ATC speakers / Monitors

[YSC]

Measurement mikes are usually small omnis, which are rarely useful for recording. But yeah, their flatness would be a problem too. Recording is essentially reduction, compression, taming. To add excitement back, in a way that domestic replay can handle, favorite recording mikes have broad peaks and dips that create punch, warmth, pleasant smoothness, etc. Initial EQ decisions are made by mike choice and then mike position. The more care you take there, the less you have to do later.

yea and that's what I think, so I agree in this sense that the production chain "engineers" or whoever you call, don't really try to recreate the live sound, as of how the replay of X speaker have some magic to make it sound like live is kind of a silly goal/claim to me, the best we can get is the system being true to the recording

 

[617]

I do doubt this part, in my understanding the recording/mixing guy in the mixing room, can only listen to loudspeaker sound which comes from the mic-> speaker, where only the artist in the recording room listen to live sound?? I thought their experience is tuning the sound to be "good" for replay using the systems they use, or have in mind what earbuds/car speakers/BT speakers would sound good while not F up the mix in higher res gears. If I am one of the producing chain guy actually I won't care too much of say, off axis or even if the speaker in "neutral" or "honest", only "good enough" as I would need to have some reference to make the average Joe's speaker still sound ok/good for my mix, so anything not limited in SPL and kind of neutral could get the job done, after all, the audiophile with hundreds of thousand dollar system and room are the <0.01%.

IME Hobbist usually seek for perfection way more than pro in the gears they use, say only geeks seek out the latest computer/cameras every generation, for pros, they choose the best/adequate setup they can, dump big money into it, and continue business until the gear breaks/ fall behind too much to get the job done right, then go for next upgrade, usually the pros choose on reliability, instant replacement service within warranty and familiarity of use over absolute quality. say for photography which is once my part time job, using the same brand of camera is always my choice as I don't need to re-adapt to the controls every new camera, even if my used to brand is falling behind half or even one generation in technical perfection, I think same goes for studios, if you adapted to some good enough but maybe less good speakers and you already adapted that to how it translate to the layman's system, you won't want the balance of it to change, even it's changing to be more transparent to source/ even live performance, coz the 99% of wild speakers out there is what feed you

Then photography analogy is great. I have a few things I do which involve using a camera as a tool in an artistic context, but I've noticed being familiar with a flawed or basic tool is way better than trusting the veracity of some super high tech state of the art thing. Our visual apparatus simply isn't sensitive to the things which cameras are getting incrementally better at, and if you can control light and manage color, very little else matters much. I can see loudspeakers in the recording context being like that. It's not like recording engineers are really attempting to achieve fidelity, whatever that even means.

In the mixing context, when tonal balance is massaged for final delivery, I would like to see more standardized loudspeakers. I would also like to see mixes dedicated to different playback contexts, such as car, portable, multichannel and hifi.

 

[dfuller]

In the mixing context, when tonal balance is massaged for final delivery, I would like to see more standardized loudspeakers. I would also like to see mixes dedicated to different playback contexts, such as car, portable, multichannel and hifi.

This is asking a lot. Surround mixing is already something that you don't necessarily want your stereo mixer doing, so that's more money.

And asking for different masters like that is something that is already sort of done.

 

[YSC]

Then photography analogy is great. I have a few things I do which involve using a camera as a tool in an artistic context, but I've noticed being familiar with a flawed or basic tool is way better than trusting the veracity of some super high tech state of the art thing. Our visual apparatus simply isn't sensitive to the things which cameras are getting incrementally better at, and if you can control light and manage color, very little else matters much. I can see loudspeakers in the recording context being like that. It's not like recording engineers are really attempting to achieve fidelity, whatever that even means.

In the mixing context, when tonal balance is massaged for final delivery, I would like to see more standardized loudspeakers. I would also like to see mixes dedicated to different playback contexts, such as car, portable, multichannel and hifi.

yes that is exactly what I think, for the pros producing the product, the tool's quality/perfection degree as in accuracy is not too important as long as the producer knows what he's doing and the limitations of that to produce the final product, and in case of studio, more than often a few different sets are used, so if the main monitor or such is perfect in off axis or even on axis FR isn't as important, frequency extension and SPL before clipping is, plus one won't want the studio gears to change in tonal balance often, it's like tuning photo colour by a different uncalibrated monitor every now and then, which guarantees disaster.

While for consumer enjoyment, I would say tonal accuracy as in neutrality and directivity being way more important as we would want the sound to be as close to "the artist intended" as possible, especially in home audio even with treated room, more than often we will walk around, pick up some drinks, wives coming in or so where good directivity ensures a much wider sweet spot

 

[goat76]

yea and that's what I think, so I agree in this sense that the production chain "engineers" or whoever you call, don't really try to recreate the live sound, as of how the replay of X speaker have some magic to make it sound like live is kind of a silly goal/claim to me, the best we can get is the system being true to the recording

This may come as a surprise to you, but even if the aim of the recording is to recreate the original sound and how it really sounded live in the recording space, the right choice of non-flat microphones can often give you a closer replication of the original sound. It all depends on distances and proximity effects, and pick up patterns of the microphones.

