ATC speakers / Monitors

[YSC]

I want or hear this baby soffit mounted in a treated room
I bet they would sound at least as good as any ATCsView attachment 224643

Personally I don’t want to use these or the mixing room atc. It’s too much for enjoyment as hifi and the shear size will create some kind of psychological pressure and not listening to the music but trying to find pros or flaws of the speakers

 

[Torbachkristensen]

That sounds to me mainly is the bigger is better kind of situation, with the wall mounted huge installations of course the SPL capability will be better, and a well designed and treated room better than any random audiophile home. But that really didn’t make atc 110 the better system.. If you went to some designed studio with soffit mounted Neumann/ genelec systems I bet you the atc won’t sound that magical really

What you think is irrelevant, all hypothetical with nothing to show. And yes it actually does make the ATC110 the better system, any constant directivity wonder speaker can’t integrate to that extent, even if they tried. Neumann does not do speakers fit for soffit mount. Can be done, but doesn’t make sense, and they would have a considerable excess of LF. Blue Horn system is not big speakers, but they are mostly used as LCR in mix theaters, and therefore take up quite a bit of room. Their Galaxy DSP will do processing far beyond any of the DSP solutions we talk about here on ASR, and I would personally be lost without a Meyer engineer setting up the system, but it really is an experience to hear that kind of phase, impulse and frequency precision. Had goosebumps for days

Genelec Soffit Mount models are good, but all suffer from fatiguing and unpleasant HF representation. Closer to the 1032, than the new Ones series.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

I want or hear this baby soffit mounted in a treated room
I bet they would sound at least as good as any ATCsView attachment 224643

Sadly they don’t, in my experience, but it could have been the rooms that were less than perfect generally the bigger Genelecs I have met, have been installed in very big rooms, and used for the headroom and extension primarily and lacked precission, reason being the acoustic design choices not the actual speakers. A shame really since it results in a kind of “brute force” sound (similar to Barefoots), where the dynamic capability far exceeds the actual sound quality. I really do not appreciate the tweeter regardless

 

[dfuller]

I've been generally pretty impressed with the Genelec mains I've heard, FWIW - I like them considerably more than I do the vaguely egg shaped ones - though the Ones are considerably better on that front.

 

[Digby]

I don't need my fridge, my speakers, my stove, or my soldering iron on my wifi.

It's not really there for your benefit, as much as advertisers and marketers. A lot of analytics information is being sent back to Google, Apple, LG, insert manufacturer here.

 

[YSC]

What you think is irrelevant, all hypothetical with nothing to show. And yes it actually does make the ATC110 the better system, any constant directivity wonder speaker can’t integrate to that extent, even if they tried. Neumann does not do speakers fit for soffit mount. Can be done, but doesn’t make sense, and they would have a considerable excess of LF. Blue Horn system is not big speakers, but they are mostly used as LCR in mix theaters, and therefore take up quite a bit of room. Their Galaxy DSP will do processing far beyond any of the DSP solutions we talk about here on ASR, and I would personally be lost without a Meyer engineer setting up the system, but it really is an experience to hear that kind of phase, impulse and frequency precision. Had goosebumps for days

Genelec Soffit Mount models are good, but all suffer from fatiguing and unpleasant HF representation. Closer to the 1032, than the new Ones series.

well, then if listening is all that important, the floor standing ATCs I have heard thus far didn't impress me, even compared to say a showroom KEF blade.. but I havn't heard any of the ATC110, you missed my point that it sounds like to me your opinion is, just your adaption and bias on the brand, as all of us do to some degree, if anything measured in room, like FR, phase, distortion etc. showed that they are better objectively, not subjectively over other options, I will embrace the ATC as much, but really, too much "out of this world", "in my exp" etc claims are what makes me away from other hifi sites and stick to ASR, what most ppl need here, is not bare word claims but actual proof.

