ATC speakers / Monitors

[czt]

(no manufacturer would have time for that)

Are you sure? PSI Audio (Relec)? At least we have one(?) measurement from the manufacturer in this endless thread. Which is nothing remarkable. I got my answer. ATCs are ridiculously overpriced mediocre speakers, living from their old studio-legend inheritance. I won't bother anymore here (unwatch).

 

[goat76]

Absolute linearity is completely overrated. All the recorded instrument that is part of the thing we call "music" have such a broad frequency response for every single chord that is played, some dips here and there will in the grand scheme of things not be noticed while listening to music, and besides that, it's pretty easy to address with (in most cases) small adjustments.

Something else that's important and seems to be overlooked, that is very important for music reproduction, is the speaker's dynamic ability and the ATC speakers got that in spades. Why isn't that part tested more often in speaker measurements?

 

[goat76]

Are you sure? PSI Audio (Relec)? At least we have one(?) measurement from the manufacturer in this endless thread. Which is nothing remarkable. I got my answer. ATCs are ridiculously overpriced mediocre speakers, living from their old studio-legend inheritance. I won't bother anymore here (unwatch).

What speakers do you have, what should we all be aiming for?

 

[goat76]

No but others did, and I tried to dig up what I could find To be honest I am surprised how well behaved this looks for in-room LP measurements, it is actually better than I had expected. Some of the issues have been addressed (mainly sub and HF decay time issues, see waterfall plot), with basstraps and diffusors, some stuff could maybe be alleviated with minor EQ but would demand a new round of up to date measurements. I am sure someone will chime in and call it all terrible.

View attachment 225011

I have never seen such short decay times, it's almost under 100 ms all the way down to 40 Hz! Do you have pictures of the bass traps in your studio you like to share?

 

[YSC]

Absolute linearity is completely overrated. All the recorded instrument that is part of the thing we call "music" have such a broad frequency response for every single chord that is played, some dips here and there will in the grand scheme of things not be noticed while listening to music, and besides that, it's pretty easy to address with (in most cases) small adjustments.

Something else that's important and seems to be overlooked, that is very important for music reproduction, is the speaker's dynamic ability and the ATC speakers got that in spades. Why isn't that part tested more often in speaker measurements?

dynamic ability shall be shown in distortion and waterfall plots, which, at least in reviews here, are common. and at least on the consumer front, ATC designs don't seem to have specticularly low distortion numbers in that regard.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

I have never seen such short decay times, it's almost under 100 ms all the way down to 40 Hz! Do you have pictures of the bass traps in your studio you like to share?

I do actually. 10 panels of various density material hanging from the ceiling (so they could be moved to tuen the basstraps to the room response measurements). This is at the back of the room opposite the speakers. Walls and ceiling were covered with tuned helmholz absorbers mostly.

This is the speakers before hanging them from the ceiling and building a 7-layer fibre plaster wall around them.

ASR turns the photo on it’s side, don’t know why.

 

[YSC]

For a QC measurement there is nothing to complain about here, you can see it at the end of Goat76 posted video it is just a sweep in their production room, pretty easibly susceptible to placement differences and room anomalies. They are surely not measured for absolute linearity in the QC process (no manufacturer would have time for that) but to check for any build or assembly problems - scientific measurements will be done at the R&D stage. This is obvious from your link where the OP's own measurements of the same speaker is essentially perfect to the target curve, except for some kind of anomally in his setup at 200hz. And as can be seen on my own measurements.

at least I know Genelec did in their calibration stage did so for every single speaker and have the data on hand... and I doubt that gearspace plot was from the single sweep of a single driver asin the video as it seems like what the complete speaker FR is, and using some klippel system, so I suspect it should be a sweep in some lab/anechoic chamber sweep to check for anomaly and is quite accurate

 

[Torbachkristensen]

at least I know Genelec did in their calibration stage did so for every single speaker and have the data on hand... and I doubt that gearspace plot was from the single sweep of a single driver asin the video as it seems like what the complete speaker FR is, and using some klippel system, so I suspect it should be a sweep in some lab/anechoic chamber sweep to check for anomaly and is quite accurate

Who said anything about single driver? Look at the video 13:40 and onwards, it is "simple" QC full range sweeps in the production facility. Some might not think that is good enough, but it makes perfect sense from a production standpoint. Especially when you have been making speakers for 40+ years, it would never make sense to do full klippel spinorama test for every single speaker - the production line should be totally optimized, consistent and streamlined at that point.

 

[YSC]

Who said anything about single driver? Look at the video 13:40 and onwards, it is "simple" QC full range sweeps in the production facility. Some might not think that is good enough, but it makes perfect sense from a production standpoint. Especially when you have been making speakers for 40+ years, it would never make sense to do full klippel spinorama test for every single speaker - the production line should be totally optimized, consistent and streamlined at that point.

Ah ok, I scroll through it in office and saw the measurement of driver around 12min on and missed that.

Anyway I am out of this debate for nothing, from what I found on various spin measurements on web, just as I said before, they looked good, but not as good as their price. one thing I noticed was that quite some of their design, off axis showed the same post 10khz drop in your measurement, looks an interesting topic to study into.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

Are you sure? PSI Audio (Relec)? At least we have one(?) measurement from the manufacturer in this endless thread. Which is nothing remarkable. I got my answer. ATCs are ridiculously overpriced mediocre speakers, living from their old studio-legend inheritance. I won't bother anymore here (unwatch).

BS. Bye bye.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

Ah ok, I scroll through it in office and saw the measurement of driver around 12min on and missed that.

