ATC speakers / Monitors

[thewas]

No, I have heard many good speakers in both lively and acoustically treated listening rooms and have always preferred the clean, detailed, and distinct-sounding presentation of a recording in a well-treated room. I also prefer a fairly short listening distance where the direct sound ratio is high versus the reflections of the listening room, as I want to get a clearer view of the recorded venue and all the details the recording contains.

The preferences are not black or white, I also prefer listening in the nearfield and in treated room acoustics, but for example don't like the side walls to be strongly absorptive.

It's easy to exaggerate what is seen in measurements, and it's probably not too uncommon for confirmation bias to kick in after someone sees some deviations in a measurement plot. The big question as always if you could pick out those directivity deviations while listening to music on those speakers, I don't think you would.

That depends on so many factors, by the way you claimed here before that people would rather hear the D&D harmonic distortions which is such an anecdotal claim,

 

[goat76]

The preferences are not black or white, I also prefer listening in the nearfield and in treated room acoustics, but for example don't like the side walls to be strongly absorptive.

I'm completely fine with your preferences. You are hereby allowed to like the same things as Toole.

That depends on so many factors, by the way you claimed here before that people would rather hear the D&D harmonic distortions which is such an anecdotal claim,

I also clearly stated that not everyone is sensitive to distortion. It's not just black and white.

 

[WillBrink]

Might not be pleasant to listen to in a living room..? What! The SCM40s are freakin' awesome sounding in a (fairly) normal living room!

As someone who has had the 11s, and then the 19s, I have no problems believing that.

 

[Ilkless]

I was a lurker on this forum for quite some time before I started posting, and to be honest with you it's thoroughly unpleasant posts like this which made me hesitant to even sign up, let alone begin posting.

Can you please refrain from totally unwarranted personal attacks? It's hugely unhelpful when most of the people here are just trying to have discussions about audio.

Thanks.

Blithe anti-intellectualism in the face of extensive evidence deserves what's coming. I previously gave numerous citations to this user and several other ATC fetishists to disprove their folk intuition yet they continue to patronise this userbase.

They are disingenuous and intellectually dishonest in hiding behind claims of accuracy yet support anecdotes above verified principles and research evidence of human hearing.

 

[thewas]

I also clearly stated that not everyone is sensitive to distortion. It's not just black and white.

Obviously and the same as for radiation smoothness, but what is important is what is really audible and what is placebo.

 

[Leeken]

Might not be pleasant to listen to in a living room..? What! The SCM40s are freakin' awesome sounding in a (fairly) normal living room!

View attachment 339132

Scm40s sound brilliant too in my far more normal room with zero treatment wish I had the room for some treatment,had to make do with a little bit of eq instead.

 

[PKAudio]

SCM40A: As Measurements of ATC speakers generally are quite rare I will add my measurements of SCM40A here. It was improvised measurement, in the living room, speaker on the floor, mic distance 1m, mic height between mid and tweeter. Gating 4ms but there were still some reflections remaining.
I listened first, before the measurements. I would describe the sound as quite ok. There was certain dullness in lower midrange, the lack of the fullness in the bass and lower midrange, it , midrange was little bit emphasized and forward, trebles quite fine.
Measurements confirmed the impression. Additionally, there was almost zero damping material in the bass cabinet, which is the cause for dull lower midrange.
Midrange in not linear, though very smooth and consistent off axis up to 3kHz.

I think with some patient work and tuning these could be made to sound much better.

SCM12: see the writeup from troubleshooting and small tuning

ATCSCM12 :: Pkaudio

Original state measurement and findings

pkaudio.webnode.cz

 

[YSDR]

Here is a quote from the analysis of Grimm LS1. I think it's related to this topic (and other loudspeaker topics):

"I can see how this could be “interpreted” as more accurate. With less energy in the lower frequencies, there is less upward masking, therefore more perceived detailed. It’s impossible to ascertain if it’s truly more accurate, as true accuracy would involve a perfect engineer capturing the live event perfectly on his recording system, and a playback system with the same on axis and directivity as the recording system. So, is the LS-1 design or are other wide baffle systems more accurate than a narrow monitor? This is impossible to tell due to the circle of confusion. Is the LS-1 a very well-engineered loudspeaker with a relatively unique choice of trade-offs for the consumer? Definitely!'

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?attachments/grimm-audio-ls1-design-pdf.68390/

 

[Ilkless]

SCM40A: As Measurements of ATC speakers generally are quite rare I will add my measurements of SCM40A here. It was improvised measurement, in the living room, speaker on the floor, mic distance 1m, mic height between mid and tweeter. Gating 4ms but there were still some reflections remaining.
I listened first, before the measurements. I would describe the sound as quite ok. There was certain dullness in lower midrange, the lack of the fullness in the bass and lower midrange, it , midrange was little bit emphasized and forward, trebles quite fine.
Measurements confirmed the impression. Additionally, there was almost zero damping material in the bass cabinet, which is the cause for dull lower midrange.
Midrange in not linear, though very smooth and consistent off axis up to 3kHz.

I think with some patient work and tuning these could be made to sound much better.

SCM12: see the writeup from troubleshooting and small tuning

ATCSCM12 :: Pkaudio

Original state measurement and findings

pkaudio.webnode.cz

Thanks. Textbook mismatch in dispersion from 3-6kHz.

