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ATC speakers / Monitors

Chrise36

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No, but it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter how it sounds if there is no data to try to figure out why it sounds like this.
You cannot see the magic through the measurements!! buddy !
This is the magic you see from the best measuring speaker is this flat or not?
What do you understand if you have not heard it?
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Frgirard

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Then there is a lot of pro's not using ATC. Look at Dave Pensado and his studio facility he did a tour of. I could be wrong but I do not recall seeing a single ATC speaker there. That was amongst other in the facility to.
Just because GS Board says something doesn't mean much as I see so many so called pro's on their posting all day. I would think if you are so busy with clients the message board wouldn't be so popular. We can also take from GS a certain Mastering Engineer who swears by tubes, homopathy, cables, etc and he even has Grammy awards. In short GS is just opinions and fan boys with a few exceptions of people who mostly stop participating. Again let us not make this board that.

From what I see here so far ATC measures objectively not great.
There has been no evidence to the contrary.
Heresy (someone said) does not change that.

I welcome objective data to the contrary but outside of that it is just all opinions I am afraid.

watch
Sterling sound is not a little home studio. Everybody can verify the credits of the ME working in this studio with ATC speakers.
Philippe Tessier du Cros use ATC.



The choice of speakers in a big structure is financial: the big discount. This is happened in Radio France when they move from Cabasse to ATC.
 
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Pearljam5000

Pearljam5000

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Sterling sound is not a little home studio. Everybody can verify the credits of the ME working in this studio with ATC speakers.
Philippe Tessier du Cros use ATC.



The choice of speakers in a big structure is financial: the big discount. This is happened in Radio France when they move from Cabasse to ATC.
I wonder which is the most popular Genelecs or ATCs in most professional studios
 

807Recordings

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Sterling sound is not a little home studio. Everybody can verify the credits of the ME working in this studio with ATC speakers.
Philippe Tessier du Cros use ATC.



The choice of speakers in a big structure is financial: the big discount. This is happened in Radio France when they move from Cabasse to ATC.
So you are bringing nothing more to this again besides name dropping. Clearly there’s nothing to discuss anymore with this subject and your agenda so I will remove myself from conversation with you. Anyone else with objective evidence I will watch for though.
 

audio2920

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Not trying to defend ATC exactly, but it strikes me from the plots I've seen that ATCs main failing (very generally) is excessive mids. I've only personally mixed a couple of commercially released music albums on ATC without room correction (as I'm mostly a film mixer professionally) but I would say, I quickly settled in to a mid-forward sound. I didn't mind it. When I played the mixes back elsewhere, it was less aggressive, but played fine.

I think a lot of mixers don't try to fight the sound of the recording too much as it can be counter productive. The most experienced (music, and film) mixers I've worked with are generally quite sparing with "corrective EQ". So, it would be wrong to assume that they would pull the mids down by the exact magnitude of the push in the monitor's response.

And then, where EQ is "mistakenly" applied to such peaks, mixing on ATCs with this trait might create a slightly more V-curved sound on the track, which then might replay nicely, as some of the mids being recessed (compared to the mix environment) is actually a listening preference for a lot of people?

We tend to say that in an ideal world all mix rooms and all listening rooms would have the same ("flat") FR. And that "flat" has been proven subjectively to be preferred. But in reality, I'm not so sure it's exactly that simple. For example my listening preference curve for my living room slopes down 3dB more (20Hz to 20k) than my studio's, even though the listening distance is roughly the same. My mixes broadly come out sounding spectrally similar to other people's, but when I'm listening for pleasure rather than work, I can play stuff back however I want; I don't need to listen to it precisely how the mixer heard it in the studio (even if that mixer was me!) So, I prefer a more "relaxed" sound out of work.

Translation from studio to home is a hugely complex thing of course, of which FR is only one aspect.

Again, not trying to justify poor FR as at ATC prices you'd think things would look better, just saying, IMHO there may be some listening preference reasons why some excess mid in the studio doesn't directly translate to mixes that the casual listener perceives as mid shy.

(And as I've mentioned before, obviously to some extent the monitor's on axis FR will come out in the wash somewhat with room correction DSP anyway.)
 

thewas

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I wonder which is the most popular Genelecs or ATCs in most professional studios
Just as a wild guessing from hundreds of photos I have seen I would say 2-way KRKs in home studios and NS-10 in pro studios (probably more then Genelec and ATC together) so lets all buy KRKs and NS-10. ;)

In Germany there is a saying, eat sh*t, billions of flies can't be wrong.