 

[goat76]

What you think is irrelevant, all hypothetical with nothing to show. And yes it actually does make the ATC110 the better system, any constant directivity wonder speaker can’t integrate to that extent, even if they tried. Neumann does not do speakers fit for soffit mount. Can be done, but doesn’t make sense, and they would have a considerable excess of LF. Blue Horn system is not big speakers, but they are mostly used as LCR in mix theaters, and therefore take up quite a bit of room. Their Galaxy DSP will do processing far beyond any of the DSP solutions we talk about here on ASR, and I would personally be lost without a Meyer engineer setting up the system, but it really is an experience to hear that kind of phase, impulse and frequency precision. Had goosebumps for days

Genelec Soffit Mount models are good, but all suffer from fatiguing and unpleasant HF representation. Closer to the 1032, than the new Ones series.

It amazes me when people are quite certain or even dead set on things they have no first hand experience with. I mean, looking at measurements can be good to determine if the speakers have any obvious design faults, but in the end, first-hand experience is needed to know how they perform in a real-life settings.

Some light speculations are fine, but to be certain a speaker is better than another, just based on what kind of technology is behind the design, is on the brink of stupidity (not aimed at any specific person).

 

[YSC]

It amazes me when people are quite certain or even dead set on things they have no first hand experience with. I mean, looking at measurements can be good to determine if the speakers have any obvious design faults, but in the end, first-hand experience is needed to know how they perform in a real-life settings.

Some light speculations are fine, but to be certain a speaker is better than another, just based on what kind of technology is behind the design, is on the brink of stupidity (not aimed at any specific person).

well but it also amazes me that not specific to this thread, there are brand defenders who only claims that in real life it's otherworldly good but without showing any real proof of data for how good it is.

IMO expecting Brand A is likely to better perform than Brand B, given the similar grade products with objective measurements are showing that Brand A constantly does better than Brand B, until brand B did show that it is performing better, or at least, on paper, without significant design flaws. A good example is for Schiit products, early Schiits are really... way underperforming regardless of price and praise from the owners, and recently ones are usually well executed, in that sense Schiit are expected/ avoided here generally despite of what schiit defenders say, until it finally showed it can perform in measurements. For that case, guess what those Schiit fans say about the new schiit despite it changes from the "analogue sounding" bad SINAD to the well engineered SINAD? nothing, they still say the newer is better and schiit is the holy grail.

in my quick memory in this thread alone ppl kept asking for the measurements for the otherworldly ATC110, but AFAIK it didn't show up. and in all possibility, not matter how well designed or built a room is, it can't be perfect, and personal preference is proved over and over again to have strongly influenced by perception, AKA bias of various things, so first hand experience is all that important is both true and false, to the individual, what he/she enjoys the most is the most important, but judging which one is better than the other, needs objective proof, not claims/choice by any enginner/ guy in the industry.

Measurements are not the be all end all holy grail of a score, but then personal experience is a far worse marking scheme for the purpose. few have exp in the ATC 110 here, so why would one believe they are magically much better than competing vendors when the same vendors in the consumer market, did proved to be better?

 

[Torbachkristensen]

well, then if listening is all that important, the floor standing ATCs I have heard thus far didn't impress me, even compared to say a showroom KEF blade.. but I havn't heard any of the ATC110, you missed my point that it sounds like to me your opinion is, just your adaption and bias on the brand, as all of us do to some degree, if anything measured in room, like FR, phase, distortion etc. showed that they are better objectively, not subjectively over other options, I will embrace the ATC as much, but really, too much "out of this world", "in my exp" etc claims are what makes me away from other hifi sites and stick to ASR, what most ppl need here, is not bare word claims but actual proof.

But that is just assumptions, it has taken me years of research to decide on an ATC install. I did not have any preference to start, but I did however listen to almost anything imaginable for studio monitoring. Finally I accepted that it is about integration and complete system design, if you want to go from good to excellent. Not that it has to be done, but nothing beats a soffit mount, for the simple reason that it solves a lot of the usual severe room issues. And for that type of install, to my ears ATC just can’t be beat, because some aspects of the speaker design go from issues to solutions and they are certainly designed with soffits in mind. Like the early LF rolloff for instance, precise on axis frequency response, square boxy enclosure and the short resonance free front port design. I think it is odd to bash on a manufacturer for creating big boxes with excellent drivers, just because it doesn’t fit a particular usecase, as it is certainly a relevant design in other cases. It is all about implementation, and what to expect. And if you ask me, for an active design with that build quality, the ATC’s Pro line is cheap compared to much else.

