ATC speakers / Monitors

[574stereo]

No dome tweeters can sustain 96–100 db test tones continuously due to heat buildup, so the limiter is doing exactly what it's supposed to. Only speakers with compression drivers can reliably handle continuous 100 db+ SPL test tones. That said, The SPL limitations of a speaker is usually in the bass region, not in HF. In typical music, the bass is usually 20–30 dB louder than the treble and the mids are 10–15 dB louder, which keeps the strain off the tweeters. In other words, the SPL bottleneck is very rarely in the treble almost never, in fact.
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The measurements above are taken from Genelec S360 which have compression drivers. Compression drivers can deal with heat buildup much better due to how efficient they are.

Why do I care about constant directivity so much? Well, the directivity shapes the tonality of the reflections in a room-like environment. Directivity determines the frequency content of the sound waves that hit the walls, bounce around the room, and eventually reach your ears. It influences the perceived envelopment, the size and precision(imaging) of the soundstage and even the SBIR (speaker-boundary interference response) profile of the system .I could go on, but the point is: our brain doesn’t just process the direct sound: it integrates the reflections too our brain combines the sound of reflections with the direct sound. So if those reflections aren’t tonally consistent with the direct sound, our brain confuses room reflections as direct sounds with different tonality. So, our brain ends up being bombarded with a a bunch of direct sounds that all differ from each other. The result?
Muddy sound, (wider directivity in bass/low mids compared to mids/HF)
reduced clarity, (lots of early loud early reflections that differ in tonality to direct sound)
poor imaging, (lots of large diffractions in the directivity and uneven directivity) and
broken tonality because the combined sound is tonally a mess.

It also leads to listening fatigue, as the brain struggles to identify a stable reference point to anchor the reflections to. When every pseudo-direct sound varies in tonality, the brain can't figure out what to trust, and the entire experience falls apart.

I believe ATC test their S spec tweeter to be able to handle 100 dB at 1 kHz for 24 hours without failure. It might be 48 hours... I can't quite remember.

Maintaining dynamic performance under extreme abuse is an important part of building a studio monitor.

 

[goat76]

I believe ATC test their S spec tweeter to be able to handle 100 dB at 1 kHz for 24 hours without failure. It might be 48 hours... I can't quite remember.

Maintaining dynamic performance under extreme abuse is an important part of building a studio monitor.

As you say, in a music production studio, it's crucial that the drivers can handle extreme abuse, as there will be many mistakes made during the production involving very high-level signals going to the tweeters. In the ATC factory tour video posted previously, they talked about the extreme testing of all their drivers, which is probably way above the abuse most "normal" HiFi speakers can handle.

This is from the time stamp talking about their in-house built tweeters, but watching the whole 15-minute studio tour is interesting...

 

[Blockader]

I believe ATC test their S spec tweeter to be able to handle 100 dB at 1 kHz for 24 hours without failure. It might be 48 hours... I can't quite remember.

Maintaining dynamic performance under extreme abuse is an important part of building a studio monitor.

Since there's no concrete evidence for that, it could be anything. What I really meant in my previous post was that sustaining 1 khz is much easier than sustaining 15 khz, but I left out the details to keep the post shorter. That’s exactly why limiters tend to kick in during SPL tests above 10 kHz, dome tweeters just can’t handle sustained output at those levels for long. If you have an evidence to back up your claim, I'd be interested to see. The claimed sensitivty of the S series tweeter is 91.5db. That alone doesn't mean much.

 

[Chrise36]

Sound on Sound review:
8361A is tri‑amplified by Genelec’s own Class‑D PWM amplifiers, with 700W for the bass and 150W each for the midrange and treble frequencies. Crossover frequencies are set at 320Hz and 2.8kHz. The 8361A’s maximum long‑term SPL is 109dB, and the monitor is capable of delivering a maximum short‑term SPL of 118dB and an instantaneous peak SPL of 124dB. Although the 8361A does loud very well, it also has a low self‑noise of ≤5dBA (at 1m)

 

[YSDR]

No dome tweeters can sustain 96–100 db test tones continuously due to heat buildup, so the limiter is doing exactly what it's supposed to.

This depends on the actual construction. There are domes that have 95+ dB sensitivity that can sustain this SPL.
What is interesting about the Kii Three for example is that "compression profile" of the tweeter we see in its measurements. The source of the frequency response declining towards higher frequencies at higher SPL can be DC offset from the amplifier. I experienced very similar thing with my active speakers that was driven by Hypex FA253s with no series capacitor for the tweeter. All Hypex amps (which is also used by the Kii Three) are DC coupled so if one not using a series capacitor for a driver, there will be DC component at the speakers terminals, "pre-tensioning" the voice coil, resulting in compression towards higher frequencies at higher SPL. When I used series capacitor (to block DC), this compression effect had gone.
So I think what we see in the Kii Three measurements is not the limiter but an effect of DC offset of it's amplification, at least in the frequency range of the tweeter.

 

[Chrise36]

There are a couple of fabric tweeters with high power handling like this very good SEAS
E0055-06 T35C002 and others eg CIARE etc from troels:

Large domes

 

[SimonY]

Important to remember these industry standard monitoring solutions using hf/mid domes with no pattern control are heavily geared toward hot inputs. They don't have much headroom when programming subtractive elements. With -6db master, -12 vst you're getting 67db standing in front of them and some of these desks are 3m away. Your program distortions are essentially linear so it's comfortable monitoring 85db+. Well...there goes your voltage gain.