Some people here need to understand that on and off-axis mediocrity is not a necessary tradeoff for SPL, nonlinear distortion and transient response.

 

[YSDR]

I think with some patient work and tuning these could be made to sound much better.

For example a sensible waveguide for the tweeter and it would show much even off-axis response IMO.

 

[PKAudio]

A sensible waveguide for the tweeter and it would show much even off-axis response IMO.

Fully agree. And even simple edge rounding would bring significant improvement.

 

[YSDR]

Fully agree. And even simple edge rounding would bring significant improvement.

The Pro models have edge roundovers, the higher tier consumer models have beveled (or maybe rounded on newer models) dustgrilles, only the entry series don't have any edge treatment.

 

[YSC]

Fully agree. And even simple edge rounding would bring significant improvement.

fully agree here also, I am not sure about the broad mid dip is intended for what, but it looks like the directivity mismatch from 3khz up will make all reflections sounded treble heavy or so, I would think that simply get a bit more of a even primitive waveguide around the tweeter likely won't add much if any distortion but flatten that out quite a bit and much easier to do a bit of anechoic EQ to tune the tonality to liking taking advantage of the very low distortion drivers

 

[goat76]

Scm40s sound brilliant too in my far more normal room with zero treatment wish I had the room for some treatment,had to make do with a little bit of eq instead.

I do EQ too as the low-frequency range is really hard to do much about unless there is room for very thick absorbers.

When it comes to acoustic treatments for the rest of the frequency spectrum, I was surprised by how effective just adding a few absorption panels can be. Besides the corner traps, I have 5 panels in my room, two behind the speakers, one behind the curtain on the right wall, one in front of the heat radiator below the window, and one large with some artwork on the left side wall. All in all, they took down the uneven RT Decay from about 400-600ms to a more even decay of around 300-400ms. It made a big difference with a much calmer sound presentation which not only makes a difference to music reproduction, but also for normal conversations and just being in the room. I don't want to overdo it, so I take it step by step and add acoustic treatments one by one to determine what the next step should be after doing measurements.

This GIF of before and after in my room shows the change in the acoustics by just adding 3 more acoustic panels to the room, the two on the front wall and the one on the left wall.

 

[574stereo]

You know politeness is key and fortunately most of you guys here seem like well grounded people, so I’m going to continue and choose to ignore the trolling from Ilkness.



The SCM40 measurement is interesting, there is a small off-axis flare of around 1.5dB in the measurements I’ve seen of the mk2 SCM40 around 4K, no way near as significant as that posted above. I wonder if this is something to do with the nature of the measurement?

Bearing in mind it’s the same driver diaphragm & waveguide used in the larger SCM50 etc upwards, which certainly don’t exhibit anywhere near that level of DI error as indicated from the measurements. I wonder if the bigger picture needed is an actual anechoic or klippel NFS spinorama as with the greatest of respect to @PKAudio, these measurements may not be giving us a true representation of exactly what’s going on… also these would indicate that the model falls outside of ATC’s own white paper on what is expected of the off-axis performance to fall within their design criteria.


FWIW I’ve now seen NFS measurements done with some of the ATC models being discussed in this thread and they actually mostly come out really rather well. Shame I don’t have any to post!

 

[klangfilm]

Don’t know if somebody has already linked to these:

ATC SCM40 | Review - AVMENTOR.net

ATC SCM40, Read Interesting Stories and Reviews about Audio, Hi-Fi, 2-channel, stereo, and multichannel technologies

www.avmentor.net

ATC SCM19 | Review Lab Evaluation - AVMENTOR.net

ATC SCM19, Review Lab Evaluation, Read Interesting Stories and Reviews about Audio, Hi-Fi, 2-channel, stereo, and multichannel technologies

www.avmentor.net

 

[Pearljam5000]

At this price it should be at least 15 inch like the Genelec sub

 

[YSC]

Don’t know if somebody has already linked to these:

ATC SCM40 | Review - AVMENTOR.net

ATC SCM40, Read Interesting Stories and Reviews about Audio, Hi-Fi, 2-channel, stereo, and multichannel technologies

www.avmentor.net

ATC SCM19 | Review Lab Evaluation - AVMENTOR.net

ATC SCM19, Review Lab Evaluation, Read Interesting Stories and Reviews about Audio, Hi-Fi, 2-channel, stereo, and multichannel technologies

www.avmentor.net

I think saw that somewhere before, but the on axis waviness is kind of funny with off axis data very limited

 

[JustJones]

At this price it should be at least 15 inch like the Genelec sub
View attachment 339248

Here's the 15" . It's only $15,000

ATC C6SUB Powered Subwoofer

Shop The Music Room for thousands of HiFi audio products. Saving HiFi since 2011, we are the most trusted source for audiophiles of all budgets.

tmraudio.com

 

[PKAudio]

AVMentor SCM40 measurement and my SCM40A measurements match quite well, at least in basic FR shape.
NFS would definitely bring more detailed measurements, and definitely accurate bottom end measurement, but I still see my and AVMentor measurements valid and useful. Basic FR shape, off axis responses, directivity, that all can be seen from even basic measurements.

SCM50 and other models with wider baffle and tweeter and midrange offsets to one side will actually measure better as this improves diffractions significantly. Slim baffle with sharp edges is really problematic in that regard and makes any directivity matching impossible.