For freestanding, no doubt I would likely not go for current ATC designs, as stated elsewhere in this thread. I am certainly very impressed what Kii and Dutch can do in that regard with LF control, but they have other aspects of the presentation that I am less impressed with.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

well but it also amazes me that not specific to this thread, there are brand defenders who only claims that in real life it's otherworldly good but without showing any real proof of data for how good it is.

IMO expecting Brand A is likely to better perform than Brand B, given the similar grade products with objective measurements are showing that Brand A constantly does better than Brand B, until brand B did show that it is performing better, or at least, on paper, without significant design flaws. A good example is for Schiit products, early Schiits are really... way underperforming regardless of price and praise from the owners, and recently ones are usually well executed, in that sense Schiit are expected/ avoided here generally despite of what schiit defenders say, until it finally showed it can perform in measurements. For that case, guess what those Schiit fans say about the new schiit despite it changes from the "analogue sounding" bad SINAD to the well engineered SINAD? nothing, they still say the newer is better and schiit is the holy grail.

in my quick memory in this thread alone ppl kept asking for the measurements for the otherworldly ATC110, but AFAIK it didn't show up. and in all possibility, not matter how well designed or built a room is, it can't be perfect, and personal preference is proved over and over again to have strongly influenced by perception, AKA bias of various things, so first hand experience is all that important is both true and false, to the individual, what he/she enjoys the most is the most important, but judging which one is better than the other, needs objective proof, not claims/choice by any enginner/ guy in the industry.

Measurements are not the be all end all holy grail of a score, but then personal experience is a far worse marking scheme for the purpose. few have exp in the ATC 110 here, so why would one believe they are magically much better than competing vendors when the same vendors in the consumer market, did proved to be better?

I agree with you, measurements are great for initial expectations, design and confirming observations. But I have also seen a lot of measurements that looked almost perfect, where I could not believe my ears when I heard the speakers. Kali In-8, JBL 308p, Burchardt A500, Arendal, Neumann 310 among others. Not as good in real world use as they “should” be. There are aspects of speakers that fall between usual measurement data, and would probably require a different measurement approach.

 

[YSC]

But that is just assumptions, it has taken me years of research to decide on an ATC install. I did not have any preference to start, but I did however listen to almost anything imaginable for studio monitoring. Finally I accepted that it is about integration and complete system design, if you want to go from good to excellent. Not that it has to be done, but nothing beats a soffit mount, for the simple reason that it solves a lot of the usual severe room issues. And for that type of install, to my ears ATC just can’t be beat, because some aspects of the speaker design go from issues to solutions and they are certainly designed with soffits in mind. Like the early LF rolloff for instance, precise on axis frequency response, square boxy enclosure and the short resonance free front port design. I think it is odd to bash on a manufacturer for creating big boxes with excellent drivers, just because it doesn’t fit a particular usecase, as it is certainly a relevant design in other cases. It is all about implementation, and what to expect. And if you ask me, for an active design with that build quality, the ATC’s Pro line is cheap compared to much else.

For freestanding, no doubt I would likely not go for current ATC designs, as stated elsewhere in this thread. I am certainly very impressed what Kii and Dutch can do in that regard with LF control, but they have other aspects of the presentation that I am less impressed with.

I personally respect the well executed speakers overall, I forgot it's this thread or the other, higher end ATC free standing speakers ain't bad at all, the got those smooth on axis FR also with low distortion, just more expensive and less extended than the competition, and hence the "ATC seems living on the past glory" remark/impression.

