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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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lonemountain
444 posts
 
I really don't know where this information comes from, "not easy to drive".  ATC has a very consistent impedance curve, does not drop down to super low impedance like many other systems do.  Efficiency in the full range sealed box category, say BBC monitor type where 82dB was acceptable, 85-86dB seems rather good.  I see a lot of misinformation about ATC in the hi fi forums, not sure why.   Probably because the factory never posts!

Brad     
transaudio
96 posts
 
This idea that ATC is "not easy to drive" is an opinion, not fact.  The fact is its quite easy to drive for the impedance curve does not drop down low as is the case with large number of passives.  A reasonable amplifier can drive them fine.  A large amplifier can drive them fine too.

ATC makes an 150W/ch amp themselves (P1) - costs $4k. Uses the same design as their 3 way active amp packs.    Unless 4K is a cost no object price point?  
Brad
frustee
10 posts
 
I was driving ATC SCM 40 V2s with a 10 year old Rotel RB-1090 Amplifier which cost me $895 here on the Gon.  

400 wpc into 8 ohms.  That Rotel owned the ATCs.

Plenty of good values in used high power amps, would not sweat that issue.
jaybe
735 posts
 
I've heard SCM 19v2 speakers driven by a 30 watt Pass amp and a preamp with adequate gain. They went plenty loud for most listening and sounded mighty nice.
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