ATC speakers / Monitors

[Avp1]

Most likely they did some clown stuff like we all did at one point or another.

They just never figured it out and blamed the monitors.

I know I already experienced the same.

Reflection , monitor placement and uneven absorption can deliver that sort of effect. Also some phase issues can happen .

Then you'd get a feel of depth and wonder why.

I suspect that uneven frequency dependent dispersion actually can add to a feel of depth. From my experience changing of toe-in does change depth of sound field, this is likely by changing balance between direct and reflected sounds. If dispersion is frequency dependent, reflected sound will also vary with frequency. That may cause as sense of some sound sources closer and further away. That way speakers which measure worse may actually sound better, though not accurately reproducing recorded audio.

 

[Deleted member 57422]

I suspect that uneven frequency dependent dispersion actually can add to a feel of depth. From my experience changing of toe-in does change depth of sound field, this is likely by changing balance between direct and reflected sounds. If dispersion is frequency dependent, reflected sound will also vary with frequency. That may cause as sense of some sound sources closer and further away. That way speakers which measure worse may actually sound better, though not accurately reproducing recorded audio.

That's also what I think happened.

Misplacement is the most probable thing that happened.

 

[Tovarich007]

That's the basics of referencing.

I think what he mentioned is young engineers forgeting some crucial part of a mix or mastering project and trying to shortcome the issues by using the fast lane and blaming their ATC's for it.

There's a lot of precious princess in the classical world and that's me being polite.

I'm assuming those are young engineers as I wouldn't even think of a serious engineers calling a set of ATC's as ''bring your cans''. and then having the guts to call me presomptuous. That would be nothing short of a Karen throwing a tantrum and getting her butt handed to her outside of a Mall.

Dear Martel, I most probably know Radio France and the people i'm talking about more than you do !

They are not young frustrated unexerienced sound professionnals, they are seasoned and well trained ones who have the rare opportunity to work with a lot of different excellent monitors. Please speak about what you know, not about what you don't ! You don't point out an objective fact, you suppose and by doing so you try to dismiss the testimony made by these engineers.
You speak about "precious princesses" in the classical field without knowing the people you qualify this way. Well, I think there are divas too in other genres ?
On my side, I never tried to dismiss the comments of people I don't know nor suppose they are so or so (and I like Atcs myself, as i wrote).

Going back to speakers, I know of no perfect speaker, so why don't you admit ATCs are not perfect ones and that other ones can be preferred in some circumstances ?

 

[goat76]

They are not young frustrated unexerienced sound professionnals, they are seasoned and well trained ones who have the rare opportunity to work with a lot of different excellent monitors. Please speak about what you know, not about what you don't !

So how do you or the people at Radio France know that the ATC speakers don’t portray the depth of the soundstage in an accurate manner? The only thing they can be certain of is that the other speakers don't portray the same depth, but based on just that, they can hardly be sure it's not the other brands that lack in this department.

As you know the people at Radio French, please ask them how a speaker can portray a deeper soundstage than what is on the actual recording.

 

[Deleted member 57422]

Dear Martel, I most probably know Radio France and the people i'm talking about more than you do !

They are not young frustrated unexerienced sound professionnals, they are seasoned and well trained ones who have the rare opportunity to work with a lot of different excellent monitors. Please speak about what you know, not about what you don't ! You don't point out an objective fact, you suppose and by doing so you try to dismiss the testimony made by these engineers.
You speak about "precious princesses" in the classical field without knowing the people you qualify this way. Well, I think there are divas too in other genres ?
On my side, I never tried to dismiss the comments of people I don't know nor suppose they are so or so (and I like Atcs myself, as i wrote).

Going back to speakers, I know of no perfect speaker, so why don't you admit ATCs are not perfect ones and that other ones can be preferred in some circumstances ?

Dear Tovarich,
I most probably know ATC’s and the people i'm talking about more than you do !