I am not saying that any of previous mentioned monitors are sh*t, but that the discussion what other pros use is not really expedient. Pros are also prone to hype, voodoo (see cables and tubes) and poor monitors like NS-10 or some Altecs in the past (see the book of Toole for details on that) which just lead to the continuation of audio's circle of confusion. In 2021 we have good science which can even predict the subjective rating with surprising accuracy from a spinorama. Of course on a high level this is still not enough and there the subjective remarks of experienced listeners can be very helpful but please on a similar high systematic level and not just based on quantitative photo statistics.
 

Inner Space

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In 2021 we have good science which can even predict the subjective rating with surprising accuracy from a spinorama.
I'm not disputing your post in general, but for this thread in particular, we should remember the predictions you mention are about normal listeners, in normal living rooms, with mass market domestic equipment aimed at reproduction. We should try to quantify whether - and if so, why and how - pro monitoring systems need different strengths, possibly at the cost of different weaknesses, because they're aimed at production. I have lived in both worlds, and have found each to have its own demands.
 

thewas

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I'm not disputing your post in general, but for this thread in particular, we should remember the predictions you mention are about normal listeners, in normal living rooms, with mass market domestic equipment aimed at reproduction. We should try to quantify whether - and if so, why and how - pro monitoring systems need different strengths, possibly at the cost of different weaknesses, because they're aimed at production. I have lived in both worlds, and have found each to have its own demands.
We have seen a change in the last decades of studio environments becoming less acoustically damped as also the monitors got better (as can be read in Tooles book) so the difference between both becomes rather smaller which is actually helpful if we want to minimise the audio's circle of confusion problem. Personally I would rather have a neutral monitor in the studio too and introduce some EQ like a magnifying lens on demand when needed to check some regions in detail. On the other hand experienced pros do often the best results with equipment they are used to and a good pro with medium hardware gives usually a better result than vise versa (same also in any job, hobby or sports) and in the end the discussion can get also a bit philosophical. To come back to the topic I really like the sound of ATC loudspeakers but on the other side also don't like the hype on them as in 2021 its not black magic like it used to be for most of us in the 90s, thank you science and its easy and broad availability for that.
 

mightycicadalord

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I was curious if anyone had any listening experience with the genelec 80x0, namely 30 and 40, and the atc scm12 pro. I enjoy my 8040's a lot, but often feel I overmix a bit on them and take a bit of the vibe. Wondering if the passive and frankly within my budget ATC's can provide a different flavor. I find that what I assume is the dispersion causing a bit of a diffuse sound field, it's great mind you but can feel flattering to me at times. I have a pair of speakers with dayton reference softdomes, no waveguide, and while the sweet spot is more narrow, the imaging feels more precise. Am I onto something or are these just the ramblings of a bored engineer.
 

richard12511

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Although I don't deliberately do so myself, I do sometimes wonder if there's merit in mixing with more midrange, such as the upper-mid pushes we see on some high end studio monitors across various frequencies. By that I mostly mean that while it might not create the perfect spectral balance overall, it might show up mismatch and confict issues often exist in such frequencies. Dunno...
I kinda wonder the same thing.

Almost all of the audio science I've read about only deals with listener preference. Under blind conditions. I'm very confident that most folks would prefer a more neutral Genelec/Neumann loudspeaker over a more mid forward ATC loudspeaker. That said, the job of a studio monitor is not necessarily to sound "best"(most pleasurable), but rather to "best reveal flaws in the mix". If other ATC monitors also measure mid forward, I could see where that might make it easier to hear flaws within that range. It also makes it harder to hear bass/treble flaws, but I do tend to think the midrange is the most important frequency. Totally guessing here, but I could see where a mid centric monitor like an ATC might be good for mixing. Mastering I would think it's different. For mastering, I would think you want as neutral as possible. All that said, I'm not a mix/master engineer :D. I listen purely for pleasure. Of course, mixing on a mid centric monitor contributes to the circle of confusion, but I'd hope those differences are fixed during mastering.
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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I kinda wonder the same thing.

Almost all of the audio science I've read about only deals with listener preference. Under blind conditions. I'm very confident that most folks would prefer a more neutral Genelec/Neumann loudspeaker over a more mid forward ATC loudspeaker. That said, the job of a studio monitor is not necessarily to sound "best"(most pleasurable), but rather to "best reveal flaws in the mix". If other ATC monitors also measure mid forward, I could see where that might make it easier to hear flaws within that range. It also makes it harder to hear bass/treble flaws, but I do tend to think the midrange is the most important frequency. Totally guessing here, but I could see where a mid centric monitor like an ATC might be good for mixing. Mastering I would think it's different. For mastering, I would think you want as neutral as possible. All that said, I'm not a mix/master engineer :D. I listen purely for pleasure. Of course, mixing on a mid centric monitor contributes to the circle of confusion, but I'd hope those differences are fixed during mastering.
+1
For example the Beyerdynamic DT770 is very used for mixing, is not flat and have a peak in the top end
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richard12511

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I didn't love ATCs overall, but totally, totally agree about the mid clarity. It really is a thing. I'm a witness. I think ASR should try to figure out why. Which measurements are relevant to the issue, and which aren't?

