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ATC speakers / Monitors

unloren

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But mixing and music playback are 2 different things
You are claiming that ATCs are the best to mix on, which is possible, but when you want to listen to the mastered music it's also possible they're not the best for that purpose, so I don't really understand your point
No, no, that was exactly my point. :)

I guess I see a lot of the science on the listening side but not on the mixing side, and it would be nice to have that represented too. Gearspace is full of engineers who mostly go by what they hear and ASR is full of (I assume) audiophiles who, in large part, go by what they measure. If the mixing engineers knew what to measure for I think the audiophiles would be more convinced in the value of ATC and other professional-facing products.

I think sometimes the odd mixing engineer will stumble into ASR to ask about ATC or Amphion and most people will say don't waste your money on that overpriced sh$t, get Genelec or Neumann because they measure much better. I think that's unfortunate because ASR is a really cool site that is offering a very valuable service, but it has some blind spots when it comes to equipment outside of the "listening" community.
 
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BrokenEnglishGuy

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No, no, that was exactly my point. :)

I guess I see a lot of the science on the listening side but not on the mixing side, and it would be nice to have that represented too. Gearspace is full of engineers who mostly go by what they hear and ASR is full of (I assume) audiophiles who, in large part, go by what they measure. If the mixing engineers knew what to measure for I think the audiophiles would be more convinced in the value of ATC and other professional-facing products.

I think sometimes the odd mixing engineer will stumble into ASR to ask about ATC or Amphion and most people will say don't waste your money on that overpriced sh$t, get Genelec or Neumann because they measure much better. I think that's unfortunate because ASR is a really cool site that is offering a very valuable service, but it has some blind spots when it comes to equipment outside of the "listening" community.
I think asr have many engineers and manufacturers
 

Chrise36

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You quoted

and asked him for proof

which I gave showing that the KH420 dome has lower distortion than the ATC one, so what is unclear to you?
Reports are that these are custom made by Peerless India if you search there photos of them in other threads.
 

Chrise36

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No, no, that was exactly my point. :)

I guess I see a lot of the science on the listening side but not on the mixing side, and it would be nice to have that represented too. Gearspace is full of engineers who mostly go by what they hear and ASR is full of (I assume) audiophiles who, in large part, go by what they measure. If the mixing engineers knew what to measure for I think the audiophiles would be more convinced in the value of ATC and other professional-facing products.

I think sometimes the odd mixing engineer will stumble into ASR to ask about ATC or Amphion and most people will say don't waste your money on that overpriced sh$t, get Genelec or Neumann because they measure much better. I think that's unfortunate because ASR is a really cool site that is offering a very valuable service, but it has some blind spots when it comes to equipment outside of the "listening" community.
Dr Toole quote:
Technical measurements are demonstrably precise, repeatable events. Hearing perception is not. Obviously, the perceived event is definitive – if it does not sound good, it isn’t good. The task is to correlate what we measure with what we perceive – This is psychoacoustics.
 
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Pearljam5000

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No, no, that was exactly my point. :)

I guess I see a lot of the science on the listening side but not on the mixing side, and it would be nice to have that represented too. Gearspace is full of engineers who mostly go by what they hear and ASR is full of (I assume) audiophiles who, in large part, go by what they measure. If the mixing engineers knew what to measure for I think the audiophiles would be more convinced in the value of ATC and other professional-facing products.

I think sometimes the odd mixing engineer will stumble into ASR to ask about ATC or Amphion and most people will say don't waste your money on that overpriced sh$t, get Genelec or Neumann because they measure much better. I think that's unfortunate because ASR is a really cool site that is offering a very valuable service, but it has some blind spots when it comes to equipment outside of the "listening" community.
NS10 was the gold standard for years for mixing, but they sound like crap
Like I said mixing and listening to music are 2 completely different things with different goals so there's no point in comparing them.
 

unloren

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NS10 was the gold standard for years for mixing, but they sound like crap
Like I said mixing and listening to music are 2 completely different things with different goals so there's no point in comparing them.
Agree. But why are the NS10s good for mixing?
 

