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I'm glad you are enjoying your new speakers. ATC is a brand that does not get a lot of coverage around here, but they appear to make some impressive, and expensive, speakers. I have always associated the brand with their active speakers and have never heard their passive designs. Lastly, I'm not sure if there is any "magic" in their drivers. Also, I'm not sure about your conclusions regarding their proprietary driver technology. These speakers may sound better than your previous model, but there is more to good sound than drivers. My current speakers use Seas Excel drivers and they are very transparent and dynamic. They also play as loud as I could possibly want them to play. There is more to great sound than high quality drivers. The cabinet, the overall design/xover, and general implimentation play a critical role in the end results. I've owned and auditioned several speakers that used modest drivers (like the ones from GR Research) that sounded very good. I've also heard speakers that used some high $$$ drivers and exotic cabinets, and xover components that sounded pretty bad. ATC appears to be a company that makes some very good sounding speakers. Much of the "technology" described in their marketing materials seems like standard fluff. Thanks,Jack
Thanks, Jack! These speakers will have one re-thinking a lot about what one thought they knew about sound reproduction. I've been reading with some amusement in the threads here some back and forth about how amp "X" either does or does not improve the playback experience (and taking offense if you do not agree ). What has become apparent since obtaining these speakers is this: Assuming the amps are all able to sufficiently drive the speakers under test, these speakers have a HUGE difference in playback improvement in comparison to the amp. It's difficult to quantify just how much of a difference one actually hears once you hear a set of speakers like these. The ability to accurately portray the spectral decay is without equal. I've tried a number of amps on them, and here is the kicker: ALL the amps sounded quite a bit better with these speakers than they did with any other speakers I have auditioned. The difference made by the speakers is orders of magnitude larger than swapping amps around with most other speakers I've owned or auditioned. From doing some research, it seems that the hard core DIY speaker builders have been using the Super Linear drivers for years. Now, I know why.
I agree that speakers are the least swapped item. They are pretty hard to move, and you take a beating on selling them. So, one tends to "squeeze the most out of them". However, the reality is, in order to make a really significant change, speakers are the single biggest item that makes a difference. I've become a supporter of the monitor/sub setup. The ATC speakers that employ the Super Liner driver are easily some the bet I've heard, regardless of price. Would love to get my hands on the active 50's!
Hi Sam,Sorry for the late response. Completely missed it.The plasma is a 50". My room, with the speakers against the long wall as you see in this picture, would not have benefited from larger ATCs. I measured the room (actually Clayton Shaw from Spatial Computer measured it) and I had bass decay issues due to the back wall at the listening position. I later added a Spatial Black Hole which greatly reduced those issues. Clayton remarked that the ATCs measured better than just about any other speaker he had measured up to that point, except for the bass decay issue, which was very much room influenced.BTW, I later move my system to the short wall and the bass decay issues disappeared. The back wall was no longer just a few feet from the listening position, but was 15 ft behind it.I would recommend buying an active ATC that matches your room and be prepared to provide the best ancillary equipment and room treatment you can afford. They are very special and revealing. It is easy to see/hear why they are such a favorite in studios.I am happy to answer any other questions you may have!
ATC discussions come up occasionally on AC. I LOVED mine, the humungous SCM150ASL's. In fact, they were so big they overdrove my large music room, so I sold them within about 6 months of owning them. But the owning of them was such a wonderful experience, and I met such great people (Grammy-winning Michael Bishop visiting my home, and me visiting his Telarc studio, phone conversation with Pink Floyd legendary producer James Guthrie, wonderful phone conversations with ATC's Billy Woodman, etc)Here are my 150's in my foyer. ATC is a great speaker company. Congrats!
I've owned the 11s and the 19s. ATC does make highly revealing speakers. If that's what you want, they are about the best. I have to agree with the poster that stated they are a bit hot in the upper mids. Also, they are all bass light until you get up to the 100s. With a sub, they work. Without a sub, they lack too much low end punch to satisfy me. Personally I like PMC better.
One of the amazing qualities of these speakers is the ability to make it sound like there is a live performance going on when you hear them from another room in the house. The ability to reproduce piano is just spooky. I played a Chopin performance the other night, and it sounded as if the piano was in the room.
The thing that ATC's do is to play with low distortion at levels that most other speakers would sound awful. Most designs suffer from thermal compression at high levels and sound dull. ATC's sound the same at low or high SPL. The result is music sound effortless and natural EVEN at live concert (realistic) sound levels. This is because of the "short large voice coil in long magnetic gap" design combined with overly robust large magnets. Large voice coils cool better and hence less compression. The overly robust drivers remain linear at very high SPL's. Most speakers do not. Essentially ATC's are like horn speaker without the narrow directivity and distortion that you get with horns. The other trick is a low Q design which means it is highly damped so that you do not have bass resonance and colour masking what you hear in the mids. Finally the mid range dome (with two spiders) is the ideal size for mid range and it throws out a wide even dispersion that illuminates the listener and surrounding room in a very natural way. This mid range dome is the "secret" behind the great sound of ATC's. (Most other designs use overly large woofers to convey the mid range frequencies and being too large the woofers beam - resulting in an unnatural reflected sound field which narrows at the upper mids and gives a pleasant but"hi-fi" sound as the wide dispersion tweeter kicks in - essentially you get a "midrange scoop" from most standard speaker designs and these will sound bass and treble boosted.)Basically, there is more right about the ATC designs than other speakers resulting in a critically damped (highly revealing) and very natural sound that can be delivered at extreme (revealing) SPL's with distortion similar to electronics. This makes better use of our hearing which can actually handle a much greater dynamic range than most other speakers are capable of.
This is due to the wide even dispersion design of ATC and the fact they can play loud like a real instrument. A real piano does not "beam" sound in one narrow direction (at the listener) which is why most speakers will never sound like the real thing. Dr Floyd Toole was the first to research this and show that listeners prefer the "natural" sound from speakers that have a wide even dispersion across the entire frequency range over speakers that have a varied dispersion pattern. Clearly we hear more than the direct arrival of the sound and speakers that have an imbalance between direct and reflected sound do not fool us - they never sound real.
You need better data.
The SCM-11 does NOT have the Super Linear Driver.
This is a graph of the ATC SCM-20, which is very similar to the SCM-19. In fact, the SCM-19 is reportedly to actually slightly outperform the 20 according to the ATC reps.