They are not young frustrated unexerienced sound professionnals, they are seasoned and well trained ones who have the rare opportunity to work with the most prolific mastering engineer in the world. Please speak about what you know, not about what you don't ! You don't point out an objective fact, you suppose and by doing so you try to dismiss the testimony made by these engineers.
I speak about "precious princesses" and narcissistic people insulting others then playing the victim in the classical field without knowing the people i qualify this way based on their saying ! Well, you think there are divas too in other genres ? No sh!t Sherlock, ámeme tes Cannes and put where your mouth is.
On my side, I never tried to dismiss the comments of people I don't know nor suppose they are so or so (and I like classical myself, as i wrote).

I think we’re done here

 

[Avp1]

There is the only sure way to find if someone honestly believes in specific speaker quality or just pretend: through the money spent. Let's see who bought mid- and far-field monitors with their money: brand and model an what they replaced. I did buy SCM100A to replace B&W 802D. Who's next?

 

[Purité Audio]

I had some active 50s here and they were pretty disappointing, from the ‘squelch’ turn on noise through the relatively coloured sound to the limited bass extension, D&D8Cs absolutely wiped the floor with them in every regard and they are cheaper too.
It was interesting in as much as I had read so much about the superiority of ATCs ‘mid-dome’ which turned out to be hype nothing more.
Keith

 

[goat76]

I had some active 50s here and they were pretty disappointing, from the ‘squelch’ turn on noise through the relatively coloured sound to the limited bass extension, D&D8Cs absolutely wiped the floor with them in every regard and they are cheaper too.
It was interesting in as much as I had read so much about the superiority of ATCs ‘mid-dome’ which turned out to be hype nothing more.
Keith

And in another part of the world, someone else will find the ATC speakers sound better than the D&D. That part is all about taste, you know.

As an example, Alpha Audio did previously a listening session between Grimm LS1a, ATC SCM40A, and Dutch & Dutch 8C. And he is now a proud owner of the ATC SCM40A speakers.

That video is also entertaining with an artist playing live in the studio between listening to the speakers. They even did a fast recording/mixing of that artist's live performance and heard it through all the speakers in the test. That must have been a highly interesting thing to experience for the guys being there in the studio, to be able to, in such a relatively short waiting time, hear what the actual music sounded live and how the 3 speakers reproduced the recording (even though it probably suffered a bit of "a room on a room" effect if the recording wasn't extremely dry).

 

[Purité Audio]

Lack of bass extension isn’t ’taste’ is it, colouration isn’t taste, I imagine that listeners who prefer colouration simply haven’t heard an un-coloured one.
I have seen that video the panel preferred the Grimm LS1 we used to sell those, I don’t agree with their findings at all.
Keith

 

[Deleted member 57422]

Distortion is also part of taste in that direct comparison something ATC's lack a lot especially in the low end which you interpret as ''lack of'' because you are used to 99% of transmitting device to have a lot of distortion in the low end and bring it all up in your face.

Coloration is your finding in regards to YOUR taste, not THE taste. I don't find them coloured. I find them mid focused which is very different.

 

[Purité Audio]

Colouration is due to their ragged off-axis response nothing to do with taste just a technical failing.
Mid focused because the bass rolls off pretty quickly, try and hear a really fine measuring loudspeaker.
Keith

 

[Deleted member 57422]

There's a 12db slope roll off at 60hz on a 150ASL. It has all the bass you want and then some.

No one in his right mind listen to a monitor off axis unless he's not professional about using those obviously. That would apply to all monitors to different extent.

 

[goat76]

Lack of bass extension isn’t ’taste’ is it, colouration isn’t taste, I imagine that listeners who prefer colouration simply haven’t heard an un-coloured one.
I have seen that video the panel preferred the Grimm LS1 we used to sell those, I don’t agree with their findings at all.
Keith

As there is no such thing as a perfect speaker, every speaker have its ups and downs when it comes to technicalities. When we listening to a speaker we judge the overall sound we hear, and it’s pretty clear that what sound aspect is important for one person don’t need to be the same for the next person.

Do you think “lack of bass” or any kind of “coloration” was the deciding factor for the guy at Alpha Audio choosing to buy the ATC speakers?
No, there was obviously the overall quality of the sound he liked and it suited his taste in one way or another.