Spocko

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Sorry, I meant engineers as in mixing engineers and producers. I should have clarified.
Go to gearspace.com (formerly gearslutz) where many mixing engineers argue/discuss speaker selection and nothing brings out more tribalism and defensiveness than when somebody says they prefer something over another (including ATC).
As I've stated before, the meta conclusion is that more often than not, ATCs are about the "dome" if you're a traditionalist, but the better funded professionals with an open mind end up with the latest new fangled DSP active speaker from Genelec, Kii, Dutch, Grimm or Ex Machina. And the ATC faithful only have one full proof argument in their arsenal: many respected legendary studios in England use it, so it must be good because they're not stupid, they're rich, they must know what they're doing. It's great because it's technically not a strawman argument as these studios are named, but then it falls into selection bias: "concentrating on the people or things that made it past some selection process and overlooking those that did not, typically because of their lack of visibility". If one studio (Abbey Road) uses ATC and that same studio happens to succeed because of one band "The Beatles" who likely would've succeeded regardless of the monitoring speakers chosen, and future studios simply cut and paste exactly the equipment used by Abbey Road because nobody wants to re-invent the wheel, then ATC will succeed because of selection bias giving more weight to speakers for Abbey Road's success and less to the engineers and musicians that is easily 99.9% of that success regardless if what monitoring system was used. It doesn't mean that ATC is the best, but rather benefitting from the adage: "why fix something that isn't broke?" Abby Road won't be any more successful if they switched to Genelec nor will they be any worse off if they started using PSI speakers - and hell, I'd venture today's modern el cheapo special from Monolith may be better than ATC speakers of 40 years ago.

So let's please stop making speaker decisions based on the massive success of others who happen to use the equipment we're considering - the reasons for their selection may have ZERO to do with the minute improvements we're talking about here, because ultimately, all these fine brands are within 5% of each other's performance and that last 5% does not make or break your success as a producing/mixing/mastering engineer.
 

unloren

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Because the gurus said it. You cannot work on what is not audible.
I have a pair too and I like to use them. I couldn’t tell you why though other than that the changes I make while using them seem to sound good on other sources.

And I can use them for a long time without my ears getting tired.
 

Spocko

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Agree. But why are the NS10s good for mixing?
Because after the mix, if it can sound acceptable on the NS10 then it will sound good on other similarly challenged speakers. But if music only sounds good on an awesome speaker but sound crappy on the NS10 (which serves as a proxy for badly designed mainstream speakers), then the music will lose its appeal. The job of the mixer is to ensure the music sounds good in as many speakers as possible, not just well designed speakers. I believe this is the theory behind using "fatiguing" speakers for mixing where you would never use it for luxury listening but need to use it to "hear into" worst parts of the mix which will sound similarly bad on similar speakers. Not all mixing engineers buy into this approach, but this is one of the reasons why the NS10 has been popular. The modern flat/neutral speaker can now be easily EQ'd to sound like the NS10 so you can get what you want without having to use the NS10. In the past it was easy just to plug in the NS10 and focus on what sounded terrible on it.
 

richard12511

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Sorry, I meant engineers as in mixing engineers and producers. I should have clarified.

ASR has a ton of mix engineers and producers. They make up a very large portion of the ASR user base. In fact, it's really the mix engineers/producers that are largely recommending Genelec/Neumann. People like me that use Genelec purely for pleasure are definitely in the minority. Most that are listening for pleasure are buying and recommending other neutral solutions like KEF and Revel.
 

richard12511

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You quoted

and asked him for proof

which I gave showing that the KH420 dome has lower distortion than the ATC one, so what is unclear to you?

Perhaps I'm misreading, but I think this could just be an issue of misunderstanding/mistranslation/language barrier. No offense meant to either @BrokenEnglishGuy or @Frgirard (I don't even speak a second language at all :)), but it's clear that English is not their first language. Based on what was actually written

The dome from neumann KH420 its the same but can play louder with lower distortion
For a second+ language English speaker, I could see where that might cause confusion. I think @Frgirard may have took that statement to mean that the Neumann dome and the ATC dome are of the exact same brand and model.

I definitely could be wrong, though, and he can correct me if that's the case.
 

Frgirard

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You are making generalizations. How many mixers and mastering operators employed by studios are on ASR?
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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Perhaps I'm misreading, but I think this could just be an issue of misunderstanding/mistranslation/language barrier. No offense meant to either @BrokenEnglishGuy or @Frgirard (I don't even speak a second language at all :)), but it's clear that English is not their first language. Based on what was actually written


For a second+ language English speaker, I could see where that might cause confusion. I think @Frgirard may have took that statement to mean that the Neumann dome and the ATC dome are of the exact same brand and model.

I definitely could be wrong, though, and he can correct me if that's the case.
Thewas gave the proofs that he wanted, i didn't need to post because thewas already did it :)
 

Chrise36

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This is not what you get according to specs:
Sine wave output with a THD < 0.5 % at 1 m in half space @95 dB SPL (>100 Hz)
0.5 thd = -46 db
 

Chrise36

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The worse spec is this:
Self-generated noise at 10 cm (with input gain set to 100 dB SPL for 0 dBu)<20 dB(A) SPL
That means about 3db noise at 100db @1m from the amps.
 

Elkios

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Maybe more people here should own both .Live with them for a few years. Listen and play live instruments . Then make a decision on what actually sounds more real
 
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Pearljam5000

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is this true?(taken from GS)
Screenshot_20211107-010433.jpg
 
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