance?

Lastly, John Marks' piece (https://www.stereophile.com/content/fifth-element-85) about sealed cabinets that touches on the history of design, the role of Edgar Villchur, and his impressions about the 19 V2 are interesting. The specified low measurement of 54 HZ sounds anything but light on bass in a small room with room-reinforcement (close to back wall and corner) driven by the impressive Benchmark front end... I get bass down to the high 30s....Enough said, I will now retreat back into the soothing sound world of Paul Desmond's saxophone on "Glad to be Unhappy"....

I don't think anyone who has ever heard John Marks' recordings regards him as an authority.

 

[richard12511]

I wasn't going to respond to the Mac lauding - as only a mac fan can do- But I realized this is actually on topic when the discussion of this drapes into this whole thread and the paramount consumerism and the negligence of the typical user.

Pharos makes a grand statement (I use that statement since my first 8088, Mac users have always been this way) saying, "I found them vastly superior to PCs.... and that, "...the build quality has always been better....)

Show me a mac user, and I'll show you a man who doesn't tinker and know anything about the innards.

Yes, a complete generalization. But with caveats that I've understood since also using and building since the late 80's.

What Pharos is saying is completely reasonable from his perspective. He uses the computer and it just works. He needs sound? Oh, it has onboard sound. Cool. It needs a midi port? Shit! It has one!

That's Macs. That was always Macs. But nowhere in any decade will you find someone who can prove macs were more reliable than a PC. You know why? Because macs used the same parts as a PC. I still have every damn processor all the way back to my 386's and AMD/Intel's because those are easy to hold too. The motherboards never died- just upgraded (though I wish I kept my Pentium II brick.) The hard drives were all crap unless you bought SCSI or enterprise, but I still do have my original 40MB drive from it.

And building a PC? You used a part that was the cheapest you could find- or you spent the extra bucks for the top of the line. PC's were built for those of us that wanted the build to be EXACTLY like we wanted and for a quarter of the price.

The only thing a Mac person saw was the ugly PC cases and assumed their Macs were better (thank god for Apple upping that game!) and, sometimes they were! people specifically included many things in a Mac that a PC didn't have. For us on the PC side, we had to buy every little damn thing that it didn't have. but we didn't give a shit how it looked. Hell, half the time it wasn't in a case- but built on the side of it.

There was no better than PC- Mac just had it built in. But it used the same damn hard drives and the same damn RAM for MUCH more money. They had no duper-secret component maker with mystical quality.

If you were sold on a Mac, a PC wouldn't do. In the end (as it is today with apple-that's what you were paying for (and still are))- an eco system that you find more attractive and a user base lauding the company- to a point that those users actually believe in its lengthy reliability over any thing else.

The one thing I did notice about Mac guys was that they just worked on them. They didn't want, for the most part, to tinker about, they wanted to work and get shit done. Which is what a computer(tool) is for. But you pay for that eco system. as same as with the Iphones. I've used them and hate them. They're so...closed off and limited. But as we know, others see android as a hot mess- too much going on. Totally customizeable. But, hey, I'll use an Ipad over my surface (AH!) when the need arises no problem.

Pharos is saying we shouldn't use ad-hominem and to use tighter reasoning and language. But he is doing with the ATC company exactly what he has always been doing when touting Macs against PC's- alluding to them as if they are far and above other companies' offerings and willingly looks for favored excuses to wash away any and all tests with a negative light.

I'm here because I couldn't care less which company it is- I want the best I can afford- regardless of its lauded history. I'm absolutely enjoying the shit out of a company looking pretty bad right now even though it's just one speaker of many. But It's not like I'll never buy them (like I really could!) because of this thread, it's just nice for us commoners to be able to get some real world testing instead of relying solely on the marketing group.

Also, since i'm writing a book here, It's pretty obvious the ATC fanboys that just signed up to defend them. (though, I too just recently signed up as I plan on sending in an old JBL L20t for testing- I did purchase the JBL 305 MKII's for my computer setup from his testing though. Now if I can only get my lauded(!) 1820M working)

Now, if anyone cares to tell my that an LCD is better than my 24" CRT GDM FW900 then you can go right off a cliff-s i've told every salesmen and forum member since LCD's first came out.

I'm such a novice with all this stuff when it comes to speakers but it's so fascinating and I wish I would've learned it in my 20's or 30's. Wonderful stuff (but my RSL 3600's aren't going anywhere.) I've read most of the speaker reviews at length- and working on the amps and all the other fun stuff here.

My biggest gripe with PCs has always been the inferior terminal. There are workarounds, for sure, but I've always found them lacking. Right now, I've got a linux machine, a macbook pro, and custom built PC. I tend to use the linux and mac more for work(sotware dev), and the PC for gaming. There are pros and cons to all three, ime.

 

[Lao Lu]

So you want Benchmark to defend a third party's product, which happens to be a wildly overpriced loudspeaker with questionable engineering priorities (e.g., the pointlessly heavy cabinet) and--even if we disregard its high price--mediocre performance?


I don't think anyone who has ever heard John Marks' recordings regards him as an authority.

From Benchmark's website: "When Benchmark decided to add a speaker to our line, the goal was simple in concept, but would require careful implementation. We would build on the attributes of our favorite speakers. ...We know that small ported loudspeakers have become fashionable. We don’t do fashion. The SMS1 is an acoustic suspension loudspeaker. By nature, it is more linear than a ported design. It can also produce impressively deep bass. The trade-off is efficiency. " I have never heard one of John Marks' recordings; regardless of their aesthetic shortcomings I do not see how they would impede him from expressing fundamental truths learned from researching as impressive an audio engineer as Edgar Villchur: "All things being equal, a sealed-box design will begin rolling off in the bass from a higher frequency, but its roll-off will be half as rapid as in a ported design." And once again, that is their model from six years ago. The current model has a new tweeter, a new crossover, and an entirely redesigned cabinet. Do you believe that it would measure the same, or worse than the previous model? It is heavy at 39 pounds, it is expensive at $4000, and while I know I can have something that equals it custom built here in China for $1000, I sort of like the idea that a number of people of been gainfully employed for decades in the UK making a product that brings others real enjoyment.