And also in I have to emphasize again, I am NOT saying the soffit mounted ATC isn't good/great as a system, but there are other vendors doing soffit mounting solutions also, and what does great to sound reproduction are the same general properties, so it don't convince me that without the actual measurement/proof that the ATC will be better than the say Soffit mounted PMC or Genelec or you name it brand. I am just a consumer who are curious or even thirst on knowledge on the pinnicle performance of various brand offerings, that's why I kept asking for possibility for a real life, in room measurement carried out in such well designed room, no need to be a spin, as it's the in room response, distortion etc. being all important, and the fun part is, it tells us how well can an practical setup be in real life, really if it did measures good, not even need to be surperb in room, and excels in some other areas, we can know what ATC is capable in that niche, but if it measures disappointingly, at least we can try figure out what part of it makes it sounded great to you or what it's drawback are.

 

[YSC]

I agree with you, measurements are great for initial expectations, design and confirming observations. But I have also seen a lot of measurements that looked almost perfect, where I could not believe my ears when I heard the speakers. Kali In-8, JBL 308p, Burchardt A500, Arendal, Neumann 310 among others. Not as good in real world use as they “should” be. There are aspects of speakers that fall between usual measurement data, and would probably require a different measurement approach.

in my own experience (Very limited) where I change to Genelec 8030C from a pair of KEF X300A as desktop speaker, the sound was not ovrewhelmingly good also in real life at first, ended up it being

1) long term adaption to the old speaker sound
2) overly high expectation from the pre-read data (like imagine the sound must be heavenly regardless of materials I fed to them)
3) the most important factor: My room, very near field, full of reflections, desktop, window reflection etc. which makes the anechoically great speaker bad, if uncorrected by dip switches, it got like 8db bass boost below 100hz, a massive 8db boost around desktop reflection and a null at 1-5khz due to comb filtering.

After engaging relevant dip switches and later manual EQ below 400hz to tame various modes, it now sounded really amazing to my ears and beating anything I previously heard in my experienced (I do believe my personal bias plays a significant role also)

so in real world, put in unoptimized space and without the lengthy tuning/DSP, it's guaranteed it won't sound remotely as good as the anechoic data suggests, all you need is the optimization like the completely tailor made studio of your ATC mixing room.

a technical excellent designed speaker is only a good starting point, but to get to practial perfection, the whole system/environment need to be optimized, which by then, the better executed whole system is only showing the package provider's skills, not the individual component being better.

 

[Purité Audio]

I agree with you, measurements are great for initial expectations, design and confirming observations. But I have also seen a lot of measurements that looked almost perfect, where I could not believe my ears when I heard the speakers. Kali In-8, JBL 308p, Burchardt A500, Arendal, Neumann 310 among others. Not as good in real world use as they “should” be. There are aspects of speakers that fall between usual measurement data, and would probably require a different measurement approach.

We just have to wait for alien first contact, their higher tech will explain those missing measurements.
Honestly what bull, loudspeakers are entirely characterised by their measurements.
In my experience having tried almost everything here the better the loudspeaker measures the more transparent it sounds.
Keith

 

[Torbachkristensen]

We just have to wait for alien first contact, their higher tech will explain those missing measurements.
Honestly what bull, loudspeakers are entirely characterised by their measurements.
In my experience having tried almost everything here the better the loudspeaker measures the more transparent it sounds.
Keith

Watch the blood pressure Keith. Take a look at the Kali IN-8 thread, to see how an earlier set of measurements look very good, and listening reveals in-adequate measurement approach. Nothing weird about it. Not to mention that all these measurements and "estimated in room response" doesn't really mean anything if the speakers sound bad in a listeners room. Backwall cancellations being absolutely the number 1 factor in disappointing in-room response. And cancellation cannot be fixed with EQ.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/kali-audio-in-8-v2-measurements.36136/

 

[Purité Audio]

‘Back wall cancellations’ yes well unless your room doesn’t have a back wall.. unless the room is purpose built the room dominates below transition, better measuring loudspeakers sound better despite the limitations of the room.
Contemporary active loudspeakers are designed to ameliorate the interaction of the room,
cardioid, constant directivity, bass output adjustment depending upon position, built in peq etc etc.
Keith

 

[thewas]

Take a look at the Kali IN-8 thread, to see how an earlier set of measurements look very good, and listening reveals in-adequate measurement approach.