 

[Ilkless]

As there is no such thing as a perfect speaker, every speaker have its ups and downs when it comes to technicalities. When we listening to a speaker we judge the overall sound we hear, and it’s pretty clear that what sound aspect is important for one person don’t need to be the same for the next person.

Do you think “lack of bass” or any kind of “coloration” was the deciding factor for the guy at Alpha Audio choosing to buy the ATC speakers?
No, there was obviously the overall quality of the sound he liked and it suited his taste in one way or another.

I strongly reject this speaker nihilism, that speakers are necessarily a zero-sum game and purely subjective. Mountains of research evidence was given further up this thread, none of which were engaged with, and instead patronisingly dismissed with anecdotal experience.

 

[Deleted member 57422]

I strongly reject this speaker nihilism, that speakers are necessarily a zero-sum game and purely subjective. Mountains of research evidence was given further up this thread, none of which were engaged with, and instead patronisingly dismissed with anecdotal experience.

I hate to be the guy that bring people bad news but those anecdotal experience are still used to this day by the summit of music mastering engineering.

Those that make the final call on tonal balance, spatial spectrum and dynamic of the music you listen to on your monitors.

Not to point out that usually people buy monitors to listen to music and not sine waves.

If that's not enough to underline the importance of subjectivity, I don't know what will.

But I can see someone buying some monitors and sit in his living room listening to test tones for hours.

I know I wouldn't. But that's also subjective I guess.

Come on now. Let's stop joking for a quick minute. You can't dismiss this hard fact whether you like it or not.

 

[Inner Space]

Mountains of research evidence was given further up this thread, none of which were engaged with, and instead patronisingly dismissed with anecdotal experience.

No. No research was presented further up this thread. No useful research, anyway. Only Toole and Olive.

I don't want this to be a TLDR, but let's take a minute to ground ourselves. Useful research begins - as experienced researchers like @SIY often point out - by being exact about the question you need to answer. No doubt Toole knows that too, having been educated at Imperial College, which was - and remains - a very sound engineering school.

So what question did Toole formulate? His research was started at a government-funded research institute in Canada, whose mandate was - and remains - explicitly to aid Canadian industry with relevant R&D. Not a pure science endeavor, but economic help for the nation.

Thus Toole's exact question was, "What kind of loudspeakers should Canadian manufacturers produce, in order to attract large numbers of mainstream consumers who listen in conventional domestic rooms?"

To his great credit, he answered that question meticulously.

But it's an irrelevant question for studio situations, where the demands are completely different, where the users are not mainstream consumers, and the rooms are not conventional domestic spaces. Therefore his research contributes nothing to this discussion. Relying on it out of context is dumb. It's like saying, ".22 Long Rifle works great for varmint hunting, so why the hell do the armored divisions need uranium-tipped long-rod penetrators for tank ammunition?"

The actually relevant research has been carried out piecemeal, and internally, and intensely, over many decades, within a small community of specialist users and specialist manufacturers. The result is a handful of trusted principles and brands that do the job the specialist users need to do.

Thus the top picks for studio production tasks turn out to be different than the top picks for domestic reproduction tasks. Why is this surprising to anyone?

I bet if Toole had been hired by a different institution, and his exact question had been about studio use, his answer would have confirmed the conclusions we have reached anyway.

 

[Chrise36]

What we are forgetting is what the artist himself preferred. That makes the speaker selection much more valid imho.

 

[Deleted member 57422]

What we are forgetting is what the artist himself preferred. That makes the speaker selection much more valid imho.

Never seen an artist making music to be reproduced on a specific set of monitors, but I might be wrong.

What I see a lot is those artist and consumers gravitating around the same Mastering engineers work to listen to their music on their monitors.

 

[Chrise36]

What the artist is saying is my work is being reproduced better on this monitor not on that monitor.

 

[Deleted member 57422]

What the artist is saying is my work is being reproduced better on this monitor not on that monitor.

That, I could agree.