Opinions and recommendations on active loudspeakers

gosta: Doobie Bros, a Don Landee and Ted Templeman project, they did a lot of cool stuff in the 70s through 80s.  A power house those two!   I do think takin it to the streets while a great song and album but not my sonic favorite of the era.  Good bass playing, but poor low end on that record!   My 70s sonic best would be Dreamboat Annie (Heart), Fleetwood Mac (white album) 1975, Crime of the Century (Supertramp) 1974, and Aja (Steely Dan) 1977, Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd) 1973 and personal favorite Court and Spark (Joni Mitchell) 1974.  All sonically excellent albums with incredible low end, sound incredible on vinyl.  I used all of them for demo back in a hi end hi fi store in the mid to late 70s.  

Sorry to hijack this thread a little but musical tips hopefully never bad.
lonemountain: You're probably right about the missing low end but my point were more about the distorsion free completely clean recording. Pump up the volume on your ATC to 105 db and play Takin' it to the streets. Frightening. You expect something to explode when they attack the bass and drums. Sorry Ican't say the same about Crime of the Century. Historic record with fantastic music, but lots of distortion and edgy sounds. At least for me on CD and Tidal. 
A hidden secret maybe: France Gall "Concert public Concert privé". There you have the incredible bass player Sonny Thompson (know too little about him unfortunately) doing all solos and also all the melody playing. The rest of the band merely joining in. The first cd is acoustic (almost...) and certainly have the deepest possible electric bass. Great music.

@gosta  

Crime of Century was probably at its best on original vinyl. There are many digital versions and some are quite compressed. I like MFSL CD version personally. Many of the remasters get goosed to sound impressive and lose the balance that made the original such a smash success. 

I still can’t believe how good Muddy Walters Folk Singer (Tidal) sounds! In fact I have to say that on the whole most 70’s recordings tend to be better than anything since the 90’s. 

 

@gosta
We'll there you could be right.  I listen to most of my stuff on ATC's, as do several of those artists in my list.  Since ATC's tell it like it is, you are right, some of the later CD re-releases and remixes can be quite awful.  This is quite obvious in the studio.  I know some of the folks involved in those records and they hate some of these rereleases too.  Funny how little control the artist and the original engineers have over that- the record company owns it and does what it wants.    Shadorne brings that up too, the original vinyl of Crime of the Century was awesome and some of the later CD rereleases and re mixes were not.  Much less the case now, the record companies are mostly gone.
From my perspective, that "sound" of that CD is not the speaker.  The ATC SE50 we take to trade shows sounds absolutely glorious at 105dB SPL IF the recording is good.  All about the source.  And from an ATC perspective, all about the truth.  So if the remix is bad, it should sound that way.

Brad

a recommendation: The AirPulse Model 1-A200 or if you have more money the A300. Get the stands as well. I have the Model 1 and the midrange is as good as it gets at this price range. These are engineered to be studio monitors as well as hifi boxes... if there is a powered monitor better at 800-1200 USD per pair I don't know about them... there is a review of the new A300 in Sound on Sound.