Which exact post writes about that in-adequate measurement approach?

Not to mention that all these measurements and "estimated in room response" doesn't really mean anything if the speakers sound bad in a listeners room.

They sure do, as above the transition region we mainly perceive the direct sound, also a loudspeaker with poorer measurements will probably sound even worse in the same room.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

Which exact post writes about that in-adequate measurement approach?


They sure do, as above the transition region we mainly perceive the direct sound, also a loudspeaker with poorer measurements will probably sound even worse in the same room.

See Erin’s review of the Kali IN-8 where he praises it, and measurements support it, then read the initial post in the linked thread. My guess is there are more hidden problems than described in the thread, cause that speakers sounds freaking weird.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

Which exact post writes about that in-adequate measurement approach?


They sure do, as above the transition region we mainly perceive the direct sound, also a loudspeaker with poorer measurements will probably sound even worse in the same room.

Not necessarily, but one can assume. As stated in numerous posts from others, and in psycho acoustic research, uneven lowend will result in perceived worse sound quality from the entire system. (Definitely one of ATC’s challenges as freestanding speakers)

LF response is crucial if you want to achieve a truly balanced sounding system, and perfect anechoic data does not help much with bad in room response, if the design integrates poorly. There is no 1 stop solution.

 

[thewas]

See Erin’s review of the Kali IN-8 where he praises it, and measurements support it, then read the initial post in the linked thread. My guess is there are more hidden problems than described in the thread, cause that speakers sounds freaking weird.

Could you please link which exact post you mean?

Not necessarily, but one can assume.

As stated in numerous posts from others, and in psycho acoustic research, uneven lowend will result in perceived worse sound quality from the entire system. (Definitely one of ATC’s challenges as freestanding speakers)

LF response is crucial if you want to achieve a truly balanced sounding system, and perfect anechoic data does not help much with bad in room response, if the design integrates poorly. There is no 1 stop solution.

But that is not a problem of the loudspeaker and its measurements but the known issue of loudspeaker-room interaction and as said in the same placement and room a loudspeaker with better measurements will be most likely still perceived as sounding better.

 

[Chrise36]

well but it also amazes me that not specific to this thread, there are brand defenders who only claims that in real life it's otherworldly good but without showing any real proof of data for how good it is.

IMO expecting Brand A is likely to better perform than Brand B, given the similar grade products with objective measurements are showing that Brand A constantly does better than Brand B, until brand B did show that it is performing better, or at least, on paper, without significant design flaws. A good example is for Schiit products, early Schiits are really... way underperforming regardless of price and praise from the owners, and recently ones are usually well executed, in that sense Schiit are expected/ avoided here generally despite of what schiit defenders say, until it finally showed it can perform in measurements. For that case, guess what those Schiit fans say about the new schiit despite it changes from the "analogue sounding" bad SINAD to the well engineered SINAD? nothing, they still say the newer is better and schiit is the holy grail.

in my quick memory in this thread alone ppl kept asking for the measurements for the otherworldly ATC110, but AFAIK it didn't show up. and in all possibility, not matter how well designed or built a room is, it can't be perfect, and personal preference is proved over and over again to have strongly influenced by perception, AKA bias of various things, so first hand experience is all that important is both true and false, to the individual, what he/she enjoys the most is the most important, but judging which one is better than the other, needs objective proof, not claims/choice by any enginner/ guy in the industry.

Measurements are not the be all end all holy grail of a score, but then personal experience is a far worse marking scheme for the purpose. few have exp in the ATC 110 here, so why would one believe they are magically much better than competing vendors when the same vendors in the consumer market, did proved to be better?

When i apply DSP to my system it measures great but sounds shit how can i back this up in a right manner without my personal opinion?