So in short, a bunch of “colored” microphones can often give you a better “documentation result” of the original sound event.

 

[rpki]

People spend endless amounts of hours arguing correct speaker design according to their textbooks on forums. And then they go home and listen to Music that has a high chance it was mixed/mastered on ATC, PMC and similar brands. If you ever have the chance to talk to engineers that spend 8 hours or more mixing, mastering, do it.

 

[YSC]

This may come as a surprise to you, but even if the aim of the recording is to recreate the original sound and how it really sounded live in the recording space, the right choice of non-flat microphones can often give you a closer replication of the original sound. It all depends on distances and proximity effects, and pick up patterns of the microphones.

So in short, a bunch of “colored” microphones can often give you a better “documentation result” of the original sound event.

not really, pick up pattern or so will always have an effect, but if say, one wanna re-create the sound of the singer him/herself without the reflection effects of the recording studio, or recreating a live performance putting a mic on a seat vs hang in the air have different pattern, much like the predicted in room response or so,

but this don't change the point, the job of the mixing and recording engineer is to make the record sound ok on the mass market lo-fi stuffs, so inevitably it will not sound like the real thing in any hifi speaker, some kind of FR bias in the customer side, especially complicated by the room it's in, COULD occasionally hit the "closer to live" feel compared to flat speaker with good directivity, but that occasion cannot be universal for house sound A is always superior to neutral ones, AFAIK different era have mixing habits constrained by the gears available at the time, and different popular mass market norm and different studios differs, just to say for simplification, assuming mixing done by ATC will sound more real in ATC systems and done by PMC will be better on PMC speakers, and assuming all popular/nice records are done in those big, perfectly treated studios, you still have a huge variety of studio coloration, unless one only listen to a particular studio, tone curve A makes record A sounded as real as it can, but on record B very likely get it less real, what we can do as the recieving end is to not further complicate the coloration and trust the producer's mix to be good as it is, not needing additional flavor, much like a treated room is better than a non treated one, more even off axis is better than wild ones with poor directivity etc.

 

[Blockader]

People spend endless amounts of hours arguing correct speaker design according to their textbooks on forums. And then they go home and listen to Music that has a high chance it was mixed/mastered on ATC, PMC and similar brands. If you ever have the chance to talk to engineers that spend 8 hours or more mixing, mastering, do it.

All engineering students become engineers thanks to studying textbooks on forums, textbooks they find on internet. We build the bridges you cross; we design the buildings you live in; we design the amplifiers you use completely based on the theories which we can't understand intuitively but only through mathematics. I see no problem in understanding speaker design via textbooks.

 

[goat76]

not really, pick up pattern or so will always have an effect, but if say, one wanna re-create the sound of the singer him/herself without the reflection effects of the recording studio, or recreating a live performance putting a mic on a seat vs hang in the air have different pattern, much like the predicted in room response or so,

but this don't change the point, the job of the mixing and recording engineer is to make the record sound ok on the mass market lo-fi stuffs, so inevitably it will not sound like the real thing in any hifi speaker, some kind of FR bias in the customer side, especially complicated by the room it's in, COULD occasionally hit the "closer to live" feel compared to flat speaker with good directivity, but that occasion cannot be universal for house sound A is always superior to neutral ones, AFAIK different era have mixing habits constrained by the gears available at the time, and different popular mass market norm and different studios differs, just to say for simplification, assuming mixing done by ATC will sound more real in ATC systems and done by PMC will be better on PMC speakers, and assuming all popular/nice records are done in those big, perfectly treated studios, you still have a huge variety of studio coloration, unless one only listen to a particular studio, tone curve A makes record A sounded as real as it can, but on record B very likely get it less real, what we can do as the recieving end is to not further complicate the coloration and trust the producer's mix to be good as it is, not needing additional flavor, much like a treated room is better than a non treated one, more even off axis is better than wild ones with poor directivity etc.

I see now that we are talking about two completely different things. I was talking exclusively about recordings that aim for the live sound, a "documentation" of how the band really sounds in the studio, which should obviously sound like that on all types of speakers.

You seem to be talking about the sound of different speakers that sound more or less "live" than others, but I can't see what that got to do with how the recordings are done.

I simply have no clue how a mix could be done to make it sound more "live" on a specific brand of speakers, and less live on another brand.

But if I was to comment on “live-sounding” speakers, that more lively sound tends to follow the speaker whatever is played. It's not like one pair of speakers will sound more live than another pair of speakers for a particular recording, and the opposite for another recording.

 

[Eckerslad]

The FR around 4K is ragged, crossover problems? Above 5 kHz the treble is elevated. Wonder if the active version is better. I’d go for the Neumann 420 myself.

From the referenced review:
“The grille was largely non-invasive, and while attenuating the output above 2kHz by almost 1.5dB, it actually smoothed the frequency response by reducing the mild enclosure diffraction effect (a 2dB feature seen otherwise at 4kHz, resulting from the step at the enclosure edges)”

I have a pair of the active versions myself. ATC recommend you listen with the grilles on - they incorporate a chamfered edge to help with diffraction. The pro version also has this chamfered edge.

