ATC SCM 40 question

“Anyway, they sound pretty incredible a lot of the time, but I've noticed on some recordings, not necessarily bad ones, just they can come across a little shrill and sharp, like the highs are overheated somehow.”

I may be oversimplifying things but. 
Seems to me common sense says we often focus on equipment and overlook source material.

If your speakers sound “incredible a lot of the time” …actually that would be the speakers, your system AND your room…then wouldn’t it make sense to assume the fault lies with those sources and not your system.

A revealing and neutral system would expose the sound quality of the tape, record, cd etc. So, is there a playback system that makes everything sound great all the time? Can a system be tweaked to address problem areas, and I assume we are dealing with frequency here, record or cd etc. Aside from “custom” EQ ing your system to eliminate problem’s with source material on an as needed basis, is there anything you can do?

ATC (I don’t have much experience with them, though I am considering the brand for purchase) are noted for being very revealing…they are often used as mix monitors by engineers for eg. With this level of detail the source material will be revealed. Bright recordings will sound bright etc.

I, in fact, would be a bit wary of any speaker or system where everything sounded great (or not so great). We do tend to prize transparency over coloration but is there a case of too much of a good thing?

I have no answer but this OP made me think.
  
 

THis is exactly the dilema we face in pro, when the "warts" make some people think it "sounds worse". To avoid this in record making, there's a secret method some top mixers use: turn on subs or even different [EQ’d] speakers for the clients to hear their mix, so their mix sounds better to them. If they heard it on the mix speakers (say NS10s, auratones), they would universally hate it and would not approve it.

This is a very complex area and extremely diffiuclt to explain outside of the studio.  Learning how to critically listen is perhaps the single most important "skill" a mixer/mastering engineer has to learn.  The truth is if you mix to sound good on an ultra revealing pair of speakers, it will sound good on everything else and likely be error free.

If you mix with a speaker that has bass boosted, it will turn out bass light on other speakers. If you mix it on a speaker that’s too dull, too rolled off, it will turn out too bright on other speakers.  If you hear a record that has no bass, theres a very good chance the mix/mastering speakers or the room was very bass boosted.  They were convinced there was bass where their wasnt.  If the crossover is an issue on your passives, there's a dip right there, you will want to eq to remove that dip in instruments around that crossover area, becasue the dip makes them sound weird.  Now the entire mix will sound like a peaky midrange, especially on a good pair of speakers that don't have that same dip.  

I have ATC SCM7 (gen 2) with the ATC house tweeter and the earlier ATC SCM35’s with the ScanSpeak tweeter. My SCM35’s are far less forgiving of hard and bright source material. My read is that you are getting a better rendition of what the material actually sounds like than you did before.

This has been true for me whenever I did a significant upgrade. 
 

I run tube preamps and solid state AB amps with both speakers. I have heard the latest SCM40’s several times and they are not hard sounding with good source material and good electronics.

@lonemountain Thank you. Very informative and interesting.