Anyway I am out of this debate for nothing, from what I found on various spin measurements on web, just as I said before, they looked good, but not as good as their price. one thing I noticed was that quite some of their design, off axis showed the same post 10khz drop in your measurement, looks an interesting topic to study into.

Sure, in my room it was because of too much HF damping, and basically no reflections. They do however have a pretty narrow (linear) vertical dispersion so you need to be on axis with the mid dome or not more than 5-10 degrees below for ultimate precission - I could imagine that this is what causes some measurements to have an odd 2-5k dip. I am not saying these are perfect speakers, none are, but they are most definitely not mediocre and are a perfect match for soffit mounting.

 

[Torbachkristensen]

To the OP, if you are still following, I guess the last 20 pages shows you why there are very mixed opinions I can tell you for certain that what a lot of mixing and mastering engineers appreciate is the presentation from the mid dome, since it covers a big part of the vocal spectrum without crossovers and phaseshift and has a pretty impressive dynamic range at the same time. If it is right for you is another thing, but that is where some people find the "magic". Enough discussion about the quality of ATC, enough has been said, but if anyone is interested in hearing and happen to come by Copenhagen, feel free to PM me

 

[Frgirard]

To the OP, if you are still following, I guess the last 20 pages shows you why there are very mixed opinions I can tell you for certain that what a lot of mixing and mastering engineers appreciate is the presentation from the mid dome, since it covers a big part of the vocal spectrum without crossovers and phaseshift and has a pretty impressive dynamic range at the same time. If it is right for you is another thing, but that is where some people find the "magic". Enough discussion about the quality of ATC, enough has been said, but if anyone is interested in hearing and happen to come by Copenhagen, feel free to PM me

https://resolutionmag.com/reviews/monitoring/

A test on the ATC25.

 

[goat76]

dynamic ability shall be shown in distortion and waterfall plots, which, at least in reviews here, are common. and at least on the consumer front, ATC designs don't seem to have specticularly low distortion numbers in that regard.

I think it's a lot more complex than that.

If you take your time to look at this video with an interview with Klaus Heinz of HEDD Audio, I think you will realize how wrong it is to assume you know how a loudspeaker sound just by looking at the measurements. The video is rather long so I think you should focus on watching it from about 24 minutes in and onwards. He talks about the complexity of sound fields and how limited the current way of measurements really is. He also takes up the limitations of most speakers when it comes to dynamic capability, and that's the thing he hopes will be the focal point in speaker development in the future.

The title of the video is a little on the provocative side. Speakers that measure the same on every single parameter will of course sound exactly the same, but that's probably not the case with any two speakers out there on the market. The "measure the same" part in the title refers to the limited sets of measurements that can be done with a single microphone, even if it's done in a spinorama setting, and later on, trying to sum all that data into "a whole".

Acoustics Insiders - Klaus Heinz: Why do speakers sound different when they measure the same? - with HEDD Audio
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h16K8zhsmo&list=FL3oz1NoAH8shuYohk9fYjqw&index=14

 

[Torbachkristensen]

https://resolutionmag.com/reviews/monitoring/

A test on the ATC25.

Point being? Of course there are phase shifts, but they are not within critical vocal bandwidth, which was my point. Mid dome performs admirably in this review, but such a small ported box with that driver placement will inevitably have problems - I would personally never buy the 25's. Different OEM tweeter as well, so the off angle response is only telling for this model

 

[Geert]

If you take your time to look at this video with an interview with Klaus Heinz of HEDD Audio, I think you will realize how wrong it is to assume you know how a loudspeaker sound just by looking at the measurements.

Not really, it's a rather disappointing interview.

 

[goat76]

Not really, it's a rather disappointing interview.

And why is that according to you? Is it because the things he says do not line up with the hopes you have, that you will be able to fully know how a speaker sounds just by looking at a set of measurements done with a microphone at a bunch of angles?

You can probably get a fairly good idea of some of the characteristics of a pair of speakers, but to fully know how they sound, you still need to listen to them. Nope, there is no way around that at this point in time.

 

[SoundGuy]

In my experience having tried almost everything here the better the loudspeaker measures the more transparent it sounds.
Keith

Definitely disagree. Most near perfect on paper designs don’t sound natural or real - often phase challenged with poor soundstage, neutered, boring and robbed of dynamics. To me it is always much better to have a speaker with a well matched set of drivers that integrate well together without DSP, notch filters or corrective band aids - even if the on axis measurements aren’t perfect. I will agree that even dispersion especially in the transition between drivers is important but that said, people still buy B&W (which often have a bump where the tweeter takes over from their 6 inch driver due to their high crossover point)

 

[Geert]

And why is that according to you? Is it because the things he says do not line up with the hopes you have, that you will be able to fully know how a speaker sounds just by looking at a set of measurements, done with a microphone at a bunch of angles?

You are completely wrong about my hopes about speaker measurements. The interview goes non further than laymen's level. Maybe you learned something, I didn't. I didn't hear a good explanation of the point they're trying to make, a point that was flawed from the start. Everything is thrown on one pile. And very funny, different aspects of speaker sound we supposedly can't measure, ... he illustrates with a measurement ...

 

[thewas]

Not really, it's a rather disappointing interview.

Exactly, already the title "Why do speakers sound different when they measure the same?" is nonsense as with a necessary state of the art set of measurements (full spinorama, HD, multitone, decay spectrum, group delay) no two different loudspeakers measure the same.
Also the priority which measurements matter audibly more is long known and clear, wish everyone dealing with loudspeakers (from engineer to interviewer) would have read Toole's book, that would save the world a lot of time and misunderstandings.