Given, you won't need huge dynamic range on your synth, but for the price of these monitors I'd want more than 6db.

 

[Ilkless]

Since there's no concrete evidence for that, it could be anything. What I really meant in my previous post was that sustaining 1 khz is much easier than sustaining 15 khz, but I left out the details to keep the post shorter. That’s exactly why limiters tend to kick in during SPL tests above 10 kHz, dome tweeters just can’t handle sustained output at those levels for long. If you have an evidence to back up your claim, I'd be interested to see. The claimed sensitivty of the S series tweeter is 91.5db. That alone doesn't mean much.

What I'm seeing is people using anecdote and intuition to deny the logic and evidence you have brought to this thread. Which is saddening to see on this forum when people stubbornly insist to make excuses for backward designs instead of challenging their outdated beliefs

 

[Nih Noh]

<backs out slowly>

 

[goat76]

Here's another factory tour video at ATC.

 

[AlmaAtaKZ]

Very interesting to see ATC modernising production - new magnetiser, surface mount PCBs. I visited the factory in 2010 and remember their old school no nonsense approach to everything. Good to see them expanding their production space. I hope they keep making their brilliant speakers for a long long time.

 

[goat76]

Very interesting to see ATC modernising production - new magnetiser, surface mount PCBs. I visited the factory in 2010 and remember their old school no nonsense approach to everything. Good to see them expanding their production space. I hope they keep making their brilliant speakers for a long long time.

I think they have also now moved their cabinet factory closer to their main factory. There is a short video about that on their Instagram.

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[Ilkless]

Just because a brand *says* it is state-of-the-art and one *believes* it to be so based on limited knowledge and anecdotal experience against the weight of evidence does not make it *actually* state-of-the-art.

Just a comment for those trying to make sense of all the marketing drivel and slick videos being proffered in a vain attempt to put across a certain image of a brand that's not backed by any real technical, evidence-based merit.

And to think there are "studio" "expert" practitioners so clueless about the foundational science they can't even figure this out. Many of them are feeling threatened that even a moderately technically literate ASR user here understands much more about audio reproduction and room acoustics than they could ever dream of. The power balance is shifting

 

[AlmaAtaKZ]

It is not state of the art. It is as good as it needs to be.

 

[Joe852]

It is not state of the art. It is as good as it needs to be.

Exactly. There are a number of factors and the order of importance is the question. People going on about the technical aspects without staying grounded in the context of how important those aspects are serve no purpose. This site should change its name to "SINAD 107 is better than SINAD 105" to formalize its failure at meaningful analysis.

 

[Ktacos]

Exactly. There are a number of factors and the order of importance is the question. People going on about the technical aspects without staying grounded in the context of how important those aspects are serve no purpose. This site should change its name to "SINAD 107 is better than SINAD 105" to formalize its failure at meaningful analysis.

People with takes like this tend to not stick around here long, and that's probably for the better. Everyone is welcome but if you intend to make generalizations about the user base and mock the site, well best of luck to you on that, you'll probably just make the ignore list of anyone reading your posts. When I see this behavior coupled with low post counts, one can typically assume you didn't join in good faith. It begs the question if you have such a problem with users here, why even come here?

If you want to consider context for what matters in a speaker, depending on the user everything can matter especially for people using ATC for production. Keep in mind these are users who will spend a lot of time perfecting small details in their work that the majority of listeners would likely not even hear. Very small deviations are audible for these people.

Unfortunately "as good as it needs to be" is a really low bar to meet when your speakers are costing as much as ATC does, and the competition is frankly running circles around them for less money.

This thread has certainly reached maximum capacity of boring and unproductive discussion. I'm surprised it's gone on as long as it has.

 

[dfuller]

You know, I'm using SCM25As today and they do image very well and sound just about accurate to me.

These are certainly not the best speakers I've ever heard but I'm sure not going to kick them out of bed for eating crackers. There are so many worse speakers throughout studios than these.

 

[574stereo]

I think it’s perfectly valid for people to question the culture and perspective of others on this forum. If you didn’t it’d start feeling like a bit of a cult…

 

[a4eaudio]

Just because a brand *says* it is state-of-the-art and one *believes* it to be so based on limited knowledge and anecdotal experience against the weight of evidence does not make it *actually* state-of-the-art.

It is not state of the art. It is as good as it needs to be.

I see "state of the art" (SOTA) mentioned a lot lately here in the Speaker section. Can you name the most significant breakthroughs in speaker development in the last 20 years?

A few notes that might help:

• Don't bother talking much about measurements and Spinorama that ASR is focused on. Floyd Toole's time at the NRCC was from 1965 to 1991 and his time at Harmon was 1991-2007, so this stuff has been known for a LONG time.
• Don't talk about waveguides, as they have been around since 1958

 

[a4eaudio]

...If you didn’t it’d start feeling like a bit of a cult…

ASR is not a cult. If you are unsure, get up every morning and say out loud, in front of a mirror 10 times that "ASR is not a cult". It helps to turn it into somewhat of a low-frequency, rhythmic chant.