 

[Ilkless]

From Benchmark's website: "When Benchmark decided to add a speaker to our line, the goal was simple in concept, but would require careful implementation. We would build on the attributes of our favorite speakers. ...We know that small ported loudspeakers have become fashionable. We don’t do fashion. The SMS1 is an acoustic suspension loudspeaker. By nature, it is more linear than a ported design. It can also produce impressively deep bass. The trade-off is efficiency. " I have never heard one of John Marks' recordings; regardless of their aesthetic shortcomings I do not see how they would impede him from expressing fundamental truths learned from researching as impressive an audio engineer as Edgar Villchur: "All things being equal, a sealed-box design will begin rolling off in the bass from a higher frequency, but its roll-off will be half as rapid as in a ported design." And once again, that is their model from six years ago. The current model has a new tweeter, a new crossover, and an entirely redesigned cabinet. Do you believe that it would measure the same, or worse than the previous model? It is heavy at 39 pounds, it is expensive at $4000, and while I know I can have something that equals it custom built here in China for $1000, I sort of like the idea that a number of people of been gainfully employed for decades in the UK making a product that brings others real enjoyment.

First off, Benchmark uncharacteristically bought into a ton of hifi nonsense with the SMS1, by partnering with one of those cottage industry firms whose engineering abilities are outdated (being very charitable): Studio Electric. Pitfalls of letting an electronics firm unwisely expanding into transducers. The appeal to authority here is therefore laughable because the data disproves your biased anecdotal experience and Benchmark's marketing speak. Benchmark's expertise in electronics does not necessarily translate into truthful advertising, especially in a field that isn't its specialty.

This is the M4, Studio Electric's own standmounter:

Benchmark added Speakon outputs but scarcely improved on it with the SMS1 (measurements from Hi-Fi News):

You chose to defend the ATC by citing a loudspeaker with a 10dB swing from 200Hz to 20kHz on-axis.

The SCM19 V1 in question here may be discontinued, but it was still made in a time where much better was attainable. Other posts in this thread have further established:

1. That the signature driver of the company, the ATC mid dome got obliterated by a competing dome in a more compact form factor, that was in production at the same time (Neumann dome) - to get the competing dome to distort as much as the ATC requires 4 to 10 times the power input (depending on which Neumann speaker) and as much as twice the loudness. Not very state-of-the-art, especially when the ATC has a much larger and heavier footprint than the Neumann. Nothing less than outdated, clunky engineering based on a mere cult of personality
2. That their active speakers (SCM25 ASL Pro) using the mid dome are similarly bad and backwards. Speakers that are reputed to show the company at its best vs its domestic speakers are just as bad.
3. Basic measurements of the SCM19 V2 made in less rigourous conditions than Amir's show scarce improvement.
4. That, as @Purité Audio pointed out, the loss in output in the mids and bass maybe due to bad design of terminals, quoting a review from another magazine (that also shows bad acoustic engineering of the SCM25 as the tests in (2). So bad mechanical design, not just acoustic engineering.

None of these facts reflect well upon the company in isolation. That they are true all at once leads to the inevitable conclusion that the company, out of ignorance, complacency, arrogance or begrudgingly pandering to its luddite clientele (as Keith observed), regularly peddles loudspeakers with poor engineering that are propped up only by a cult of personality.

Any other conclusion is intellectually dishonest. The apologism is frankly embarrassing.

Also, supporting small businesses with a similar model to ATC does not have to mean compromised engineering. I can name many firms like ATC but with actual good engineering. KEF Reference and Blade is still made in Kent. Salk does amazing artisanal work with great, proven drivers - even their entry-level $1k monitor has box made in Michigan, SEAS midwoofers (SEAS is owned by its own employees and their factory is in Norway) and Hiquphon tweeters (made in small batches to extremely tight tolerances by the designer in Denmark). JTR and Danley do well-engineered high SPL. Genelec and Neumann make in Finland and Northern Ireland respectively. Gradient of Finland are another brand that put their own spin on speaker design, but are backed by sound engineering principles.

 

[Pharos]

That is pretty hard hitting Ilkless, do you not give ATC any credit for any of their models?

How, if they are so poor, have they managed to penetrate the professional monitoring market to such a degree?

 

[TimVG]

How, if they are so poor, have they managed to penetrate the professional monitoring market to such a degree?

How did PMC? How did the Yamaha NS10? Then there was the UREI era.. Objective performance has little to do with succes in the professional world when it comes to monitoring.

 

[Ilkless]

That is pretty hard hitting Ilkless, do you not give ATC any credit for any of their models?

How, if they are so poor, have they managed to penetrate the professional monitoring market to such a degree?

As some other users have touched on earlier in this thread, the pro audio market can be just as susceptible to cults of personality. The problem is that ATC has a more subtle cult of personality that's based on a superficial commitment to engineering, which is not blatantly voodoo. And the flawed heuristic that large, heavy drivers = great build quality and engineering = great sound/acoustic design.

 

[TimVG]

On one hand with large studios it also comes down to getting them for a good deal below market value (or even free!) so that the company can use the studio/artist/.. for promoting the brand. On the other hand for small studios or individuals, it is empowering to choose ones own system based on whatever criteria they may have. For people like these the measurements don't matter nearly as much as prestige, peer approval, and using their golden ears as the tool of choice.
Just look at this crap: