Question: Does ATC have the best midrange driver?

Just because a car has "the best" engine doesn't make it the best car. The midrange driver, good as it is, is only one part of the speaker chain, and the implementation of the entire speaker is at least as important as the drivers themselves.

ATC built their company in the professional market and has only recently began making a serious effort to enter the consumer market, which is why we don't hear about them much at this point. They are incredibly good speakers though, so I suspect this will change over time if ATC is able to procure more distribution and trickle their technology down to more earthbound prices. I do agree with Sean that ATC devotees are almost cultlike in their support of the products, much like you see in brands like Linn and Naim. Basically if you get it, you get it, but I've never known anyone to hear a pair of ATCs and not be at least a little impressed.

That said, ATC speakers are still based on a professional monitor platform and thus will not appeal to those who prefer a more "audiophile" sound. This means that you are not going to get an incredibly expansive, deep, or layered soundstage, and ATCs are not going to pull off the disappearing act as well as many others. The flipside is that ATCs are extremely transparent, clear, dynamic, and have an ability to put the power of a performance in the room like few other speakers on the market. Whether this is "the best" is a subjective and personal decision--no speaker is perfect.

Tim

NO! question is too subjective

TWL,
Don't really want to try to defend too much of what's coming out of the professional pop music recording industry, but I do want to clarify one thing.
The real reason the Yamaha NS-10 is the "most used" nearfield in pop studios by professionals is not for their reference sound quality. The truth of the matter is, the NS-10 closely resembles what the avarage consumer listens to at home. Pop engineers use the NS-10 to hear what their mixes are going to sound like in the average Joe/Jane's house. The popularity of this monitor accross the board in professional studios also establishes a sense of consistency. By and large, a pop album is recorded and mixed in several different studios by several engineers, having the NS-10's does allow them to have one constant.

Now, ATC is getting a following in the Classical and Jazz engineering scene as well. There are some very talented engineers that truly love ATC monitors.

accuracy is not subjective.

"Accuracy is not subjective"

Yes it is - plotting is one thing and listening is another

One person's garbage is another person's treasure-

you can't account for personal taste, emotion, and how trained (or not) a person's ears are, through statistics, or voting, or logic, or anything else in hopes of arriving at an absolute fact.

And one thing I am learning here on these threads is that consensous is impossible and that is because, to quote a scholar, "You can't account for personal taste, emotion, and how trained (or not) a person's ears are..."

cd