Also of note is that the review is of the older version, since I think 2015 ATC fitted their in-house tweeter, which is apparently less “hot”

 

[Eckerslad]

View attachment 248295View attachment 248296View attachment 248297View attachment 248298View attachment 248300
Some cool photos

From the top photo of the tweeters, it’s interesting that they use different waveguides. The tweeter on the left is the “Super” version which is used on the bigger pro and classic lines, the shallower but smoother radiused one on the right is from their home hifi range

 

[Avp1]

While for consumer enjoyment, I would say tonal accuracy as in neutrality and directivity being way more important as we would want the sound to be as close to "the artist intended" as possible, especially in home audio even with treated room, more than often we will walk around, pick up some drinks, wives coming in or so where good directivity ensures a much wider sweet spot

From my experience this is not a case. I was/is a member of several high-end audio clubs. Most setups are very far from transparent. Actually they mostly were made less transparent on purpose by their owners. Wide sweet spot is not a requirement. In most cases there is only one listener all the time. Some speakers not known for wide sweet spot (like Wilsons) are very popular in that group. Bass response also hit or miss - ranges from excellent with integration of multiple subs to either boomy or outright missing (surprise for speakers with dual 18" drivers). Almost no one uses active room response correction, but many use passive equalizers like MIT "cables".

 

[YSC]

From my experience this is not a case. I was/is a member of several high-end audio clubs. Most setups are very far from transparent. Actually they mostly were made less transparent on purpose by their owners. Wide sweet spot is not a requirement. In most cases there is only one listener all the time. Some speakers not known for wide sweet spot (like Wilsons) are very popular in that group. Bass response also hit or miss - ranges from excellent with integration of multiple subs to either boomy or outright missing (surprise for speakers with dual 18" drivers). Almost no one uses active room response correction, but many use passive equalizers like MIT "cables".

that's just how most audiophile clubs are running.. mostly sold on brands, marketing gimmicks, with a lot of snake oil like cable risers and all from subjective impressions...

sadly though most who can afford those are at least passing their mid ages, where hearing loss is quite a problem

 

[YSC]

I see now that we are talking about two completely different things. I was talking exclusively about recordings that aim for the live sound, a "documentation" of how the band really sounds in the studio, which should obviously sound like that on all types of speakers.

You seem to be talking about the sound of different speakers that sound more or less "live" than others, but I can't see what that got to do with how the recordings are done.

I simply have no clue how a mix could be done to make it sound more "live" on a specific brand of speakers, and less live on another brand.

But if I was to comment on “live-sounding” speakers, that more lively sound tends to follow the speaker whatever is played. It's not like one pair of speakers will sound more live than another pair of speakers for a particular recording, and the opposite for another recording.

ah I actually was confused about another thread on do we want speaker sound the same, that one have been in similar coloration topic

 

[goat76]

ah I actually was confused about another thread on do we want speaker sound the same, that one have been in similar coloration topic

It doesn't have to be “coloration” that makes a speaker sound more live than others. For me, it can as likely just be that some speakers have a more dynamic sound that brings out a more rhythmic live-like sound, something that does exist in the recordings but that many speakers can't reproduce in a convincing way.

My ATC speakers have this fast stop-and-go quality that brings forward a more engaging dynamic feel of the music, that's the thing that, at least for me, makes it sound more “live” than many other speakers I’ve heard of the same size.
As I see it, that’s a less-colored reproduction and most likely more true to the incoming signal.

 

[YSC]

It doesn't have to be “coloration” that makes a speaker sound more live than others. For me, it can as likely just be that some speakers have a more dynamic sound that brings out a more rhythmic live-like sound, something that does exist in the recordings but that many speakers can't reproduce in a convincing way.

My ATC speakers have this fast stop-and-go quality that brings forward a more engaging dynamic feel of the music, that's the thing that, at least for me, makes it sound more “live” than many other speakers I’ve heard of the same size.
As I see it, that’s a less-colored reproduction and most likely more true to the incoming signal.

AFAIK the fast start stop quality should be reflected in transient response, where it measures how fast or slow the ringing "parasitic tone" persist after the signal, ATC measurements on the web did shows it is doing well in this regard, but need more data from same source to determine one is better than the other.

 

[Pearljam5000]

Which is better?

 

[Purité Audio]

Are the drivers exactly the same, the enclosure is I believe the same … distortion looks a bit higher in the active version.
Keith

 

[thewas]

Are the drivers exactly the same, the enclosure is I believe the same … distortion looks a bit higher in the active version.
Keith

Even the on and and off-axis tuning look very similar, the active one is tuned a bit deeper in the bass though which is probably also the reason that the distortion increases in there more.

 

[outfaced]

There is just something in ATC ... cant say what, but even now, when i switched to genelecs, cant deny it.
RTM Media city music studio seems to think the same