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Your thoughts about ATC loudspeakers

I’m interested in the ATC SCM-40 from their HiFi series and would like to hear from people who have owned or spent a lot of time with ATC speakers. This is a fairly new model and may be a bit of a departure from their classic sound.

At the show in Newport last weekend, I was quite taken by these speakers. I went back the next day and heard the same things that I liked about them, but a couple of red flags also went up:

Microdynamics – not sure these speakers do them well and microdynamics are critical to communicating inflection and nuance and to making music sound alive

Imaging, specifically wrt depth. Nothing much outside of the plane of the speakers, so recording venue info is not there and even instrument and vocal body may suffer a bit.

Were these shortcomings of setup or associated gear, or is this what ATC does?
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nrivera1957
3 posts
 

I purchased the SCM40 V2 about a year ago and have enjoyed discovering how good and bad my CD collection sounds. The tonal balance of the speakers is excellent. The bass is tight, articulate and quick. And it's a sealed box design standing about 24" from rear wall. The timing and control is terrific. If the end of a song has a long diminishing end to it the speaker does not truncate it but carries it through till there is no signal left. That's accuracy. The sound of Cal Tjader's vibraphone and Count Basie's piano, and Maynard Fergusons' trumpet is fantastic through the SCM40s. The dynamics is impressive. Turn up the volume and the music simply gets louder without distortion. I also heard that the amplified version of these speakers is best. I would like to hear them someday. Maybe at the NY Audio show in Nov.

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david_ten
5,480 posts
 
IMO depth is nearly entirely a psychoacoustic construct that depends on how far away from the front wall the speakers are. Further you put them, more perception of depth you have.

Thank you! I have long believed this to be true. If your brain (via your eyes) doesn't perceive space for the musicians to occupy behind the speakers, your ears will not perceive soundstage depth through your audio system. At least that's what I believe. Unless you've pulled your speakers out into the middle of the room (even as an experiment), I don't believe you've experienced the depth your speakers are capable of.

@acousticfrontiers  @hesson11  +1 +1

Any feedback on the active version?
shadorne's avatar
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shadorne
7,477 posts
 
@david_ten

I have used extensively since ’95 ATC speakers. SCM 20, SCM 20SL, SCM100A and their C6 subwoofer and even their largest active centre channel.

They all sound very similar even active vs passive.

As you go larger and go active the clarity and distortion drops while the SPL capability increases to truly incredible dynamic levels.

Recently I simplified to their active 150 elliptical design which has a 15" woofer. If you are a stickler for precise timbre of sound for percussion, vocals, piano and pretty much anything at live music levels then you can’t go wrong with ATC - especially the larger models - no speaker I know of has better driver integration or such extremely low distortion at high SPL than a large ATC. The sound is neutral and precise and totally natural/realistic.

My speakers and class A to 2/3 power active discrete component amps are entirely made in the UK by ATC. All three drivers are entirely made in house by ATC. The tweeter is a new in house design and has no Ferrofluid - it has a double spider - perhaps the only tweeter using this design. As others have mentioned, the magic is in the bass and mid range with ATC - the bass and mid range are so clean and tangible that this is immediately easily noticeable versus other speakers. The new tweeter is designed and built in house by ATC (like all their drivers) and is only available on very recent models and it is outstanding but the tweeter improvement vs other speakers is not of the same order of magnitude noticeable significant improvement as the bass and mid range.

Active is such a no brainer - it allows amps to work within a limited bandwidth and without the heavy load of a passive lossy crossover - the design is just an order of magnitude better than the traditional approach in terms of low distortion and driver integration (provided active is done well as it is possible to mess up any design approach).

digsmithd
913 posts
 
I have my 19's fairly far from back wall (for a small room,10' by 13.5') and that does give soundstage alot of depth...I recently took out some larger bass traps and replaced with smaller room ones and that gave some oomph to the whole sound stage/bass...i over did it with larger traps I think...They do need some volume...there new tweeter design is something special to my ears...never heard piano so coherent and natural...space is the place baby...+ air,detail
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