Looking at the data, I think it's pretty obvious why ATC has such great mid clarity. The speaker has relatively good (not great) directivity, and the midrange is turned up 2-3dB over the rest of the spectrum. For that reason, the midrange stands out more than it does on other (more neutral speakers). You could get the same mid clarity by turning the KH310 mid dome up by 2-3dB.
 

BrokenEnglishGuy

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Looking at the data, I think it's pretty obvious why ATC has such great mid clarity. The speaker has relatively good (not great) directivity, and the midrange is turned up 2-3dB over the rest of the spectrum. For that reason, the midrange stands out more than it does on other (more neutral speakers). You could get the same mid clarity by turning the KH310 mid dome up by 2-3dB.
Is way easier hear the mid with that boost, some people just say they like the mid centric presentation with that small peak in the top end (the fun fact, its the mid centric presentation its pretty consistent from ATC)
Anyway i didn't hear a bounch of people with Genelec or Neumann talking about mid range black magic.., for me its just the people don't realize what kind of FR they like.
 

richard12511

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From what I see here so far ATC measures objectively not great.
There has been no evidence to the contrary.
Heresy (someone said) does not change that.
This is where I am, pretty much. The objective evidence we have so far suggests that ATC is decent, but nowhere near Genelec/Neumann. Individual subjective impressions are meaningless, given the biases of the human brain. But, a great measurement of one of their more modern active speakers could change my mind. Would love to see a SCM150 measured!

If there are any owners out there, I'd be willing to chip in for shipping.
 

Inner Space

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The objective evidence we have so far suggests that ATC is decent, but nowhere near Genelec/Neumann.
This is the pivotal sentence in the debate. All three speakers can be accurately described by measurement. Their measurements can be compared against a standard. One will be the closest match, and the other two will be less close.

But why compare a studio monitor against a standard derived from normal listeners using mass market equipment in normal living rooms in normal houses? Meeting one set of demands doesn't mean you meet every set of demands.

My own hopelessly unscientific thought experiment goes like this: you have a problem in the mix. You don't really know what it is. But it's very important to fix it. Tension is high. Fifty people are going to do better or worse in life depending on how well this record sells. Not least you. Your rep is on the line.

So, question: out of every mixer who has ever been in that spot, which is all of them, what would be the net migration? Would more guys who started the mix on ATCs move to Genelecs or Neumanns, or would more who started with Genelecs or Neumanns move to ATCs?

Based on doing it and seeing it done, I would say the latter. And it's not just a question of a 3dB boost. Anyone could do that, and eat into ATC's market. Certainly ATC's prices give them plenty of room.

That mid dome is a real thing. And I say that as a person who avoided ATCs wherever possible, partly because of flaws elsewhere, and partly because I didn't like the guy who owned the company. He gave me huge negative bias. But if it was 4am and I had a problem, I'd use his damn mid dome.
 

Elkios

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This is where I am, pretty much. The objective evidence we have so far suggests that ATC is decent, but nowhere near Genelec/Neumann. Individual subjective impressions are meaningless, given the biases of the human brain. But, a great measurement of one of their more modern active speakers could change my mind. Would love to see a SCM150 measured!

If there are any owners out there, I'd be willing to chip in for shipping.
What are the biases of a human brain that is not biased by brand , appearance, measurements. Say the complete opposite to us here . One that play's a lot of musical instruments and listens to live unamplified up close and at distance and they say a particular speaker sounds more real ? Some people do not care what a speaker looks like. Same as I don't care about cars but I know I can be shocked by a high spec small car after a drive just friends cars . Most people are aware that small speakers can sound big these days heck all my girlfriends in the past have and really don't care about my speakers but some who play instruments and sing have commented about attributes of my speakers that are better one to the other and funnily they shared a lot of the same opinion as myself when I asked what they thought so no manipulation or suggestion to help them . So maybe there are things we don't fully understand. I don't want to go down the Genelec vs ATC path because I don't need to but I do like both a lot. But in saying that I have just moved my 8341s for either bigger Gen or ExMachina. I'm to up in the crypto universe with current bullrun. Buy crypto guy's and buy your dream speakers .
 
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